A Cool Day. Literally.

When I invited my father-in-law, UT Professor Ken Diller, to come share his Hero's Journey, with the AI Griffins today as a tie-in with our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory invention quest, I immediately began to worry. He speaks to audiences all over the world, but usually at a college level or beyond. Would he be able to engage some squirmy eight year olds? Would they be able to behave as an attentive and respectful audience? Should our class bow out and just let the Middle Schoolers hear his talk?

Boy, were my concerns ill-founded (as usual). The Elementary School kids were ready and waiting on the dot of 12:!5, many with notebooks for sketching in or taking notes. We had talked briefly in our morning launch, before reading the fabulous book The Inventor's Secret, about good manners for a guest speaker. Well, these kids grabbed hold of this privilege and responsibility and ran with it. They raised their hands eagerly to answer his questions, and they also responded with fabulous, thoughtful questions of their own. One gem of Abigail's: "Do you do most of your experimenting alone, or do you work better with helpers?"

Our speaker shared with them about his journey as an inventor and holder of many patents over the past decades. He confided that inventors use about 10% inspiration (good ideas!) and 90% perspiration (hard work!). He told them the steps of the process that have led to his successes: prayer, intuition, knowledge, and experimentation. And then, before showing them all the iterations of his latest medical device, he pressed home this central idea: Some of his most important learning has come about when things don't work the way he thinks they will. 

Since the device he showed them had to do with cooling the brain in order to save lives during heart attacks and other acute events, it was only fitting that our project for today was all about cooling! We weren't cooling brains, though. We were making ice cream! Big shout-out to Mrs. Outlaw and little brother Brooks for bringing the materials and kicking off this project alongside our fearless Head of School! (I had to give our guest speaker a tour of the schoolhouse. :-))

Team 1 made a batch in a bowl using dry ice, with rather carbonated results. Do I even need to tell you how exciting it is to play with dry ice???

Team 2 and Team 3 churned their ice cream in Zip-loc baggies, using rock salt and regular ice. Team 2 had half and half; Team 2 had coconut milk.

In the end, it was dry ice for the win. You probably would rather not know how many spoons were dipping and double-dipping into that big bowl of carbonated ice cream. So I won't tell you. Let's just focus on the fun and the learning that took place. Deal?

Wonka-Worthy Candy Machines

Have you heard about our new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory quest? The ES and MS students are using this book as a jumping-off point to explore the themes of the Hero's Journey, Inventions, and Perseverance. A magical trifecta!

Quest activities this past week included introducing the stages of the Hero's Journey and sketching corresponding scenes from Charlie in small inter-pod groups of three, making "Boo Bubbles" out of dry ice (our apologies if your children are now pestering you to supply them with dry ice at home!), and my personal favorite: the Limitations Challenge. We tested the theory that limitations actually encourage creativity by unleashing the ES kids on the Tinkering Lab and allowing them to each fill one shoebox with supplies. Using only those supplies, they could work alone or with a partner to invent a Wonka-Worthy candymaking machine. I loved seeing their ingenuity at work! The results were about nine very different "machines" that could produce the imaginary candy of their dreams.

A few glimpses of them admiring each other's work. No close-ups  of their creations, because you get to admire those on Exhibition Night!

Cyrus and Genevieve found an old speaker in the Tinkering Lab that they wanted to dissassemble for their creation. They tried a hammer. They tried getting a Middle Schooler to wield the hammer. They even recruited Mrs. Blair, a bystander who had unsuspectingly come to school to drop off a taekwondo uniform, to run the thing over in her SUV! None of the above worked on the stubborn old gadget, but they got props from their classmates for our highlighted character trait of perseverance. (And by the way, they tried all those tactics with zero input from me. Props for resourcefulness as well!)

One thing I as a Guide am struggling a bit with as I plan projects is how to budget time. My Holy Grail, if you will, is to give them adequate time to really dig deep into a project -- but that includes time to listen to the parameters and time to clean up. I don't want the projects to be superficial, but I also don't like to rush the kids. I REALLY don't like rushing them.

