Orientation Week
My first 5 days as a guide at The Socratic Experience.
I was nervous.
I spent the full month of August getting acquainted with the culture at The Socratic Experience, the online school founded by Michael Strong. After learning about Socratic dialogue, holacracy, Quick Schools, and much more, the first day of school came along.
“I’m letting them in” - someone said. In a matter of seconds, dozens of students entered the “Auditorium”, the name of our Zoom class.
As faces filled my screen, and different shouts of “good morning” and all of its variants filled my ear, I couldn’t help but feel excited, nervous, but, above everything else, vibrant.
I smiled and waved to the students.
“This new chapter looks promising!” - I thought.
A few months ago, after emailing Michael, he invited me to teach Creative Entrepreneurship & Finance at TSE, and now, there I was, about to start this journey.
Instead of talking about the school’s vision and mission, which you can read here, I’ll share with you, day by day, what happened in the first week. I was caught off-guard by how meaningful it was. Sure, I had read the documents about our pedagogy, and I had the meetings discussing it. However, I feel that only after that first class was the “curtain” unveiled.
Day 1
On the first day, after an introduction note by Michael, we dove directly into Personal Growth.
This is something highly valued at TSE since we want to make sure that each student, in their uniqueness, has a pathway to developing themselves. In smaller breakout rooms, a question was asked:
What is learning?
It was game on.
Almost 20 kids started a deep, thoughtful discussion about what is learning.
Have you ever thought about it? What is learning?
Is it the accumulation of knowledge? Is it personal? Can we learn from our mistakes? How? And how about other people's mistakes? Can we learn from that? How?
The guide only asked questions but eventually, even that became unnecessary since students started to ask each other questions.
No correct answers, just “What do you think about this, and why do you think that?”
After a break, we dove into “Meno”, a Socratic dialogue about virtue and learning.
We read part of the text, the guide picked a passage and people started to discuss it. Now, keep in mind, that this is the first time some of these students are coming into class. And yet, they’re treated as intelligent, knowledgeable individuals.
Reading Socrates it’s not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about the first day of Middle School and yet, this was what they were doing. Ranging from math and geometry to the meaning of some ideas shared in the text, the discussion was on.
I was in awe, listening to these students (who may never have heard of Socrates, much less read him) making questions to each other and laying out their own views of things. Suddenly, as fast as it had come, it went way. It was lunchtime.
In the afternoon, we went through the principles of what Learning looks like in TSE. This was the most "expository" part of the day and still had a LOT of student participation, with them asking questions about, not only logistics but some of the principles in our own philosophy of learning.
After setting up some math software, the first day was officially done.
Day 2
On Thursday, we started off with a small presentation about physical spaces.
How important it is for students to make sure that their physical space while learning online, is one that portrays the kind of emotional landscape they want to have. Each student, in a breakout room, shared their own space and what was something that they liked about it. From books to artifacts, from pets to paintings, everyone ended up sharing part of what their environment looked like and why that was important.
Then, we dove into Aristotle's Physics. In a matter of minutes, we went from “Here’s my room!” to discussing the following passage:
“The question, what is place? presents many difficulties. An examination of all the relevant facts seems to lead to divergent conclusions”
We had a difficult, complex discussion, ranging from black holes to math, no neuroscience.
Going through that discussion, seeing students reading this kind of material for the first time and work through it, trying to better understand the ideas, and wrestling with different perspectives, confirmed my theory that we treat kids as if they’re “dumb” when in fact, if you give them the right environment, they’ll quickly show you how smart they are.
After lunch, everyone gathered around the “Auditorium” to read and discuss a passage from “Socrates Café”, a book by a philosopher named Christopher Phillips. It was aimed at trying to help people define what “Home” meant for them.
After some (great) guidance from Bert, a fellow guide, students were then invited to share their own thoughts. Without any prompt or suggestion, previous students from TSE started to refer to it as “home”, moved by the feeling of being welcomed here and at ease with who they were.
