So far, so good!

I'm typing this up right now, as my Exploratory Learning girls are all making open-ended presentations about "things that they're interested in," with the goal of breaking down their interests into various facets, and trying to get the rest of us tuned into their passion. We have everything from animals, special education, makeup and fashion, to throat singing. And yes, we have been practicing our throat singing at the beginning of every class.

We've done such a good job of building community that we begin every day just checking in with each other. (Thank you Paul Thek!) It feels totally relevant and important, but it also takes time! I can already see my students start to focus in on their interests, and I'm starting to feel the trajectory of our semester taking shape, BUT, I sure do wish we had three hours instead of fifty minutes! The social and emotional connections my students are making are pretty magical, and I think this time will serve them well as we get into the semester, but "progress" with our explorations feels slow-going, and has me slightly worried. I have to remember that we're only a couple of weeks into the semester, even if it may feel like summer never happened. 

In a couple of weeks, we're taking a field trip to the UIUC libraries. I felt like it was important for them to see the wealth of information that's available to them (well... sort of to them... they can't actually get a guest library card unless they're 18) right here in our community. I remember going into the stacks as a young person and being floored by the number and specificity of the books there. One of my greatest advantages was being able to go into college with a basic idea of how the library systems work. 

Leaving off with Dave Pink's TED Talk about drive and motivation, which we discussed in Exploratory Learning this week.