As with many aspects of this model we are all adapting to, I expect finding that balance will simply take time. But I'm also praying for wisdom and insight and listening to ideas from others, including these persevering and resourceful children of yours. And YOU! Please know that although I may not be instantly accessible to you, especially during or immediately after every school day, I am happy to hear from you with any questions, ideas, concerns, etc. I know Tiffany would say the same -- not only is she Head of School, but she also spends time in the ES classroom each day. We know it's not easy to send your kids off all day and wonder what on earth they are doing, beyond the photos you see on GroupMe or these blog posts. Part of that is the letting go process, but we want to support you in that to the extent we are able.

Introducing ... SMART Goals!

This week we introduced SMART Goals. Heard of them? There's some disagreement online in the world of business productivity as to what exactly some of the letters stand for, but for our purposes, SMART Goals are:

SPECIFIC

MEASURABLE

ACHIEVABLE

RELEVANT

TIME-BOUND (and reasonably TOUGH)

We have been kicking off our morning Core Skills time by practicing setting some SMART goals for the morning. This is a brand new skill, and I'm encouraged by how quickly they're picking it up. I worried a bit that they might set the bar quite low for themselves in order to easily achieve their goals. But this morning, they were setting some fairly ambitious goals for themselves in math, handwriting, and reading!

How do we make our goals SMART? Well, one child came to me with her list. Item #1: Do Khan. OK, so that's a start. She's not just going to "do math." She's going to do Khan, and she's going to do it this morning (time-bound). By chatting a bit, we were able to tighten it: Based on what she did the previous day, she decided that "Mastering two new skills on Khan Academy" would be in her Challenge Zone. It's specific. It's measurable: she and I can both see by the end of the morning that she has mastered two new skills. It's achievable (she did it yesterday, to her great surprise. It's relevant, because finishing Khan Academy 3rd Grade Math will earn her a math badge, which is part of her academic journey for the year. And it's time-bound (do it before lunchtime!) and tough (this child isn't naturally inclined toward math). 

I encourage you to look for examples of SMART goals in your own life and in the lives of others whom you know or hear about, and share them with your kids. This morning in our launch, I shared this famous example of a SMART goal with them: President John F. Kennedy's proclamation about going to the moon.

At the end of Core Skills time, we had a little huddle where everyone had a chance to weigh in on whether they achieved their three goals, whether the "successful" ones had reached high enough, and what those who "fell short" thought they might do differently tomorrow (with some suggestions from their classmates).

My hope and prayer is that we build a culture that encourages everyone to do their best work but also provides a safe place to learn from apparent disappointment. Please pray for us as we seek to engage them at a heart level. Thank you!

Week Two: The Good, The Ugly, and the Path In Between

Friends, it's been such a full week that I haven't even been sure where to start sharing it with you. I've been praying about what God might have as the "Big Rock" to convey in this post (ask your child what that means!). I think He's nudging me with something, but honestly, it's not the answer I would have hoped for! Who wants to walk that far out on the vulnerability limb?

Deep breath. Here goes.

In his first Launchpad blog post, Gary ended thus:

"We’ve only just started.  Will it be messy?  Will it be risky?  I hope so.  I am starting to believe that those are actually the optimal conditions for deep transformative learning to happen."

We reminded each other many times over the summer that we were heading into a messy, risky venture. But it wasn't until this Tuesday that I smelled the burning scent of the rubber hitting the road -- in my own soul. I suppose I said those words -- you know, the ones about how my plans would probably fall apart but I had to make them anyway, or about how it would be imperfect but beautiful -- rather glibly, in retrospect. 

Because when you are crying big ugly snotty mascara-dissolving tears on the back porch of the schoolhouse ... and then at the lunch table ... and then at the staff meeting ... and then on the front porch ... and then at home on your bed ... IT DOES NOT FEEL BEAUTIFUL. Oh, and how's this for the kicker? Crying IN FRONT OF THE KIDS. 

Here's the honest truth: This past Tuesday I felt like the weakest link among the AI Staff, as awesome and encouraging as they are. No one else has bawled their way through an afternoon staff meeting for no apparent reason. (And by "no apparent reason," I mean this: my ES kids were not badly behaved that day. They are simply young and needy, and ask me to make many decisions, revise many plans, and answer many questions all day until they are able to make their own. Sensory overload, or what our class might call "the panic zone," snuck up and grabbed me from behind, and it looked like a scary plumbing situation on my face.)  Anissa, you probably need to re-stock an entire box of Kleenex at the schoolhouse on my account alone. 

