It would be three more years before we’d see how Charlie’s growth from mall cop to true leader would play out.
Elementary intervention
The middle school tribe was setting its own standards. But these standards were neither good enough nor being held strongly enough for some of the original and younger Eagles. A rebellion was brewing in the elementary school, led by our son Sam, who had found a strong and steady voice and cared deeply about the standards of excellence at Acton Academy. So did Bodhi, Chris, and Saskia, who were also in the elementary school; they had seen Charlie, Ellie, and Cash move on to middle school.
“The middle schoolers are ruining Acton,” he said a few weeks into the new session. “They don’t work hard, they distract us all the time, and they don’t follow the Contract.”
Sam informed us at the kitchen table that the elementary school Eagles had written a letter and signed a petition asking the middle school Eagles to leave.
“We’ve elected an ambassador and a commission to deliver the petition,” he said. “Can we do that tomorrow?”
Sam was speaking with a seriousness I’d never seen in him. He was protective of Acton Academy and its culture of learning and excellence. He was becoming a thoughtful and persuasive leader with a quiet but strong voice.
Charlie shot back: “Sam, I can handle it.”
“Well, why haven’t you then?” asked Sam.
The next day, a group of elementary Eagles approached the middle school with the petition. They had collected evidence over a period of weeks to prove the middle school standards were too low for Acton Academy. They were detracting from the Acton name, which the younger Eagles held in such esteem. The older Eagles’ studio was a mess compared with the younger Eagles’ studio. There were library books all over the floor. The microwave had old food stuck inside that emitted an unpleasant odor. The supply cart was a complete mess—pens and pencils broken and stuffed under the copy paper tray. Much worse than the appearance of the studio was the level of noise during work time. The walls between the studios were thin, and the younger Eagles were having a hard time focusing on their work because of the bad work habits of the older Eagles.
This was a rude awakening for the middle school tribe.
Jeff led a discussion with the group. “Well, you’ve all read the elementary studio petition, alleging you’ve damaged their property rights by being a poor neighbor. In the real world, you could be facing Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” he explained.
Fourteen pairs of eyes went wide. Whatever bankruptcy was, it didn’t sound good. “Why don’t you take thirty minutes and research what bankruptcy might mean for the middle school?”
The group reconvened a half hour later, and Jeff asked, “So what’s the difference between Chapter 7 or Chapter 11 bankruptcy?”
Ellie said, “Chapter 7 bankruptcy is about liquidation, which I think means the middle school would disappear and Chapter 11 means reorganization. I think that means starting over.”
“In this instance, we’d declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, because there’s something worth saving,” Jeff said. Everyone in the room relaxed, until he added, “Which means three elementary Eagles will be appointed as your overseers, to make sure the studio runs smoothly as we reorganize.”
Problem solved. The thought of being led by seven- and eight-year-olds was enough to jolt the middle school leaders back to a high level of personal responsibility for running their studio.
The elementary school Eagles were right on target and their insurrection proved to be a turning point. I was learning again that sometimes it is the youngest who speak the truth and create change.
Bucking the trend
“Witnessing the chaos is so difficult for me,” Jeff told me one night after a particularly trying day. “It’s just disheartening when the studio turns messy and mean. Some days I just want to give up.”
It was time to add more clarity and structure, some risks and rewards. Jeff designed and introduced a crude economic system based on poker chips. “I am always setting up games and inviting students to play,” he said. “If they don’t work, I design a new one.”
Jeff organized the Eagles into three-person squads. Each Eagle received three chips per week. Each infraction of studio rules that governed “listening” and “respect” triggered the loss of a chip. If everyone wasn’t in place for the opening discussion at 8:30 a.m. or the studio wasn’t pristine by the 3:00 p.m. closing, everyone lost a chip. If every member of a squad had a chip on Friday, the entire squad received a treat. Squad members could loan one another chips, but only if there were consequences in place for the loan.
The poker chip game translated into equipping the Eagles to better understand and use the power of Eagle Bucks. They had never practiced how to use them, and like with any new system there was a learning curve. There were days when Eagle Bucks caused personal conflicts between students and there were days when they worked like a charm to keep the group working hard and holding boundaries. As time went on, they decided the system, even if flawed, was much better than needing to revert to having adults order them around.
Sam came home one day and decided it would be a good idea for the elementary studio to have Eagle Bucks, too. “Good idea, Sam! Why don’t you figure out how to implement that and introduce it to your group at the next Town Hall Meeting?” I said, happy to see him rising to the occasion to help the younger Eagles become even more student-driven.
Town Hall Meetings became part of the Acton weekly structure during our first year. In those early days, Kaylie or Anna would lead and manage the discussion of issues in the studio—from people distracting each other to how they could celebrate the end of a session. By the fourth year, the Eagles had taken over the facilitation of these weekly meetings. Organized, disciplined, and important discussions are led by an Eagle, who chairs the meeting. The agenda is created by Eagles earlier in the week through a system of completing a form, specifying either an announcement to be read out loud at the meeting or a problem that needs to be discussed and resolved in the meeting. The forms are collected in a box, and before the meeting begins, the chairperson of the meeting collects them and sets the agenda.
