Trust the children
- "We trust you and you have power. You don't need to ask us to get a drink or have a snack."
- "self-governed young people bound by contracts and working towards specific goals."
Let them struggle
- "Be courageous enough to let them fall into chaos until one of the other children steps up to lead."- Embrace the adventure / chaos
- "work hard to earn your freedom and have a lot of fun along the way"
- "Witnessing the chaos is so difficult for me. It's just disheartening when the studio turns messy and mean. Some days I want to give up."
- Cycle from order into chaos and back into order again
  - Eventually the kids can learn to predict, resolve and manage the cycle on their own rather than depending on adults to mandate it from top down
Socratic teaching:
- Never answer questions, no matter how practical
- Students are in charge of discovering the answers
- Students become seekers of knowledge and wisdom
- Socratic method for teaching history
  - Moral dilemmas
    - "giving young people the tools to make better moral decisions"
    - "When we get the questions right, young people will spend hours on the research and, with a little preparation, they'll hold a self-organized, high-energy debate."
Mixed-age classrooms for peer teaching
Peer accountability
- Student-written and agreed-upon contracts
- Student-driven community
  - "Make it fun to belong, then let the tribe set it's standards. Hold up a mirror when the group or some individuals fail to keep a promise."
  - Town Hall Meetings
    - Weekly
    - Students facilitate the meeting
    - Agenda is created by completing a form, specifying either an announcement to be read out loud or a problem that needs to be discussed and resolved
    - Forms are collected in a box, facilitator reviews and sets agenda
Agile
Self-paced learning
Adults primary job is to set up the environment properly
- Proper expectations and boundaries will enable children to take charge of their learning rather than wait and be told what to do.
- Children as central figures in the environment - made for them, not for adults
  - have everything they need within their space
  - they know what to do and when to do it without an adult needing to make an announcement
Experiential learning
- Set up experiences "in which the adults had no idea what the outcome would be"
  - Similar to the way the Spartan education system worked: complicity through action
- Do real-world work
Exhibitions of Learning every 5-6 weeks to demonstrate what they learned over that period
- Invite parents and friends to participate in the evaluation of learning
- Examples on page 75
Portfolio Review Meetings
- Cull best samples of writing, art, and project documentation and construct a portfolio for parents to review
  - Parents see and asses for themselves
    - Ask questions, discuss areas of weakness and strength together
Assessment is hard!
Reflection / retrospective
- "The next day to reflect on their learning and process the experience with their guides."
Core Skills Work: reading, writing, and math
- Writing
  - Journaling and creative writing, with frequent feedback and sharing
Writing Workshops: idea generation, rough draft, critique, revision, critique, editing, and publication
- critiqued one another on ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions (grammar), and ranked use of traits from strongest to weakest
Science taught via Kuhn's paradigm shifts
- paradigm busters, puzzle makers, data collectors
Design systems that run the school rather than an adult running the school
- In reality, the adult is part of the system
- "The magic of checklists"
Ceremonies designed
- Greeting ceremony every morning
Kids with disabilities: "Jeff estimated that perhaps one-third of our Eagles have some level of ADD or ADHD."
Hero's Journey

Interesting examples:

"Hands-on project focused on building a mini-civilization-their own-during their first few weeks. Developed guidelines for the studio, including rules of engagement for studio discussions, such as "Listen", "Be concise", and "Provide evidence."

Key Quotes:
"Minimally invasive education so that they can be free and joyful in their discoveries while working on things that matter to them."
"I wish I had known to love the messiness, ambiguity, and questions."

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Courage to Grow How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down

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Courage to Grow: How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down