“I don’t want to talk about school anymore,” he told us at the dinner table.
Charlie had grown into a straightforward, hardworking young man. Tall, lean, and focused, he took after both parents in his dedication to a mission and “get it done” attitude. Under Jeff’s coaching, he had risen above being a mall cop and had cultivated a quiet leadership that encouraged others to shine. But he cringed at how a small group of his peers shunned work and skirted through loopholes in the Contract.
After dinner, we’d sit on the couch, and Charlie would often share frustrations about his experience. He had been defending the studio contract since he helped write it with the other founding students back in 2009. He was getting tired of feeling alone in making the older group of Eagles work better together.
Rather than complain anymore, he hunkered down and worked harder. But I could tell he was headed toward a breaking point.
At the same time, Sam had experienced a physical illness and hospitalization that had spiraled into a deep state of anxiety. My darkest moments as a parent were watching him suffer without understanding why and not knowing how to support him or ease his pain. I began wondering if the Acton way of learning was simply too hard. Did we cause his suffering? Were we expecting too much?
And then there was Taite, who had chosen to live full-time with her mom, leaving us with a sense of emptiness that no level of thinking or planning would ever fill.
Layered on top of the hurts at home was the realization that starting a school sets one up to be a target of blame when things don’t go well for a family. I had received emails laced with vindictive language and been cut from social circles. “Why didn’t we open an ice cream store and just make people happy all day?” I asked Jeff one day. “This work weighs heavily on me.”
“I’m done”
At 5:30 one dark winter morning, I was sitting in my bedroom reading when Charlie walked in.
“Mom,” he said, “I want to go somewhere else for high school.”
All I could muster was, “Thank you so much for coming to me. Let’s wait until tonight to talk with Dad about this.”
I couldn’t bear to break this news to Jeff. Our elder son—who had been one of the reasons we started this work in the first place—actually wanted to break away. My heart broke wide open.
But Charlie’s decision was not a complete surprise. He had been sharing his frustrations about feeling disconnected from the group for some time. But how had it gotten so bad? What was he running away from? Had we completely failed?
Our sons, Charlie and Sam, were our pillars at Acton Academy. We started it for them, and they had become our canaries in the coal mine. Around the dinner table and on lazy weekends, we’d hash out how things were going in the studio. And when we introduced new programs or quests, Charlie and Sam provided the truth serum. Did our new ideas work in real time, or did they fall flat? We had depended on them every step of the way to inspire us and to share what was working and what was not. They had been our teachers and guides.
A shimmer of hope was that Sam was still “in.” As the clouds of his anxiety lifted, so did his commitment to his learning journey at Acton. In fact, he had come out the other side of that dark tunnel with a grounded sense of purpose and a desire to lead others. Along with him, we had almost seventy other young people at Acton who were lights in my life each day. My dedication to my own children’s learning had morphed into a dedication to all children’s.
But the Acton journey ahead would not include dear Charlie. This was not how I wanted our story to go.
The end of the day came, and I knew I had to tell Jeff.
“Charlie told me this morning he doesn’t want to go to Launchpad. He wants to look at other high schools in town.”
“Well, he can do that, but I’m not paying for him to go to another private school.” Jeff’s response jolted me. We were so used to listening to the children and considering their input. The schools Charlie wanted to apply to were, indeed, the private ones, but that was not the point right now. This was more complex than a financial choice. No matter how much we say we trust the children in the learning environment, being a parent is hard; there is a balance to be found between being permissive and authoritarian. A parent can trust a child, but that doesn’t mean he or she turns authority in the family over to the child. Parents are not Socratic guides. It’s not healthy for family life to center on a child’s wants all the time. Jeff and I never claimed to be perfect parents, and we struggle like all parents with knowing when to claim authority and when to let the children figure things out on their own. I sensed the direct clarity of Jeff’s response was a cover for his own muddled feelings about Charlie’s decision.
In this tender moment, we were both at a loss.
· · ·
When Charlie came to me that dark morning to announce his desire to leave Acton, I could see the resolve in his eyes. In a sense, Charlie had taken command of his education. The initial shock I felt at this announcement progressed into stages of grief—denial, anger, some bargaining with God, and, finally, a sweet acceptance and realization. What stood before me was not the six-year-old child who loved trucks more than anything. He was a young man who had become an independent learner and could make solid decisions. Here was someone who could claim his dreams and make plans to achieve them, a person who could understand what he needed to learn in order to be complete. Charlie had proven he could work extremely hard and was not afraid to begin a new adventure on his own.
Charlie’s decision to leave Acton disrupted our lives in more ways than one. For more than a week, Jeff stuck to his initial reaction. He simply went quiet on the subject. We never discussed it, as if it never had been brought up.