In my years of leading Acton, these weekly Town Hall Meetings have proven over and over that children can do far more than we ever imagine or allow. They can decide what’s fair in distributing scarce resources, such as dodge balls or green space. They can assess and weigh options for how to fix a flaw in layout of the studio. They can disagree with each other respectfully, and they can delegate responsibility based on skills and experience. They run efficient and effective meetings. And they function much better when the adults stay quiet and turn over this leadership in an authentic way.
“Learning design”—chaos into order
Despite the cultural challenges, the middle school Eagles were learning as much and as rapidly as the younger Eagles. Just as in the elementary school, students were encouraged to read anything they found fun. We set aside time specifically dedicated to reading and to discussing which books they’d recommend to a friend. Soon every Eagle was reading—a lot. The first year, the average middle schooler devoured sixteen books; even the least-engaged reader finished seven. At one point, Democracy in America, 1984, Animal Farm, Madame Bovary, The Catcher in the Rye, The Screwtape Letters, and Anna Karenina were scattered around the studio.
The middle school Eagles practiced journaling and creative writing, with frequent sharing and feedback. At this point, there were only rudimentary online grammar programs and very little game-based writing software available, so we used small group workshops for editing support. We quickly learned that the more the Eagles shared, the more they wanted to write, and the more they wanted to write, the more interested they were in using various tools to improve.
Jeff introduced a classic writer’s-workshop process that has a predictable flow:
&nbs
p; Idea generation
Rough draft
Critique
Revision
Critique
Editing
Publication
The Eagles critiqued one another on ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and conventions (grammar) and ranked the use of traits from strongest to weakest.
Math was straightforward, too. We used Khan Academy to deliver math skills with no guide interaction and to allow each Eagle to move at his or her own pace. For example, one of our middle school Eagles pushed through pre-algebra in only three weeks, while another struggled with an early traditional school math deficit but soon found a new stride and began to love math, moving five grade levels in ten months. “I was told I was bad at math,” she said to me one day. “I’m not! I just have to work hard at it.”
The traditional academic path to study science is criticized by some because it often presents it as a subject area to be memorized, making it seem more like answers to life’s important questions rather than a form of logical inquiry.
In the middle school studio, we introduced science through Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shifts, where the frameworks that make sense today are expected to be overthrown tomorrow.
Eagles could then separate scientists into three archetypes: paradigm busters, revolutionaries like Galileo and Einstein, who bravely turned an established view of science upside down; puzzle makers, who proposed theories to shore up or disprove a paradigm; and data collectors, the careful and meticulous scientists who carefully gathered and recorded data, making the other groups’ work possible.
We then could debate whether discovery (paradigm busting); invention (puzzle making); collecting data (data collectors), or innovation—non-scientist entrepreneurs bringing science into the real world by spreading inventions—add the most value to the world.
We began to introduce more difficult real-world challenges, requiring more difficult skills like probability analysis and filmmaking. By design, the problems were messier and required more teamwork. While the stakes were high to deliver top-notch exhibitions because parents and visitors were in the audience, even more important were the self-management and self-governance lessons that began to emerge as the Eagles realized the necessity of converting chaos into order.
We had no idea this would be one of the more powerful outcomes of what was beginning to be called “the Acton way”—chaos into order and back again. A cycle that the Eagles were beginning to predict, resolve, and manage on their own rather than depending on adults to mandate it from the top down. Understanding this freed us to embrace the times of chaos, knowing that learning was happening because the students were connected and engaged with their emotions, even if those emotions included stress and frustration.
The most impactful learning experience also became the greatest incentive and culture enhancer for the middle school group: apprenticeships. Knowing the last quarter of the year would be spent finding real jobs suddenly made spelling, proper English, persuasive word choice, and responsible time management seem very important to this young group. They were writing letters and accomplishing goals not just for a grade; they were working to get hired. By early May, Eagles each had an apprenticeship secured in a wide variety of places, including a ranch, a bakery, a veterinary clinic, a graphic design shop, an architectural firm, a preschool, and a news station. Want an engaged, serious teenager? Let them do real work they care about.
The results are in
The first line of Jeff’s email to me read: “Here are the test scores.”
I guess you could call this a moment of truth. After the pretest from the beginning of the first year showed the middle school Eagles divided into the highest and lowest percentiles of achievement, I dreaded seeing this next round of scores. What if the initially underperforming student hadn’t improved? Worse, what if the high-level students had joined the others at the bottom? I scanned the report. On average, Acton Academy students tested three grade levels above age before maxing out the test. This is crazy, I thought to myself. It really works.
