In addition to the basic daily schedule, Art, Civilization, and PE are scheduled separately throughout week.

Art is incorporated into every Quest and is also scheduled separately twice a week.

‍P.E., personal fitness, health, and sportsmanship are an important part of being a hero. Formal PE includes a variety of individual and team sports, group games, and outdoor adventures.

Civilization combines history, geography and economics from pre-civilization to the modern day, putting Heroes in the shoes of decision-makers to answer:  “Why do some civilizations rise and others fall?” Our primary goal with Civilization is to prepare future leaders to make important decisions, with deep context and perspective, rather than memorize easily Googled facts. Heroes dive into historical, geographical, political, and economic dilemmas, enigmas and puzzles. In each case, Heroes step into the shoes of a historical figure at critical turning points to debate and make real-life decisions.  

Growth Goals at the beginning of the week help students think about their longer term personal improvement goals.

Reflection at the end of the week asks what worked well this week? What didn't? What could be improved for next week? 

Our year starts the day after Labor Day and runs through mid-June. The year is organized in 7 "Sprints". Just like a rocket blasting off on its journey and returning to earth, each sprint has a storyline with a rise and fall of energy and a look-back to reflect. Each sprint has a theme, a new Quest, and new Communications projects. Our list of holiday breaks for 2020/21 is here.

Quests differ each session and from year to year, giving you a broad range of experiences. However the Leadership Quest and Entrepreneurship Quest are staples and build on each other from year to year.

Leadership Quest: Each year kicks off with a quest designed around leadership and team building where you'll experience how to creating a vibrant & productive culture. This quest culminates in our Children's Leadership Adventure Race, which the public is also invited to participate in (sign up here today).

Entrepreneurship (E-Ship) Quest: Each spring the you'll become an entrepreneur and start your own business. You'll be challenged to think differently, adapt, group problem-solve, debate viewpoints, embrace ambiguity, and create in meaningful ways.  You'll then sell your products or services to real customers at our Children's Entrepreneurship Fair in downtown Brighton, which the public is also invited to participate in (sign up here today).

(Town Hall meetings are led by students themselves, where they bring up issues that need airing or suggest changes to improve the studio.)

By Michal Leshem
Guide at Acton Academy Verona
Originally shared with the Acton Academy Owner Network
Re-posted here with permission:
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Hi Actons,
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I have a story I would love to share with you about our small and young tribe :)Four weeks ago, one of the students (that happened to be my 9 YO son) had a suggestion for the town hall that he will teach art classes. He did not write a full suggestion, just wrote: "I want to be an art teacher". The students had a great discussion about it, and then they took a vote and the majority decided to vote against his proposal. He was devastated. He felt they were doing it because they hated him and really was hurt. For him, it felt like a big failure.
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After he calmed down I took him for a conversation and we discussed what were the problems with his suggestion. He had an idea to ask the other students why did they vote against it, and he did so. Those conversations were very helpful for him: He understood what he needed to improve, and for the next town hall he came with a better plan: Each student that wants to be an art teacher, should make a plan with the list of materials and instructions for the students. After the lesson, the students get to give him/her feedback and also vote whether they liked it or not. This time he had a majority voted for his suggestion! For him, it was such a great experience of learning from your failures.
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Today was his first art lesson and it was a great hit! The students love it, gave him great feedback, and after the lesson was done two other students said they want to lead art next time.

I feel this whole process of giving the students to lead the studio is so empowering. It gives them a real opportunity to grow and learn the most important lessons.  I feel grateful to be part of this journey. 

By Jessica Guile
Co-founder of Acton Academy Redford
Originally shared with the Acton Academy owner network
Re-posted here with permission:
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Last session we had a terribly messy studio when they would "finish" studio maintenance.  They would mostly fight or play and have a hard time getting each other to do their own work.  When we would have closing group, we would sometimes ask them to rate themselves on their studio maintenance and ask them what they would like to improve.  The reflection was always about what others were not doing.  

One day, they seemed to think very highly of how it was done, and I personally thought it was terrible.  So we quickly took pictures of each area and cast them on the screen.  They picked apart the pictures, horrified at their own work.  Still, they did nothing to change it.  (I should add that it drove my apprentice guide crazy and he would stay to clean it up and I was constantly telling him to leave the mess alone and go home.) Then one day.... we had a problem. 

