Bottom line: does Acton work?
For the children? According to standardized test scores, online dashboards, writing samples, and public demonstrations of work—yes. The Eagles have soared in their learning and are able to prove it to the world. We would soon discover one of the best ways to gauge learning: the apprenticeships the Eagles would experience when we opened our middle school and high school. To have small business owners and nonprofit leaders call us and request we send more Acton Eagles over to work with them has been one of our surest signs that our students are learning—and the community recognizes it.
For the parents? According to our families’ survey results—yes, again. We’ve given more than 250 surveys with the question, “How satisfied were you with your experience at Acton Academy this week? Rate us 1–5 (with 1 being not satisfied, and 5 being extremely satisfied).” We’ve received an average score of 4.85 since our founding. Though we do receive a stinging comment now and then on our surveys, the overall rating tells me our families are generally happy and want to continue on with Acton, even though there are seasons of struggle in every student’s learning process. I have learned that the Acton journey is not for everyone, and some parents opt out when the journey gets emotionally trying. But for those who stay and participate as optimistic partners with us, satisfaction is close to guaranteed.
Another telling evaluation was our Net Promoter Score to measure whether our Acton parents would recommend Acton Academy to a family or friend. This score is a standard measurement of loyalty for a brand. Apple, for example, had a very high Net Promoter Score of 76 percent in 2015. Costco’s score that year was 78 percent. Acton Academy’s most recent score was 100 percent—a rare level of satisfaction, to be sure.
Out of one abyss and into another
By the beginning of our third year, we had outgrown our sweet house and moved to temporary buildings on the campus of the Acton School of Business along the south shores of Lady Bird Lake. We had a three-year waiting list, and our oldest Eagles were aging out of elementary school.
It was time to open a middle school.
Chapter 7
Middle School Monsters?
“If you were willing to allow me to open my own Acton, I would do it not only for my own kids, but because I want all children to have this opportunity. Once you experience your children loving to learn, becoming independent, and happy, you can never not be a part of that.”
—Dani Foltz-Smith, Acton Academy parent and owner of Acton Academy Venice Beach
On a Friday afternoon in late August 2012, I wrestled with a situation that threatened to scuttle the launch of our middle school, just a week away. We had fired our recently hired guide. He was unable to shake his traditional teacher tendencies, which included creating required reading lists and situating a large desk for himself in front of the room; our other guides didn’t even have desks. We worked with him for months leading up to our launch; but the Socratic method of not answering questions was proving to be too big a struggle for him. He thought he should tell students the right answers rather than waiting for the students to figure them out. The last straw was when he told us a disturbing story about how he handled a disagreement with a middle school student by using intimidation—an attitude that went against everything we believed in, no matter how rough he said the school environment and this child were.
We understood; giving children the opportunity to make their own decisions and claim the consequences was not natural for most adults. But without him, we were left in a lurch.
Jeff and I racked our brains for a replacement, the pressure building with every passing hour.
“I’ve had an epiphany,” I said.
“What?”
“You.”
“Me what?”
“You are going to be the lead guide for the middle school,” I said. “What a coup for our parents and Eagles to have you as their guide. You are one of the best in the country!”
Jeff was a dedicated student of the Socratic method, and he had been weaning himself away from his teaching load at the Acton School of Business for a while so that other entrepreneurs could take the reins there.
“This could be your next calling,” I said. “A middle school guide.”
Silence. He percolated.
“I’ll do it,” he said in what came off as a confident tone.
Jeff spent that night regretting his response. Sure, he knew how to lead a class of elite MBA students in a Socratic discussion about entrepreneurship; but how would that translate to middle school students with reading, writing, math, and science? And didn’t most traditional teachers steer clear of middle school, knowing that it was an awkward time for everyone? In education circles, as one principal told me, middle school kids were known as “monsters” for a reason.
And if he failed it would be especially painful, because his own sons would be in the studio.
The next morning, Jeff said he was at peace: “I’m all in.”
· · ·
Teenagers were a completely new population for us, and I had many questions about how self-governance would work with young people who are socially self-conscious, more interested in covering each other’s backs than holding each other accountable to excellence. The gripping narrative of the Hero’s Journey worked so well with young children and older adults; but I had no idea how maturing teenagers would take to it. Would it seem trite?
Not only that, the middle school “studio,” our term for classroom, had to look and feel different from our elementary school studio. It had to feel “older.” Yet the design had to imbue the same purpose: self-governed young people bound by contracts and working toward specific goals.
On a more trivial note, I had to beat the competition’s rite of passage for middle school—the exciting shift to getting a locker. It seemed this was a sign of new independence. All the public middle schools had lockers, and the young teenagers in town were chatty and excited about decorating their lockers. We, however, would not have lockers. Acton Academy’s middle school would look more like a tech start-up’s office space, with long tables and rolling chairs. If only I had known that rolling chairs could become bumper cars. Bad design idea on my part.
