Celebrate Learning and Conquering Ambiguity
The more you celebrate what you have, the more you have to celebrate.
Join me in celebrating that my “the driven learner” newsletter is now settled here on Substack.
“Whooptido,” you might think; and while that’s the appropriate response for the end user, what’s important for this post is that I faced ambiguity, made a decision, and now I’m able to move forward with confidence in a plan and a method.
Nothing in grade school prepared me for this challenge. It was almost all rote memorization and regurgitation on tests to “prove” I learned something, like that somehow meant I knew when it was necessary to use or how to apply it in the real world.
We used to say, “Fill up the cup (our brains) and dump it out on the test.” We dumped it out because we never needed it again and we needed to clear space for the next set of tested information.
In my personal story about making a newsletter choice, not only did I have to figure out that a newsletter might be the best way to maintain communication with community leaders, parents, and anyone else who wanted to learn about Acton Academy North Cincinnati, I had to decide which newsletter platform to use, how to set it up and how to optimize things for maximal return on my energy expense.
Why it’s important
What’s important for the reader here is that my experience might be relatable for any business person with any need whose solution is inherently ambiguous and has no specific clearly “correct” answer.
Not getting much practice at these kinds of decisions until I was nearly a grown-up and the stakes were high, I find myself wondering, “wouldn’t it be great to give young people this kind of experience so they feel comfortable with ambiguity while the stakes are low?”
That’s an essential component to Acton Academy’s “learner driven” educational philosophy, and that’s what we aim to do with Quest Club and The Acton Children’s Business Fair.
Quest Club and the Children’s Business Fair
There are many Acton “Quests,” project-based learning activities to choose from, and we chose Acton’s “Entrepreneurship Quest,” as it leads very nicely into the Children’s Business Fair.
Acton’s Entrepreneurship Quest is a game in which heroes (our name for learners who bravely conquer challenges) seek to find and create a business they can test at a mini-market exhibition, which we will run at our Children’s Business Fair coming up on May 4th.
In Quest Club, heroes travel across a gameboard to different islands that represent different questions an entrepreneur asks along his or her journey. The goal is to equip young heroes with the skills, tools, and frameworks needed to start a business.
There are three main goals of the Entrepreneurship Quest:
To learn more about themselves and what they love
To learn as much about entrepreneurship as possible
To create a business to operate at the Children’s Business Fair
That sounds personally satisfying, intellectually stimulating, and offers real, tangible skill-building.
What parent doesn’t want that for their children?
“Quest Club,” starts on March 25, and you can register for it here:
https://actoncincynorth.com/quest-club
The Children’s Business Fair is a one-day market and you can register for that here: https://www.childrensbusinessfair.org/cincinnati-ohio
These programs come together to help children develop personal agency, sovereignty, and real-life skills to create their world.
I find that incredibly inspiring.
We’d love to have you join us for either/both of these events, and if you want to learn more about our private school starting this fall, and schedule a tour for your advanced kindergartener to 5th grader, send us an email to hello@actoncincynorth.com.
“I find that the best way to predict the future is to create it.”
-Abraham Lincoln-
Talk soon,
Joshua Blatman
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