But speaking of Anissa, she said to me in one of the sweet, supportive, encouraging texts I received (which of course made me cry harder) the following: "Tears are meant to be seen. That's why they come out of your eyes." Consider that for a minute.

Which is harder -- to fall apart, or to be SEEN falling apart? 

That night, another friend reminded me this: "No, you can't make it, do it, or be it. But if our God can hold together the entire universe, He can surely hold together your personal universe." In that moment, I realized that until that day, there was a subtle part of me believing that I could do this. That I had what it took to spend three full days a week with fourteen children guiding them into a new model of learning and self-governing. If you'd asked me, I would have said that oh no, I depended on God. But Tuesday pulled away a layer of pretense that I hadn't known was there. 

My husband also reminded me that our own children are watching me. They've seen me work hard all summer, funneling my energy into this endeavor. They've seen me take the risk of public failure in a way that being a homeschooling mom for the past decade has not demanded or provided. They saw me fall apart on Tuesday and accept their offer to make dinner so I could chill out. They saw me get back up on Wednesday and climb back into the saddle to try again. I hope your children saw a bit of the same. I hope their hearts are telling them what their brains may not have processed yet: Mom, a.k.a. Mrs. Diller, is not talking about learning from failure and building our perseverance muscles from a pulpit. She's talking about those things from right beside us in a muddy trench.

The other thing I hope they noticed (because I pointed it out to them) is that part of life in the trench involves asking for help and accepting it when it's offered. The rest of the week went dramatically better. I was able to budget my bandwidth with the children because Apryl, Tiffany and Gary stepped forward at various times to help out. Oh, and because several of you were praying for me, and your prayers availed! 

Now, enough about me! I told the staff I didn't want to write a super-long blog post, and yet here we are. For the two of you who have made it this far without your eyes crossing, here are a few lower-cost highlights of the week:

1. Thanks to our portable internet hotspots (which we took in turns with the Middle School), all fourteen children successfully logged on to Khan Academy, DreamBox and Spelling City and made progress! Their enthusiasm is heartening. Maybe a little scarcity of resources is a good thing from time to time.

2. Each child had a one-on-one meeting with me to discuss their badge journey for the year. It's exciting to see them accepting challenges! Two children who were convinced that a certain platform or achievement were "impossible" for them both agreed, albeit hesitantly, to give it a try. Music to my ears. 

3. Our project for the week was to craft a container, using limited materials, which would hold a raw egg and prevent it from breaking when dropped from the back porch ... and then the second floor balcony. They worked on this for three days, culminating in the final deliverable: a 30-second commercial for their egg container. Hilarity ensued. 

4. Several of the kids (boys especially) really enjoyed hearing from our guest speaker, Chris Hall, a former offensive lineman for the UT Longhorns who currently serves the Lord in campus ministry. He shared about growing up in a Christian home and then finally meeting Jesus personally his freshman year in college, where he realized that he had no chance of persevering through the rigors of UT football without a genuine walk with the Lord. He also shared how a friend led him to the truth that being a Christian didn't mean coasting through football and college with an "I have Jesus; life is great!" attitude. It meant being willing to work the hardest and the longest, because we express a God who doesn't do half-baked jobs. 

{They didn't do a half-baked job teaching Chris to play GaGa. Because apparently GaGa rules the world.}

5. It sure was cool on Friday afternoon to see and hear a bunch of them around the table in the Tinkering Lab, crafting, swapping stories about their great grandparents, and singing a chorus of "We Were Made to Thrive." 

May your weekend with your children be full of blessing, friends! We'll see you back on Tuesday, ready to learn again together. 

- Hannah

Week One: Lessons Learned

Well, it's been quite a week. An exhilarating, exhausting, fun, loud, crazy, growing and learning week -- punctuated with periods of quiet calm, tears, laughter, schedule changes on the fly, frustrations that teach perseverance, and little victories as I saw these bright, energetic, curious people of yours adapt to their new environment and rise to small challenges. They have been coming together as a tribe, and that is a beautiful thing!

Here is a link to a video we watched on Day 2, when I introduced the idea of a Hero's Journey and our character trait of Session One: Perseverance. Scroll down to the "Book Trailer" video for a little treat!

