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.