Session 1, Week 1
After a hero accepts their call to adventure they enter “the Special World.” CHOICE heroes accepted their call to start at CHOICE this year and this week began exploring their special world. What does that exploration look like in each studio?
In the Spark Studio this week exploring the Special world meant figuring out their daily schedule and systems, while making new friends. Each day they are learning and developing systems to help the studio run smoothly. We are fine tuning our lunch time routine, practicing our discussion behavior, and trying different systems for studio maintenance. Heroes are encouraged to share their insights; if something in our routine doesn’t flow, we talk about how we want to adjust it and try something new.
We practiced what Montessori work cycle looks like.
Through fun games like “freeze” heroes are discovering how to choose and set their daily goals.
Heroes are learning how to seek out a challenge.
Heroes are already taking charge of being a ‘leader of the day’ and helping tribe members know what comes next in our schedule.
During CHOICE work cycle, heroes excitedly explored their new studio space, practiced (or tried for the first time!) asking to join an ongoing game, helped others feel included, and explored with lots of new materials like our hot glue guns!
We talked about hidden treasures in our lives. Several heroes shared that when they started at CHOICE for the first time they were scared to make new friends and nervous about going to a new school (or just being in a new building). They also shared the hidden treasure they already discovered – new friends, how nice everyone is and how much fun it has already been!
In the Fire Studio’s Special world heroes quickly become excellent builders as they get to work building their systems, their growth mindset, and their relationships. All that building creates the real treasure–an environment and culture of learning, caring, working hard, and having fun! With a treasure map to guide them, heroes created the contracts and rules they will use to hold themselves and their fellow travelers accountable to in this special world culture. They also formed into Running Partners and Squads because no hero travels their journey alone!
Fire Studio Heroes not only entered the special world of a new building, creating new systems, new friends, and routines…they entered the Quest theme of World Travel, Culture, and Games!
This week we traveled through the portal to Russia. In Russia everyone starts school with a celebration, and older students help newer students make the transition to school. We paired up returning heroes and new heroes on a scavenger hunt to learn about our Quest studio.
We listened to a Russian folktale about unity and created new folktales with our squads.
Heroes created their own Kindiski inspired abstract art piece.
We explored Russian food and and learned Russian words that are hard to pronounce (yet they still tried…can you say “Kikishnik”?).
Learning the way things run at school can be a lot, but heroes are coming together to figure it all out. There are friendships developing and we are building our tribe.
In the DELTA Studio an essential part of their Special World is knowing one another and trusting one another. This week we practiced a lot of that.
We practiced getting out of our comfort zones and recognizing our own (and others) challenge and panic zones; finding where we could lend support and where we could ask for support. Between art, physical challenges, reciting literature, math, writing and sharing feelings, meditation and dancing, at least one of these challenges put every hero out of their comfort zone!
Several tribe building and trust exercises helped highlight the truth that trust is crucial to building a community in our special world.
Agreed upon systems and contracts are also essential in the heroes’ Special World. We hadn’t planned on working on these until Week 2, but heroes asked to do them this week and finished them in record time. It is beautiful to watch past years’ cultures build upon themselves.
Both the DS and FS started Civ this week with an engaging discussion and then a lively game. Ask your FS & DS hero what Civ is about each week!
The DS heroes also scanned the far reaches of our galaxy to discover potentially habitable exoplanets. Some of them even made the light-speed journey (one might even call it a “star trek”) to visit these planets!
In other words, they were introduced to their first quest of the school year; it is an Earth Science quest where the goal is to learn about Earth’s atmosphere, geosphere, and hydrosphere by contrasting it with what might exist on other worlds.
There is also a fair bit of astronomy sprinkled in all throughout which is why the hero above is learning about the Doppler effect.
The scenario for this quest is that our sun is dying and humans must find another planet to inhabit. Each squad will be sent to an exoplanet to study it and determine its suitability as a future home for humans (in a lot of ways, it is kind of like the premise of that movie Interstellar).
Completing quest challenges on Journey Tracker rewards heroes with SPESOS (which everyone knows is the most acceptable form of interplanetary currency) and often unlocks details about the exoplanet they have been sent to study. For example, if a hero learns how to take barometric pressure readings here on Earth, it unlocks that information for their exoplanet. There are also several ways that heroes can earn extra SPESOS for their squad by exploring other topics.
No, that’s not Saturn. That’s the exoplanet one of the Delta Studio squads will be investigating as a future home.
There is so much ahead this year – meeting mentors, allies and helpers, a road of trials, caves, dragons and treasure – and most importantly, how we will all grow and change. It was a fun week beginning the discovery of our special world and meeting the incredible fellow travelers who will accompany us on this Hero’s Journey!