The studio was terribly smelly.  So smelly that I couldn't stand it (pregnancy nose!) and had to open a window.  The learners also had a bad habit of leaving their lunch containers open and unfinished on the tables and not cleaning up their trash.  Right when studio maintenance was beginning, the learners discovered an army of ants coming through the window, down the wall, across the floor, up onto the table and into two different food containers. Those who discovered it started shrieking and freaking out about the ants.  They ran to our apprentice guide who was walking out the door for the day.  He felt it was an emergency, and he responded to their distress to help them.  They all began working feverishly to get rid of the swarm of ants and in the meantime the guide spilled an entire bowl of chili (which was left open) on the floor.  He then asked the owner of the bowl to clean it up which made her late for closing group.  It was a comical mess.  I sat by listening to the whole ordeal from the other room. 

The next day, the guide came to me, upset about a discussion that he had with his son who had observed the whole thing.  His son confronted him and said that he thought it was unfair that the guide asked someone else to clean up the chili bowl, making her late for discussion (for which she had to pay an eagle buck that day).  He said that she didn't spill it, and the guide should have taken responsibility to clean it up.  

The guide was asking me what I thought, and looking for me to defend him.  He felt justified to ask her to clean up the bowl because she had left it out uncovered, even though he knocked it over.   I asked him why the incident felt like an emergency to him.  He said that he could feel their distress and didn't want to leave me to handle the whole mess so he stepped in to help.  I told him patiently that I would not have done anything except ask the learners what they could do to solve the problem.  He was shocked.  I told him that the ants were not dangerous, but they were an awesome representation of the chaos that a messy studio can create.  So I was thrilled that the ants had arrived.  He quickly realized that he had just stepped into a rescuer role and that his actions short-circuited the entire learning experience that could have been.  I told him that it was now his learning experience, and whenever he felt the internal anxiety and impulse to step in, he could picture the comical day with the ants and the chili and the terrible mess.   

He apologized to the whole group, realizing his mistake and understood that he just created more of a problem by stepping into the mess.  The learners all decided that day to figure out how to do studio maintenance as well.  They cleaned better than ever and have taken pride in their work on most days since then.  I feel like studio maintenance is a beautiful opportunity for things to get wild and out of control without any significant damage or even pushback from the parents.  The parents know that it is the learners responsibility.  Studio maintenance offers parents the same great opportunity to see beautiful improvement and ownership in the process.  

How do you deliver hands-on, real world skills, in a way that motivates Heroes?

The answer: Quests.

‍Start with a series of individual and team based real-world challenges. Tie them together with a compelling narrative, where you feel as if the fate of the world rests in your hands. As you compete individually or in a team, you conquer one challenge then move forward to the next, ending with a high stakes public exhibition that’s led 100% by you and your fellow students. Now you have a compelling Quest.

Examples of Quests:

➢ Entrepreneurship Quest, where you'll experience entrepreneurship first-hand and start an actual business.
➢ An Electricity Quest, developing patents for new electrical devices in Edison’s Menlo Park lab.
➢ A Game Design Quest, where learn about risk, probability, and human behavior, and design your own game to be played at the public exhibition.
➢ A Detective's Quest that delves deeply into forensic science.

Core Skills include math, reading, writing, spelling, and language. You'll set their own SMART goals each day for what you'll challenge yourself to accomplish. At the end of Core Skills time you'll report out your results to your peers who help hold you accountable.

For math, spelling, and language, you'll use gamified adaptive programs that help you “learn how to learn” as you progress at your own pace, building a strong foundation without gaps, moving quickly through topics you grasp easily and taking time to master those concepts you find tough.

Reading and comprehension skills are developed by choosing great books you love. Those who love to read, learn to read, and love to learn.

Writing is integrated throughout Quests, Civilization, and focused on specifically in Communication Projects.

Communications Projects are also an important part of Core Skills. Our goal isn't just to learn how to write, but communicate clearly, creatively and with great joy. These projects feature a wide variety of "writing" and "non-writing" adventures to spur creativity and develop excellent writing, speaking, and storytelling.

Our goal is to help you learn to communicate clearly, creatively and with great joy, in a variety of mediums. You'll practice effective communication in writing convincing speeches, biographies, stories, research articles, websites, journals, emails, videos, thank you notes, etc.

Communication Projects: Each session offers a rich communications adventure that moves from idea generation to rough draft, to critique, revision, peer review, and final publication.  The beauty of this approach is our learners eventually become powerful writers, who love to write.