· · ·
On the first day, our fresh band of fourteen middle school Eagles walked one by one down a long entry path flanked with photos of their greatest heroes. Jack, Pace, Charlie, Jasper, Crayton, Coby, James, Kenzie, Hayes, Ellie, Sarah, Ana, Claire, and Mason were our founding middle school Eagles.
Their studio stood next door to the elementary studio, where the younger children were playing freely and already enjoying themselves. The older students looked timid and hopeful, stopping to examine each photo as if trying to delay entering the studio for one minute more.
During the summer, we had asked every new middle school Eagle to send Jeff the name of their personal hero and a quote about why they admired that person. We purchased white cardboard signs and created a Hero Board for each new Eagle. Their names were printed boldly at the top, and large photographs of their heroes were flanked by the Eagles’ personal quotes. The boards were secured to posts and planted in the ground to line the path from the parking lot to their new studio door.
The Hero Boards would become a tradition for celebrating the gifts and dreams of each new Eagle, providing identity and a place for those unsure about their new community. They also served as a source of curiosity and questions to begin bonding each new Eagle to the tribe.
We started the first morning just like we had in the elementary school—with a Socratic launch, our term for a discussion on a theme for the day that sets the tone for learning. This happened at precisely 8:30 a.m.
“Why are we all here?” Jeff asked. “What matters most to you—having more freedom, discovering a special gift, or changing the world in a profound way?”
The next leg of our journey had
begun.
· · ·
For the first few weeks, the middle school Eagles concentrated on the fundamentals—reading, writing, math—and building the tribe. Jeff organized team-building exercises, including an off-site ropes course, and pulled activities from the Acton MBA curriculum designed to get them started on learning more about themselves.
Many educators assume teenagers go to school to learn or prepare for life. We learned quickly that most young people just want to be with their friends. So our goal was to make it fun to be part of the Acton tribe and to make the first few weeks feel like the start of an adventure. Once Eagles wanted to belong to the tribe and were eager to start a journey together, the guides could make hard work a requirement for staying. The simple ethos was, work hard to earn your freedom and have a lot of fun along the way.
Their daily schedule was similar in design to that of the elementary school. Mornings were for quiet core skills work. Afternoons were for collaborative, hands-on projects. In between were Socratic discussions for history, writing workshops, and free time.
“How can you teach history through Socratic discussions led by children?” asked a guest observing one day from a local high school.
Jeff replied, “In fact, it’s the student-led discussions that are the secret sauce to learning history. The key is the moral dilemma. We put a young person in the shoes of a historical hero facing a difficult decision with an important moral issue at stake. Even better, that same moral issue is vexing leaders today and (separately) matters to the young person in his or her own life.”
The guest seemed eager to hear more, so Jeff went on. “The bottom line is this: We’re not teaching history. We’re giving young people the tools to make better moral decisions; and to do so, they need to dig deeply into what happened in the past. The motivation makes all the difference, as does the goal of ‘learning to do’ something—make better moral decisions—instead of ‘learning dead history.’ 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 about what matters in life.”
Early on, the middle school Eagles surprised us. While it wasn’t Utopia, this group often worked and played together like highly functioning adults.
“It’s dawned on me that middle schoolers aren’t monsters at all,” Jeff said. “They can be responsible, creative people—as fun to be around as a roomful of ambitious Harvard or Acton MBAs.”
However, there were soon signs of trouble.
Testing boundaries
We know standardized tests have little correlation with lifelong achievement, but they provide benchmarks for improvement. By administering a test at the beginning and end of each year, we have a measure of improvement that quantifies the real growth of our students, growth that we see every day, including in their projects and exhibitions.
This sort of test would be a departure from Acton’s routine and our typical approach to learning. So it was not surprising that the first time we tested the middle school students, they immediately reverted to the expectations of an adult-centered, teacher-driven system. We didn’t see this reaction in the younger group of Eagles who just took the test in stride, almost like a funny activity. There was no preparation or teaching to the test. We simply emailed their parents the night before and told them what we planned on doing. But the older Eagles suddenly acted like students with a teacher in a classroom; they started asking lots of questions and seemed helpless until a teacher gave them answers.
“Where can I find a pencil?”
“Is it okay to erase a wrong answer?”
“Can I use a scratch pad?”
The test instructions were crystal-clear. Moments before, these young heroes had powered through self-paced math problems, led Socratic discussions, organized janitorial duties, and drafted self-governing documents; yet they became infantilized by the testing process, asking for the most minute directions.