(And speaking of videos, how hilarious was that Lip Dub? Tiff did an amazing job leading the charge on that one, but the moves and choreography were all their own ideas! So proud of what they did in just three days!)

I thought I'd share ...

Five Things I Learned in My First Week as an Elementary School Guide at AI:

1. I need to be patient with the process. We are all brand new to this way of living and learning together in community! Building covenants and setting out rules of engagement together takes longer and goes more slowly than I planned, especially for the youngest brains and wiggliest bodies, but the work will be worth it.

2. The mixed-age model works. There were moments this week when I thought "I CANNOT listen to the sound of my name coming from eight different mouths simultaneously for one. more. minute!" (I'm noise-sensitive. Go ahead and laugh.) What turned those moments around was being able to look at one of the older children and say, "Camryn, can you help Abigail with getting her Chromebook set up?" "Ben, can you answer Cyrus' question?" "Who can tell Miles what we decided about reading passion books during DEAR time?" "WE CAN!" It's beautiful to see these kids step up and take leadership -- and to know that every single one of them will have these moments in the weeks to come.

3. Cherished traditions can happen by accident. On the first day, as we attempted to sit in a circle, I commented that our "circle" was really more shaped like a potato. From then on, all we needed to huddle up on the floor was for me, or someone else, to call "Potato!" (Reliable sources in the car on the way home confirmed that a potato is way cooler than a circle.)

4. We can have some pretty cool discussions when hands are busy. Yesterday we read the first chapter of "The Mystery of History" while everyone drew in their sketchbooks. Then we had a little chat about God's creation (the subject of the chapter), and what His purpose in creating us is. They had some ideas about that, and about how not believing in God might affect how you feel about the purpose of life. Deep stuff for their ages. I love hearing their minds work!

5. AI parents are amazing. We could not do what we do without you! Whether it's the gift of lunch brought in, text messages just to say "I'm praying for you today!", wrapped games left on the shelf on Day 1, encouraging emails, doughnuts brought for our "Challenge Doughnut" exercise, your smiling faces outside at the end of the day ... in so many ways, you support us and make us feel loved and sustained. Truly, we could not ask for a better group of families.

New School, New Tribe, New Adventure

The air was absolutely electric this morning as the carpool circle filled up and kids came streaming out of minivans and toward the house, stopping to have their photos taken by some older Griffins. I could feel their both their excitement and their uncertainty, especially these sweet 7-10 year olds who have spent most of their learning days at home in the comfort of their families. Some were a bit nervous, some reserved, some confident, some wiggly and overflowing with energy, needing to know the boundaries. We had a wonderful and productive first morning together, including an impromptu Socratic discussion on whether jumping off the loft ladder should be allowed, if so from what height, and what kind of beanbag would be suitable as a landing pad. 

Good times. 

After lunch, we used rubber bands to talk about how we're all being stretched in different ways this year. Some of us find math easy; others feel stretched. Some find working with others and being around people all day easy; others feel stretched. The stretching can be uncomfortable, and we 

don't want to stretch to the snapping point, but we need to stretch to grow! I think it's safe to say that every single person in this schoolhouse is experiencing different kinds of stretching today. We are growing! (And unlike rubber bands, our capacities never return to quite their original size.)

We also read 1 Samuel chapter 3 together and talked about God's calling of each of them in His own timing, and how that relates to being on a hero's journey. 

This is the story I shared with them during our first Elementary School launch. It's long, but I thought you might enjoy reading what they heard. See if you can figure out which part of the story really drew out the crazy cheering! :-)

"Welcome to the very first ever Acton Imprimis Elementary School class! You all are a very special group of pioneers, because you and your parents have said YES to a big adventure when none of us knows exactly what it’s supposed to look like! This is a year when you will take chances, get messy, make plenty of mistakes, pick yourself up and dust yourself off and try again, learn to set and achieve goals, and give each other plenty of encouragement along the way. We hope you’ll also discover more of who God made you to be and how you fit into His plan for His kingdom on this earth.

When Jesus was on this earth 2000 years ago, He taught a lot through stories. And here at Acton Imprimis, we learn a lot through stories -- by hearing them, telling them, reading them, thinking about them, and discussing them. So I thought I’d start us off with a story. (And if you get wiggly, please know that you will rarely hear the sound of my voice as much as you will right now!)