While the primary communication focus is on writing, you'll experiment with film, photography, speech making, sales pitches and many other "non writing" communication skills such as,
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➢ Storytelling
➢ Improv
➢ Small talk
➢ Debate
➢ Comic strips
➢ Visual design
➢ Mirroring
➢ Starting conversations
➢ Interviewing someone
➢ Being interviewed

In Socratic discussions, you are presented with an interesting scenario and asked to make a difficult choice. As you struggle with questions and come to your own conclusions, you are forced to really think about what you believe and why, and to seek evidence to back up your answers. The goal is to learn how to evaluate all sides of a topic, take a stance, and articulate your opinion with a solid argument.

What makes a question "Socratic"? 

If you know the answer, it's not Socratic.

Questions that seek a particular answer, even if open ended, lead to lackluster discussions where only those who know the answer participate. (And those who don't are more likely focused on avoiding eye contact rather than learning what their peers have to say.)

For example, in Civilization one could ask:

Non-Socratic question: "What was the significance of Julias Cesar crossing the Rubicon River?"

While open ended, only those handful of students who know will answer, simply recalling what they've been told and rephrasing it in their own words. Non-Socratic questions leave little room for unique thinking.

Socratic question: "Imagine you're Julias Cesar. You've just spent 8 years away from home battling the Gauls. Finally, you have emerged victorious! As you head back to Rome with your army, you're looking forward to be welcomed home as a hero. You're now standing on the edge of the Rubicon River. This is where the law requires you to send your army home. However there's a problem. In the time you were away, your government has become corrupt. You realize that at this moment in time you're in a unique position to do something about it, but it would involve breaking the law. You could lead your army into Rome and attempt to launch a risky revolution – knowing that if you're unsuccessful you'll forever be known as a traitor. As you stand on the edge of the Rubicon River, you're forced to make this difficult choice: Do you disband your army as the law requires and come home a hero, OR, do you risk everything, march on Rome with your army, and attempt to launch a revolution?"
If a Socratic question is posed properly, answers and opinions will differ. The result is a lively discussions with every participate contributing their own unique viewpoint.

The goal of Socratic Guiding is to help someone else learn to think more clearly and critically.

Guides do not offer shortcuts. Struggle is essential to the learning process. Guides ask questions because learning to think critically is more important than being shown an answer. Good Socratic guiding focus on the process of solving a problem.

For example if you are stuck on a math problem, a Guide may ask,

➢ What strategies have you tried? Is there a strategy you haven't you tried yet?
➢ Have you faced a similar problem before? How did you solve it?
➢ Have you watched a video on this topic? Would it be more helpful to you to rewatch that video or search for another video on this topic?
‍➢ Which mindfulness technique would best help you refocus?

➢ Can you restate the problem in your own words? What information do you know? What information are you trying to figure out?
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➢Would it be more helpful to break the problem into small steps, or take a step back to try to visualize what's being asked?

The goal is to walk along side someone, while they learn to think more clearly and critically.

We are always interested in meeting those who would be a fantastic Guide. As we grow, we'll be hiring additional Guides.

The three important traits of a Guide that are absolute requirements: 

➢ Must be an inspiring storyteller,  
➢ Must love reading,
➢ Must be excited to embrace Acton's approach, where you're role is not about being a “deliverer of content”, but instead is to ask questions, offer challenges, and create a vibrant learning environment.
Most of the daily work of a Guide is in preparing meaningful Socratic discussions and engaging challenges that resonate with the young heroes. This can almost always be accomplished during the school day, leaving time outside school as personal time.

As a Guide, you'll have a wealth of materials to support you, including access to hundreds of pre-packaged Quests, communications projects, civilization resources, and Socratic discussions that you'll be able to customize and adapt to our Studio. You'll also be able to collaborate with and ask questions to every other Guide around the world in the Acton network. You'll also be able to create custom Quests and your own Socratic discussions to best serve the interests of the students.

Having a Montessori-trained background is a plus but not a necessity.

If you are interested, please read through this website, watch the videos, and devour the Blog for Acton Parents. If as the more you read, the more this opportunity excites you, please contact me at scottktay@gmail.com or 586-337-9300. Scott Taylor

➢ Read or listen to the book Courage to Grow, How Acton Academy Turns Learning Upside Down. If you live in the greater Brighton area, I will gladly gift you a copy, just ask :)
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➢ Explore our Acton Academy Deep Dive
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➢ See the kids in action on our Facebook or Instagram