The free time after the test saw an explosion of pent-up energy, as chaos overtook the studio. The students’ behavior began to spiral out of control.
One of the middle schoolers approached Jeff. “Would you please do something?”
“It’s your studio, not mine,” Jeff told him. “What are you going to do about it?”
The student wavered, so Jeff rephrased the question, offering a choice: “Should you act alone or see if there are some other leaders who want to join you?”
The Eagle got the message and quickly called an emergency meeting of the studio leaders. Everyone showed up. He reiterated the verbal promises each had made and appealed to the most disruptive Eagles to keep their word. Order was restored—at least for the time being.
“First, you make it fun to belong. Then you let the tribe set its standards,” Jeff told the other guides later. “You have to hold up a mirror when the group or some individuals fail to keep a promise.”
Jeff found that the key was to keep experimenting with different combinations of incentives and boundaries, individually and for the group, each announced in advance; his intent was to keep from triggering that sense of adolescent injustice that arose quickly when the students found themselves being ordered about by adults—especially without good reason.
“If they are in charge and making choices, they are motivated to challenge themselves and one another,” Jeff told me. “They can learn at warp speed. But if they see adults taking control and running things, they get back in the mode of doing nothing. It’s a delicate balance.”
The first round of test results was surprising. Approximately half the class was in the bottom 10 percent of test scores—shockingly low in reading and writing ability. The other half hovered near the top 1 percent. It seemed we had attracted either those bored by conventional school or those failing dismally—with few, if any, in between.
· · ·
Before long, middle school had a rhythm of simple core skills practices. They were keeping track of math skills earned on Khan Academy, daily pages read in a favorite book, writing challenges shared in peer critiques, and Socratic discussions about important turning points in civilization.
The first middle schoolers’ hands-on project was focused on building a mini-civilization—their own—during the first few weeks of the year. They developed guidelines for the studio, including rules of engagement for studio discussions, such as “Listen,” “Be concise,” and “Provide evidence.” They created a process for cleaning and organizing the studio and put “champions” in charge of checking up on the work to ensure their space was left in pristine order each day. They got to know each other and listened to daily stories about the Hero’s Journey. As in the elementary studio, we integrated PE and creative arts to round out their work and create opportunities for personal growth.
At the end of five weeks together, they were ready to write their studio Contract. They had the elementary school’s document as a standard, and it was a high one. This document would be the studio authority. It would define the boundaries of behavior, character traits, and attitude.
As a Socratic guide, Jeff held to the strict code of conduct—promising to never answer a question, no matter how practical or necessary. Keeping this promise was hard, especially when the studio became disorderly, which was happening with the older students more often than the younger ones. The pull of entropy is strong, and the middle school Eagles’ intentionality to work hard kept fraying. Cleanup time in the afternoons resulted in a less and less pristine studio. Collaboration during core skills time routinely deteriorated into wasting time with friends.
Jeff felt like his hands were tied. He decided to ask for a small group of middle school Eagles to volunteer for an observation mission into the elementary school to try to understand why their culture kept falling into chaos while the elementary school’s held together. Why was it harder for them to establish the same work habit
s that the elementary students exhibited?
They would return to the studio with ideas, and each new attempt injected energy for a day or two, but the commitment would soon decay. Lord of the Flies moments cropped up weekly.
Mall cop
Charlie was not afraid to question authority, nor did he shy away from challenging his fellow students when he thought they were coming up short. He enlisted himself on a mission to keep the middle school’s standards high.
“That costs an Eagle Buck for each of you,” he said to two Eagles who were having a side conversation during a Socratic discussion. Jeff had injected “Eagle Bucks” into studio life as an incentive for the students to work hard and to hold each other accountable. They could earn Bucks for accomplishing work goals and then spend their earnings on treats like snacks or buying more free time. An Eagle could lose Bucks for breaking the rules. But the Eagles themselves had to be the ones to deliver the fines, not the guide. There was a bank and a committee of students to manage the distribution and collection of Eagle Bucks; this took the delivery of “discipline” out of the hands of an adult and gave the young people a way to manage each other—if everyone participated in the system.
Later that day, as Charlie walked past a cluster of desks, he saw an Eagle playing videogames instead of working. “That’s an Eagle Buck,” he said, as the offender slammed his laptop closed.
“Quit being a mall cop,” one of the Eagles said to him. Charlie had not yet learned that leadership is a balance between tough-mindedness and warm-heartedness. He had the tough-minded part down and had no problem calling his peers out on being distracting at every turn. To him, he was just calling things as he saw them. But it didn’t sit well with the other Eagles. The “mall cop” label stuck.
Jeff coached him along, asking him to let others be the voice of accountability and generally helping with what “warm-hearted” leadership looked like.
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