The news breaking around us regarding college admissions scandals is beyond dispiriting. Sadly, it is likely the tip of the iceberg. The layers of corruption run deep.

These are stories of adults and parents doing terrible things to children. They are shocking because of their scale and criminality. One can only imagine what damage is done on the souls of the children in their midst.

All of this fuels my urgency to continue fighting for the small learning experience we call “Acton Academy.”

We built Acton as the antidote to robbing children of what they rightfully own. We named it after Lord John Alberg-Acton whose scholarly work focused on liberty and virtue. Lord Acton wondered if a free society could also be virtuous. He wrote, “Power tends to corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Acton Academy exists to free children to be richly competent in a world where others around them have parents who seek ease or prestige as the ultimate value; thereby refusing to let their children fail and continually making their paths easier.

With ingrained and hard-earned competence, the Acton graduates won’t sit idly by waiting for someone to fix their problems or get them a job. They’ll be excited to stand up and get to work, using their gifts for good.

To the parents at Acton Academy: Thank you for your courage. I know what we are doing together is very, very hard. Yet each day you say “yes” to the rare work of letting your children take real responsibility for their learning. You don’t resist the Acton tools such as our parent contract and the parent communication protocol. You know it is not there to protect us as school administrators. You know it is there for one reason: We believe in your children. We know they have to do big things on their own in order to claim their competence and giftedness. We believe they can do amazing things. We believe they will rightly earn their place in the world and make it better. Thank you for partnering with us and sharing these beliefs. I wish it could be easier, but it cannot by nature be so.

At Acton Academy, we are fueled by a deep love of freedom, of humanity and virtue. This isn’t a popularity contest. Not everyone wants the hard road of transformational learning. People do leave when it gets hard and we honor that choice, too.

But I do know that any school or person who promises a journey with no frustration, easy progression through grade levels and always-happy parents is either bluffing or just wants to get people through a system to count it as a success. There is no learning without frustration. There is no love without suffering.

Our children deserve honest struggle which builds deep, strong roots. And they are vastly capable of facing it with courage. The courage to grow.

We call it Journey Tracker and it’s a bit more nuanced than the title of this post – but not by much.

Eagles set goals every day, receive their quest, civilization and writing challenges AND post their work on Acton Academy’s Journey Tracker.  We parents have daily and immediate access to all of our children’s work and can see the status of their progression whenever we want.

But there is a catch. It takes my personal responsibility as a parent to be informed. The good news is that it’s not complicated.  And there is satisfaction, even joy, in being informed about my children’s progress and seeing the work they are doing. The bad news is that your guides aren’t going to spoon-feed you. We trust you to take charge of being personally informed.

Here’s how you can be armed to ask the best questions of your child and know exactly where they are in terms of moving to the next level or studio:

Login to Journey Tracker.  (Or ask your child to do this for you if you don’t yet have the login credentials.) Look at your child’s badge plan – the big map of their learning that you signed off on – and where they are in terms of completing their plan.

When you see green, you know that work is finished. Green = good.

When you see red, it means it was not. This is not always bad because there are different scenarios for why a goal was not completed. Red means it’s time to ask the question: Why is this red?

Now you get to have a meaningful conversation and inject some good old fashioned love, support, encouragement or trouble-shooting as needed.

Don’t do this every day. That’s called micromanaging and gets annoying for your hard-working Eagle. Once a week is a nice stride or even bimonthly.

Enjoy this amazing tool and thank Mr. Reed when you see him.

The post Journey Tracker – Green Means Good; Red Means I Have Questions appeared first on On Being an Acton Academy Parent.

It was one of those afternoons. My son was grumpy. He’d have to work all weekend to finish a badge. My thoughts are  once again screaming in my head: The system is too complicated! He shouldn’t have to work so hard to get a badge approved!

I want to intervene. Blame the school, my husband, the guides.

But I resist. I’ve been here before. I know if I tell him there is a problem with the system and this isn’t fair, he’ll tell me to stop intervening.

So I wait.

When the badge is finally submitted and approved, we process it together and I hear the same thing: “That was on me. I didn’t get the work done on time so I complicated things.”  

Feeling the pain of procrastinating or turning in shabby work is part of the etching of character onto one’s heart. It is far from comfortable.

I read the comment on our family survey this week and felt a kinship to this anonymous middle school parent who said:

“A frustrating week. Even after days of begging and pleading, our eagle’s former squad leader said there was no requirement for a squad leader to take the time to review and sign off on late badges. The result was our Eagle got no review and no credit for late badge work. Certainly this was a great lesson for our eagle about how success sometimes depending on the cooperation of others. However, I am again asking the question why are studio squad leaders not motivated to help their squad members succeed? In most companies and functional organizations a leader’s success depends on team member success. By not providing squad leader motivators for member success, the academy is failing to teach an important life lesson about leadership.”

As always, we take these comments to guides and Eagles to investigate what is going on and see if we can make improvements.

On this one, a small group of high school Eagles met with middle schoolers to investigate. What they found was written up to us in report:  

“According to all of the Squad Leaders, it is the responsibility of the Eagle to submit their badge on time:

• It was made clear that it is no longer the Squad Leader’s responsibility after the deadline.
• According to the Squad Leaders, it was made clear in Town Hall and discussions when the deadline was and what the consequences were of missing the deadline. They said that this is poor time management of the Eagle, and that the Badge System was very clear.
• It would be a favor for a Squad Leader to review these badges, and according to the Squad Leaders, only a few were approached by Eagles with overdue badges.
• Based on the comment and the responses by Squad Leaders, this falls on the Eagle. To put it bluntly, an Eagle acted like a victim to their parents, who do not have knowledge of the system. The consensus of those with proper knowledge of the system (the Squad Leaders) was that the Eagle is responsible for poor time management and a lack of effort to approach other Squad Leaders.”

The studio-mates worked it out. Squad leaders generously shared their personal time to help.

And I remembered that much of what frustrates my own Eagles (hence triggering anger in me) is tied to the consequences of work left undone, turned in late, or presented in less than excellent form.

While there may indeed be a problem with a process – and we will work with Eagles to improve those – as a parent, I’m gratified knowing my children are learning this truth deeply: missing deadlines hurts. 

The post My Child is Stuck and It Makes Me Mad appeared first on On Being an Acton Academy Parent.