What Does Learning To Live Together Mean To You? - Year 3, Week 29
A busy final week of the session for all of our learners! Each Studio completed their exhibition with many learners expressing they’ve completed more than they ever thought possible!
spark studio
As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “Learning never exhausts the mind”.
We continue on our journey focusing on how to learn to live together. Learning to Live Together is one of the most vital components to building a genuine and lasting culture of peace throughout the world. It can be achieved by developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions, and spiritual values. In Learning to Live Together, it is necessary to devise a form of education which will make it possible to avoid conflicts or resolve them peacefully by developing a spirit of respect for the values of pluralism and the need for mutual understanding and peace. What does learning to live together mean to you?
elementary studio
You always pass failure on the way to success. - Mickey Rooney
This session heroes conquered an insurmountable task, or so they thought. We jumped into the world of coding, with only a few heroes having ever done it before. While it was much like learning a foreign language, heroes tackled the challenge head on. Many days seemed impossible, as they were introduced to more and more difficult tasks and ultimately challenged to create their own coding project. They used these projects to create either a dance project, art project or short game. It was so impressive to see what heroes were able to create. One of our learners even figured out how to send her finished project as a text for her parents to try!
By the end of this session, heroes that thought they would never be able to code, or that had failed different levels multiple times, realized that what they considered failures, were actually the best lessons learned. Today I can confidently say, we have 34 elementary computer programmers!
middle school studio
Session 6 has come to a close.
This week, our Electricity Quest culminated in a virtual exhibition. We were joined by Jimmy Adams, Vice President of Energy Services at Coweta-Fayette EMC. He gave our learners a complex challenge: should the new Middle School building have solar panels installed? Learners needed to calculate the return on investment on the solar panels and give a recommendation with financial, technical, and environment reasoning. It was a tough challenge, made more difficult by time limitations, but each group stepped up to the mic to offer their thoughts. Exhibition participants gave feedback to each group on how well they worked together through a survey, and we analyzed the feedback as a Studio to reflect on ways to improve next time.
Over the past six weeks, learners were challenged with learning the basics of electricity and building their own cities with working power grids. There was plenty of trial, error, frustration, and blown circuits. But, at the end of the day, each team engineered a city with working lights, could explain the basics of electrical theory, and was able to engage with a complex challenge on the feasibility of solar power on our new school building.
At The Forest School, it's not a question of why we learn math, science, or communication skills, but rather a question of how we are going to use those skills to solve real world problems.
high school studio
“Regardless of what came before or what has yet to come, what matters most now is how I choose to respond to the challenge before me. Will I lie down or will I fight? The choice is mine and I choose to finish strong”- Dan Green
In the final week of the session heroes came together not only to showcase their comedic skills, but to share their after action reviews with their dream teams; a group of individuals meant to support, challenge, and encourage them throughout their time in high school.
Terry Orlick once stated, "the heart of human excellence often begins to be when you discover a purpose that absorbs you, frees you, challenges you, or gives you a sense of meaning joy and passion”. During this time, heroes were able to get real time feedback from experts that have found their own personal purpose and give feedback on the hero's goals and purpose.
To begin the week, each hero sat down with the guide to map out the remainder of the school year. Each person left knowing how much and what time they have to complete their badge plan. In addition, heroes worked tirelessly to complete and approve badges before the session's end.
Looking into the next session, the studio will again launch with all new Civ, storytelling, and Quest topics and continue to grow as heroes work on finishing all four apprenticeships, deep books, Khan Mastery challenges, servant leader badge, learner design course, and of course practicals.
Until next time!
-Onward
Banner image via