Creative Leadership at Lincoln Center and Exploring America’s Foundations (Session 1, Week 6)

Welcome to the sixth Launchpad Newsletter of the year!

This week was considerably shorter compared to prior weeks: Monday we had off for Columbus Day, Friday we went to Alpine, and we spent most of Tuesday on a field trip. So, our usual work load was spread out over 2 and a half days.

On Tuesday, we took a field trip to the Lincoln Center in NYC, a building complex for the performing arts. During this trip, we learned the history of the different buildings that make up the Lincoln Center, along with the 11 different organizations that call the Lincoln Center home. Though we learned a lot about the performing arts and the architecture of the various buildings, our main focus was on creative leadership as we continue to research different types of leadership. 

Before the trip, we took time to complete work in Genre, Quest, and NGA. For Genre, we each used a version of the Six-traits Critique (Organization, Voice, Sentence Fluency, Conventions, and Idea Development) to give another learner feedback on the rough draft of their essay. For Quest, we continued our work on Leadership Tools from last week, researching new tools as well as describing how the tools are used at Acton, and how we could better use each tool at AABC. Lastly, for Tuesday, during NGA, we each created a plan for offering guidance to two different learners in the Discovery and Journey Studios, describing how we could best impact them and a larger group.

On Wednesday, we worked in our houses for core skills, keeping everyone focused for around 2 hours, then leading an exciting game for 15 minutes. Afterward, we had our first Civ. of the week. This Civ. focused on the foundation of America as a Democratic-Republic, and led us to discuss what change in American culture could pose the greatest threat to that foundation. 

 To finish Wednesday off, we had 2 Quest challenges. The first was to reflect on the field trip to the Lincoln Center, noting what was most memorable and what were the most important takeaways. The second was a continuation of what we did on Tuesday. This time we made a plan for how to use and improve the tool ourselves. Some of us had to get very creative to make plans that made sense in the context of Acton.

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