Concerned that he had not heard me on that ill-fated evening, I said to him, “I think you need to listen wholeheartedly to Charlie. This is really important to him, and he’s being brave to take a stand and to think about his own journey differently than we are. I am going to help him in this process. He’s going to apply to two other private schools.”
I walked away thinking that there was a solid chance I’d be fighting for Charlie alone. I thought I should be standing in solidarity with Jeff, but he had not seen Charlie’s eyes on that morning. He had not heard the tone in his voice.
Greener grass?
Charlie and I had a month to hit the application deadlines for the two private high schools he was considering. There were entrance exams to take, essays to write, applications to complete, interviews and tours to attend.
My life as I’d lived it for the past eight years now suddenly seemed so simple and focused. I was entering the blur of traditional school bureaucracies and was reminded of how free I had felt as an Acton parent. All of a sudden I was hearing about detention policies and absence restrictions.
My reality was now divided. I woke up every day and greeted Eagles at the curb, coached guides, and witnessed learning happening. I was the Acton Academy head of school. I had that hat and wanted to wear it well. And soon we were launching a high school. How could I face other parents who wondered about applying to it? I couldn’t imagine having to say, “Yes! Acton’s fabulous! We built it for our son. Oh, but he chose not to go here. But believe me, it’s great.”
At the same time, I was rushing with Charlie to tour schools and attend admissions interviews. How could I sit with Charlie in those interviews and honestly say I agreed with their programming and that I supported his desire to go there? How could I answer the questions on the applications about why I was choosing that school and what I planned to contribute as a parent?
And finally, after a long day at Acton, I’d come home to Jeff. We weren’t talking much about what was going on. Charlie kept pushing through the application procedures, and Jeff was quiet—except when he would remind me: “I’m not paying for this.”
The school Charlie chose to attend was in many ways
quite the opposite of Acton Academy—a private school with a classical Christian curriculum, mandatory uniforms, chapel, frequent quizzes, tests, a focus on college preparation, and a high value placed on obedience to authority. Charlie was drawn to the vision of having real teachers and high school sports. He wanted to see if he could sit and learn in a classroom like everyone else seemed to do. Maybe most importantly, he didn’t want to have to be the leader all the time and hold standards for other kids his age.
The question for me was clear: Could the fledgling culture of the Acton middle school and high school survive and grow without Charlie’s daily presence and vocal persistence to keep the promises in the studio contract?
Jeff comes around
Charlie was sitting on the couch at home one day when Jeff came in and sat down next to him. It had been two weeks since Charlie announced his desire to leave Acton. During that time, Jeff had been on an internal odyssey of his own. While wrestling with how much freedom to give Charlie and waging his personal battle against the traditional education system, he realized he had been suppressing his son’s inner spirit—the one thing he did not want to do.
“Charlie, I’ve made a decision,” he said. “I’m going to fully support your choice to go to another school. I’ll miss you dearly at Acton but will pay for you to attend elsewhere. I’ve thought a lot about this and you need to do this. I need to let you have your own journey.”
As I listened in from the kitchen, all I could feel was relief. We were united again as a family, rather than living as a divided front. I wasn’t happy we were losing Charlie at Acton, but at least we were supporting each other’s individual life paths and embracing the strain together.
We kept the applications to other schools a secret from the Acton community as long as we could. It just didn’t seem necessary for the world to know. It was still difficult to explain how the head of the school’s own son could leave that school.
Charlie’s decision to leave was particularly hard to take because we knew he would thrive in Launchpad, which would be more like working at a creative start-up company than attending a school. The studio would be mostly managed by the teenagers themselves, with lots of freedom and with leadership opportunities to guide and mentor the younger Eagles in both the middle school and elementary school studios.
Our designed structure of the Launchpad day was similar to that in the elementary and middle school studios but with more time spent in real-world apprenticeships. These ambitious teenagers would continue to hone core skills each morning through online programs, reading deep books, writing even more complex genre pieces, and tackling upper-level math subjects like probability and statistics and calculus. They would also engage in Socratic discussions to explore deeply important questions about what made civilizations rise and fall, and they’d continue studying American and world history. Their afternoons would be spent in collaborative work, participating in more advanced quests (a deeper form of “projects”) in biology, chemistry, and physics, which included online college course components. We also had joined a private school athletics association so our older Eagles could compete with other schools in flag football, basketball, and soccer. They would each earn First Aid and CPR certification and have the opportunity for an annual expedition—international or national—planned and executed by the group of Eagles and funded by money they earned during apprenticeships.
As the name implied, Launchpad was preparing these teenagers for their next adventure after graduation. They would receive personal coaching to help dig deeper into their dreams and life goals as well as spend more time in apprenticeships to gain real-world experience within industries of their particular interest. These young people would launch into the world equipped and prepared to fulfill their plans. Most were planning to attend a competitive college and would graduate with a substantial number of college credits.