The gains were dramatic and would continue over time. Lower-performing students typically advanced two or three grade levels in math and reading each year, until middle schoolers reached post–high school level.
Of course, we had far too little data to stand up to any serious academic study. But Jeff and I and the other Acton parents didn’t care—we could see the transformation that was happening in our children right before our eyes.
We ended our first year of middle school developing the capstone piece of the Acton Academy learning journey—a series of badges that represented long-term bodies of work by the Eagles in reading, writing, math, projects and quests (sciences, arts, technology, entrepreneurship, finance, and engineering), civilization (history, economics, government), and servant leadership (mentoring, coaching and guiding other Eagles). The badges were designed to be modular, like Legos. The type and amount of work necessary to earn a badge could be clearly defined, while leaving many choices up to the Eagles. This preserved both freedom of choice and excellence. Eagles could prove their skills to the world and be able to choose the challenges they found compelling.
The development of the badges would be critical for our creation of a high school. Each one included requirements from a traditional course and could be translated into a transcript that other schools, colleges, and universities could interpret easily.
Each child at Acton, including the youngest six-year-olds, would have a Badge Plan that parents could see, understand, and track. Another layer of complexity, yes, but one that raised the standards of everything we were doing. The detailed descriptions of requirements to earn a badge made visible to the world the rich, deep, and rigorous learning an Acton Eagle would achieve (see appendix G).
The successful addition of an Acton middle school was a big step forward. We could forge ahead building and improving it, knowing that soon we’d be doing the same for a high school. Just as I began seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for building up our “dream school,” a darkness that would change everything was creeping into my personal life—a life that had become inextricably bound to everything Acton Academy.
Chapter 8
Lost in the Darkness
“Our daughter was showing signs of depression before attending Acton Academy. She is now happy and thriving, in large part because of the Acton way of learning. Now, she loves school so much that she never wants to miss a day.”
—Susannah Hollinger, Acton Academy parent
Sam and Charlie were mistaken for twins the first six years of their lives. While their physical appearances blended together, their personalities stood starkly apart.
“I’m done.”
With that, two-and-a-half-year-old Charlie stood up from the crowd of toddlers at the library story time and began walking out of the room. He’d simply had enough of the exaggerated voice and methodical reading of the librarian. There were more exciting things to do with his time, and he knew it.
Charlie has a truly independent, decision-making spirit. He’d said out loud what I had been thinking at the same moment. I was done, too, but would have sat there, politely, thinking it was the right thing to do. Not Charlie. He has been driven and vocal since day one.
He also carries his father’s peculiar bent toward not caring what people think about him. He’s kind and extremely thoughtful but has no qualms about clearly stating his ideas. He has absolute confidence in walking alone.
Sam’s typical response was more cautious. He said, “No, thank you,” when I signed him up for three-year-old soccer. All of his friends were going to be on the team, and so I went through the motions as all moms did. You simply signed your kid up for soccer, right? Not Sam, though. It wasn’t until he watched from the sidelines for a year that he decided soccer was something he wanted to try.
Sam is
an observer of life. He watches, listens, gathers information, and then—only then—does he make a decision. But once the decision is made, he doesn’t waver. This plays out interestingly in a family of daredevils.
Paragliding, for example, is one of our favorite summer activities. We trek with tandem pilots to the top of a mountain, strap in, and run until the wind picks us up to soar into the clouds. Charlie started tandem flying at age three after watching me do it once. So, we thought that Sam, too, would love to fly when he turned three.
That year, he rode up the mountain with us. Dave, Sam’s wildly charming, uber-talented paragliding pilot, chatted with him on the drive all the way up the mountain about what he needed to do when we got to the top. He talked to a three-year-old with exactly the right dose of respect and humor. They unpacked the paraglider, and Dave got them all strapped in and ready for takeoff. Suddenly, Sam looked back at him with his dark serious eyes. “No, thank you,” he said.
Dave unstrapped them, packed up the gear, and drove Sam down the mountain for an ice cream cone. It took Sam three more years of watching us before he said, “Yes, please.” We learned as time went on that Sam’s deliberate decision making contributed to a deep sense of commitment once a decision was made.
The winter of discontent
Acton Academy’s sixth year included our progression toward a grand opening of Launchpad—Acton Academy’s high school, named by the rising middle school Eagles. It was also a year filled with frustration for Charlie Sandefer.
As he approached the end of middle school, our older son’s demeanor changed. He became quiet, tired, slow to laugh. His regular funny rants to morning talk radio on the way to school stopped. He didn’t say anything at all. I feared his fire had gone out—the one thing I was trying to protect by building this school.
The culture of the middle school Eagles was strikingly different from that of the elementary school he helped create, and Charlie began to have trouble reconciling his own place there. He was feeling disconnected from the tribe. For the first time since 2009, he sensed a negative aura in the Acton studio. There was a sub-tribe forming of Eagles who didn’t want to work at all. And Charlie was caught in the middle.
Courage to Grow Page 9