Year 2. Session 5. Week 3.

The young heroes in the Discovery studio have been discussing the last line of their rewritten contract they will be signing this session, and there is one word that has been coming up in the final days of debates: try.Here are the variations they have been grappling with for the last line:

I will include others
I will try to include others
I will not exclude others
I will try not to exclude others

At closing group, they were shown this Star Wars Clip and they revisited a hero’s mindset: finding opportunities in problems and challenges, taking responsibility for choices, striving for excellence, and helping others. Then they participated in a Socratic Discussion that asked (no right answer):
  1. Would you consider “try” (I tried, I will try) an excuse?
  2. Your collective goal in rewriting your contract was to raise your standards after they slipped and to strive for a stronger community. Should the word “try” be on your contract?
The Eagles were presented with the challenge to hold a Socratic Discussion at home tonight (5-10 minutes) on these questions.  They were then asked to sleep on it and come back to it in the morning with a vote.
Here are some of the takeaways from the discussions with their families:
  • One Eagle shared how one of their parents works in real estate and with contracts every day. They mentioned that the word “try” doesn’t show up in any of the contracts and that there is a penalty if someone doesn’t do what they agreed to.
  • Another Eagle shared that their family discussed the word and how it relates to the control a person has over the decisions they make. If a person has control over their actions/choices, the desired outcome is either achieved or it isn’t. There will often be learning experiences as a result, but there isn’t a middle option that can occur because someone “tried”.

This session’s quest places the Eagles in the shoes of innovators and inventors in Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Lab. They will be exploring properties of power and electricity through hands-on experiments and writing patents to describe the results of their creations! Take a look at some of the progress seen so far this session!

We’ll take a deeper dive into this session’s Writers’ Workshop and circle back up to see the heroes’ progress in Process Drama with Mr. Ben.

Stay tuned!