But Charlie would not be experiencing this vision in action.
Exodus and support
The other Eagles could tell that something in Charlie had changed. They started asking him about whether he was staying for Launchpad. The day we got the acceptance letter from Charlie’s new high school, we decided it was time to get ahead of the gossip. I wrote a blog post about Charlie’s decision and waited for the comments and emails to roll in. It now felt more real. Charlie was leaving Acton.
The response came in slowly—supporting Charlie. One mom in particular helped me gain some perspective: “My husband and I were talking about it, and we realized neither one of us would want to go to high school where our parents were the teachers and principal! We wish Charlie the best.”
I made a slideshow for just the four of us—me, Jeff, and the boys—called “Acton Academy with Charlie.” I had collected photos from every year and put them together to mark this milestone. On the eve of his last day, we watched it together. I tried to hold back tears. Jeff smiled. Charlie laughed and annotated the scenes.
Sam didn’t say a word. He had never expressed much of an opinion about Charlie’s decision. I wondered if he was relieved to be out from under Charlie’s shadow. Maybe this is the best thing for both of them, I thought.
As the slideshow ended, we laughed over the memories of the declaration of independence rebellion. We moaned over memories of Eagle Buck mishaps and Charlie’s “mall cop” label. We congratulated Charlie for surviving it all and contributing so much of himself to our mission.
The next day, at closing group in the middle school, Jeff asked Charlie and another departing Eagle who had been with us for years to stand in front of the group with him. Jeff wanted to mark their departure with words of gratitude for what they had given in their time at Acton. But it got deep and personal very quickly.
He started to read his personal statement but made it through only a few lines. He pounded his chest with his fist, because the words would not come out. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I didn’t expect to be so emotional. We are grateful to both of you. We will miss you dearly. We wish you heroic journeys.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen Jeff cry.
Charlie had served as both our test case and our truth teller. We needed the culture to be redefined without him. Though we felt fear about doing this without Charlie’s leadership, our zeal did not waver. Sam was coming up through the middle school, and the thought of his future in this unpredictable and drastically changing world steadied our determination to get Launchpad right.
I asked Sam if he thought he’d want to look elsewhere for high school like Charlie did. His indomitable commitment to his personal decision making shone through.
“Charlie’s crazy,” he said. “I’m staying at Acton.”
Chapter 9
More Parents Pick Up the Torch
“The fact that Acton demands excellence and mastery is the ONLY reason our daughter could even dream of applying to a top university. At Acton, she was not handicapped by being a ‘late bloomer.’ She has had both the room to find herself and the accountability to rise up. Acton is the place she has learned to find and be her best self.”
—Sandy Yaklin, Acton Academy parent
A magical twist was happening in my personal Acton Academy story. With each month that passed, I was growing. And so were the other parents who had committed to this journey with me. As our children launched into their Hero’s Journeys, we parents were becoming braver. We were learning to kill our tendencies to project our personal desires onto our children and to protect them from difficulty. We were becoming learners again. Even dreamers.
We parents at Acton Academy were stretching into our own inner selves to explore who we were meant to be. The children’s curiosity began fueling our own. And our burgeoning curiosity was in turn fueling the children’s wide-open dreaming about their futures. We had escaped the trap of stressing about homework, PTA politics, and grades on tests. Like fre
eing birds from cages, we were loosening our grip on our children and they were learning to fly. Once you experience such a thing, you really can’t go back to a system that is built to keep unique individualities tamed, even dulled.
One morning at drop-off, I ran into Bodhi’s mom, Becca, who said, “Seeing Bodhi become so self-motivated and independent is amazing. I only wish I could have trusted the process and not worried so much when he was in elementary school! Can you believe he just finished a 900-page book on the history of oil—that he chose to read—in THREE WEEKS?!?”
I was just beginning to see what was happening—parents who tasted Acton Academy wanted one for their own communities. We had seen this very early but never thought it would actually happen. Within one year of opening our doors, however, an old friend came knocking. Would we please let him start his own Acton Academy?
Acton Academy Guatemala City
When we were still in our second year, with Acton Academy up and running, Jeff received a phone message from Juan Bonifasi, one of his most successful students in the first graduating class of the Acton School of Business. Juan and his wife were visiting Austin from their native Guatemala City with their three children as part of a reunion weekend celebration with Juan’s old Acton MBA friends. He’d heard we had started an elementary school and was deeply curious about Acton Academy. He shared his frustrations with the limited school opportunities for his own children back in Guatemala.
We invited him and Ana to meet us at Acton Academy, and they spent most of the day observing in the studio. At first they seemed overwhelmed as they watched children in constant motion without the direction of an adult. But Juan saw through what appeared to be chaos. Jeff had always described Juan as a “systems expert,” and I was about to see that in action.
Courage to Grow Page 10