Imagine that it is the year 2035. You are all twenty years older. How old will you be? What do you think you’ll look like, sound like, and be like? Will you feel the same and think the same way? Imagine that you’ve all come back together, right here in this room, for a reunion. Here’s one version of what you might discover.

In the year 2035, Abigail and Aliya are running their own successful veterinary practice, “All About Animals with Abigail and Aliya,” where they specialize in domestic animals like horses, cows, goats, sheep, and dogs (especially golden retrievers and Cavalier King Charles spaniels). Their skills have come in handy when they visit a different Third World country every year to provide free veterinary care to struggling farmers and share the gospel with them. They also get frequent calls from Camryn, who is running her own thriving farm in the Texas Hill Country, taking fresh produce to the weekly Lakeline Mall Farmer’s Market and keeping prizewinning pygmy goats, along with more traditional farm animals. She supplies all the vegetables to the popular Austin restaurant where Cyrus has worked his way up from server to manager to chef/owner. He has a secret breakfast menu there that’s only available to his family and his fellow AI graduates.

Josiah stops in to visit his twin sister whenever his travel schedule allows for any free time. He’s on the road for weeks out of every year, competing as a professional skateboarder, and winning a gold medal at last year’s X Games. Winning medals is not as important to him, though, as his visits to inner city skateboarding parks and camps, where he demonstrates his mad skills for kids and then shares with them about Jesus. Last year he started his very own sports camp for underprivileged kids with Zach, who went to college on a soccer scholarship and now plays professionally for the LA Galaxy.

Caroline and Genevieve are providing the refreshments for this party, having flown in from Paris, where they opened their own little bakery in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower after graduating from Le Cordon Bleu culinary school as pastry chefs. Caroline specializes in macarons and cupcakes, while Genevieve excels in artistic birthday cakes. They have come up with an innovative program for feeding Paris’ homeless population with the daily leftovers from the city’s bakeries and cafés. Their shop was designed by Milam, an architect whose work also includes homes for poor families in Southeast Asia using inexpensive and highly renewable bamboo.

Gage is entertaining the crowd at this party with his dazzling collection of magic tricks. Even though everyone knows these are really illusions, Gage has refined his skills so much that he’s fooling everyone! Miles, meanwhile, produces a trick that seems just as magical to his former classmates. He has invented an amazing machine that turns Brussels Sprouts into bacon! He’s already made his first million dollars, as the machine is selling like hotcakes, but he chooses to live simply so that he can support five missionaries with his earnings. He’s also building a Christian orphanage in Haiti (designed by Milam!) and Gage plans to visit frequently to entertain the children there with his magic tricks. He knows that sometimes when life is sad or difficult, kids can really use a laugh!

Ben, Hope, and Meg have all started their own Acton Imprimis schools, putting to work all the many hours of experience they gained watching their parents and working alongside them in 2015. Ben’s is right outside of Paris, and he often sends his students to apprentice with Caroline and Genevieve. Hope’s is in Bora Bora, where marine biology and sandcastle building are Core Skills and the Griffins snorkel for recess. Meg’s is in the mountains of North Carolina. She makes sure every Griffin acquires knife handling skills in the first two weeks of school and spends plenty of time camping, hiking, and learning to survive outdoors. They all hope to cultivate humble, brave and godly heroes who live boldly for God’s kingdom on this earth, just as they and their classmates from the very first Acton Imprimis have done.

So, what do you think? Is it possible that this scenario may happen? Is it probable? Maybe, maybe not. Whether this represents your future, or whether God has something else in store for you, we believe that the choices you make today, this week, this year, can help determine the way you end up going, even many years from now. You will have to make decisions. Some of them will be tough. You will encounter obstacles and be tempted to give up or take the easy way out. You will need to decide whose definition of success you listen to: the world’s or God’s.

And that is why we are all here together: to support each other in our challenges, to help each other learn to set and reach goals, and to remind each other of whose voice, whose applause, really counts. Who gave us our gifts and abilities? Whose glory and honor do we seek? What kind of people should we then be? We’re here to take that journey and tackle those questions together."

And we're off!

                                                                                                                          ~Hannah