Essay Greenlighting, Entrepreneurial Leadership & Exhibition Prep (Session 1, Week 7)

Welcome to the final Launchpad Newsletter of Session 1!

This week was the last of the Session. A lot of time was spent wrapping up the House Cup, Quest, Genre, NGA, and much more. Everything we did this session was meant to prepare us for Friday, the day of our Exhibition!

On Monday, we started the process of greenlighting our Genre essays. We recorded ourselves reading our essays and rewatched the recording, taking note of any words, phrases, or sentences that sounded out of place or could be improved. We used this to make the final copy of our draft, cutting out bulky paragraphs and unnecessary words.

We also had our final Quest challenge of the Session! We spent hours researching Entrepreneurial Leadership, something most Launchpad learners have a strong interest in. This research helped prepare us for a Hero’s Visit from the founders of Mochidream, a skincare company geared towards young women. Before the visit, we each created a list of questions we wanted to ask them so as to learn more about Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Tuesday, we spent an hour proofreading our essays, going line by line, looking for grammatical errors or typos, and occasionally seeking help from websites like Grammarly or GrammarCheck to make the process more efficient. Finally, to make the essays as visually appealing as possible, we formatted our essays so that the  size, color, and font were all consistent. 

For NGA, we created our Next Great Adventure Commitment pitch. We used this pitch as a written template to help us with our presentations during the Exhibition, where we had to share our NGA plans and ask for feedback and advice. As we worked on our pitches, we made sure to keep in mind that we should approach the audience as a mentor, to briefly describe the commitments we are making and how we imagine they will impact our futures, to ask for help, and to end with sincere praise and a promise.

On top of this, we also worked on our Servant Leadership Reflections. We reflected on all of the roles we took on this Session, such as a Sparks math helper, Launchpad closing group leader, Journey Deep Book Pitch approver, and many others. We ranked our favorite projects from this Session and described why we chose particular ones for Session 2. 

Finally, on Tuesday, we welcomed the founders of Mochidream. At around 1 o’clock, Uzezi and Naomi came into our Studio and introduced themselves as the founders of Mochidream! Before answering any of our questions, they briefly described their experiences with launching their own company. They also explained why they started Mochidream, how they met, and what they did before becoming entrepreneurs. They gave us a lot of insight into their roles as entrepreneurial leaders and spoke about the important traits that make a good leader. They were happy to answer any questions we had and offered us advice on numerous topics: they spoke to us about the importance of communication and how, when talking to others, we should keep in mind that not all people are the same. This was an excellent Hero’s Visit, largely because the energy Uzezi and Naomi brought to the Studio was amazing, and they offered valuable insights for any learner who might want to travel a route similar to their own.

On Wednesday, we had Civ, Genre, and 360-degree Feedback 

During Civ, we spent 45 minutes researching the American Industrial Revolution and Samuel Slater, an English Industrialist who brought advancements in technology from Britain to America. After researching, we spent 15 minutes in a discussion about the three biggest causes of the American Industrial Revolution and debated which cause we thought had the biggest impact on the American Industrial Revolution. 

During Genre, we got into groups of three for greenlighting and editing. After confirming that we were proud of our essays and ready to share them, we got into the groups and looked over each other's, paying attention to whether the sentences were legible and grammatically correct, and whether the essay has a clear thesis supported by strong arguments.

Finally, on Wednesday, we had our first 360-degree feedback of the year, reflecting on the levels of intentionality, focused work, civility, leadership, cooperation, and more, that we noticed among our fellow Falcons. For these categories, we offered warm and cool feedback, along with a number rating and why we chose that rating.  

On Thursday, we gathered as a Studio and shared our essays. After everyone had read theirs aloud, we held a vote for the best two essays, with the learner in first place sharing their essay with everyone at the Exhibition. We then spent time reflecting on the SMART goals we’d set over the last few weeks, and which aspects worked best and which did not work. Finally, we took a step back and imagined if the impact from the goals we set would be long-lasting in the Studio and AABC as a whole. The rest of the day was spent preparing for the Session’s Exhibition. We tidied up any challenges we thought needed some work and began the compiling process for the Genre and Quest Badges.

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