This was my second day, I just got here. And yet, witnessing this was very emotional. Seeing all of these students, with their own particular idiosyncrasies, sharing that, here, judgment was suspended and they could be more of themselves…It made me realize how lucky I am to be a part of this experience.
After setting up a few different software, the second day was done and I couldn't wait for the next one.
Day 3
On Wednesdays, we don't have STEM or Humanity classes in TSE. It's a day dedicated to electives and other classes so it made sense to present them and help them choose the right ones for their path.
It was the first time I was assigned as the main guide in a room and actually got to talk with a small group, asking questions about their thought process in the choice of the different electives. Once that was done, the day was over.
Day 4
As we got closer to the end of the week, students were evermore engaged.
On Tuesday, we started off with a video talking about non-violent communication.
Now, let’s take a moment to think about this.
One of the biggest problems in the world right now is the number of young students suffering from mental issues such as depression and anxiety caused, in part, by the fact that they’re spending countless hours in a closed building, in a tense emotional state, being forced to evaluations for things they don’t care about with people that they may not like.
If you pursue this thought forward, in more extreme cases, this leads to psychological and physical violence against teenagers by other peers. Bullying and mockery are currencies in every school that has not carefully crafted its culture.
In an online school, a lot of these things just go away, especially when it comes to physical violence. Even so, we spent time talking about this to make sure that the overall environment and culture around TSE is one of challenging kindness and empathic growth.
I found this fascinating, spending so much time (early morning and afternoon) just talking about this. The different feelings and needs one may have, and how to convey them in a way that does not hurt anyone while at the same time, not stopping individual students’ growth.
It’s always satisfying, to hear all of the stories about students’ past experiences with violent communication and see them find a place where, from week one, they’re being trained to do the opposite.
We also talked about Rubi’s poem “The Guesthouse” and discussed how human beings are but guest houses, where feelings come to visit temporarily.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
After all of this, in the afternoon, we played math games. There were 6 different choices, one of them being led by me.
We played “The 30min CEO”, a game I’ve built based on a business resource called “Business Model Canva”, where students become temporary CEOs of different companies that they know and try to build meaningful partnerships, value propositions, and client segments.
I loved it, they loved it.
As fast as it had come, Orientation Week was about to end, as we moved forward to the last day.
Day 5
On Friday, we read through "On Walking" by Henry David Thoreau (which is a phenomenal lecture that we transformed into a small essay) and discussed the different meanings of some of the passages around walking (both as literal act and as a metaphor).
If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again--if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man--then you are ready for a walk.
Intense, right?
Afterward, Michael gave a presentation on different paths one might take as a High Schooler and how TSE allows you to be prepared for each one of them. Some people want to go to college, others want to be entrepreneurs, and others want to explore internships. All of these are taken into consideration by TSE and we help students clarify their game plan in order to achieve it.
When lunchtime was over, it was time to meet my mentees.
A student at TSE will have their main classes (STEM and Humanities), a series of Electives (ranging from all topics you can think of), and mentorship sessions.
These are ways to help students become familiarized with TSE, understand how’s they’re overall experience, but also helping them develop self-awareness about their visions and paths, and, like a personal coach, help them craft goals that drive them forward.
So, I met with all of these students and we just got to know each other, before getting back to the Auditorium for the last part of this Orientation Week. We had a seminar on Getting Things Done, the methodology created by David Allen.
As a corporate trainer, I’ve worked with a bunch of different companies across all areas, in their management and upper leadership levels. Some of these people never heard of GTD and yet, here are these teenagers, learning one of the most acclaimed personal management systems in the world, on the first week of school.
One last final speech and it was done. The first week was over, everyone was excited and it was time to enjoy the weekend before starting individual classes.
I am about to start the 2nd week of actual classes and I've been loving to meet all of these students. I’ll write about TSE throughout this school year, for sure since I can’t wait to see what students will build and how will they prosper.
I’ll see you soon.
João