Exploring the Magna Carta, Leadership, and Learning Adventures (Session 1, Week 3)

Welcome to the third Launchpad Newsletter of the year!

To start off, in Civ, we researched the Magna Carta on Wednesday, learning of it’s intentions of limiting the power of the king; basically saying he is not above the law and is subject to it as well as everybody else. While this is part of the Magna Carta, another huge part of it was focused on giving the Barons more freedom, not everyone.

On Thursday, we learned about religious toleration in America the spaces different religions and denominations had. We debated a bit about if being intolerant and judgmental were the same and how America grew to be a country with freedom of religion.

For Genre, we started our research on if our past determines our future on Monday. We found articles and YouTube videos all with contradicting views. On Tuesday, we had our first debate on this topic; we got into pairs and chose sides to support. 

Thursday, we strengthened our arguments. Though at this point we each already leaned towards our respective side, we still researched a couple arguments for and against our past determining our future. 

For Quest, we continued the Team-Building Quest: playing poker and other games, but we also started Leadership Quest.  Throughout the entire week, we each chose a company to research for their leadership abilities/tools. After choosing a company or organization, we looked for how that company describes themselves and their leadership style and also how people who don’t have an incentive to say nice things about the organization describe their leadership style.

Lastly, on Thursday, we laid out the information we found in a presentation and presented it to each other.

We also did NGA this week! On Tuesday, we got into groups and focused our energy into finding our own virtues and blind spots: character traits we have and character traits we could improve and work to have. After identifying our own, we helped each other find ways to improve or get rid of their blind spots. 

Thursday, we selected a deliberate practice to work on throughout the year. This is something that we could work on while getting money that would help us later in life. 

It could be a skill that you have, or a skill that you don’t have but want to have. Throughout the entire year, we have to put many hours into this one practice to get good at it and seriously work to have in the future.

Last but not least, this week we went to Alpine! We spent an hour in our houses before splitting up into the studios. During this hour, we played some ice-breakers to get everyone introduced to each other and then went to the field to play Tail-tag. Unfortunately we forgot the tails at the school so we had to improvise and instead played Gagaball. After this we had free time with our studios to do whatever we wanted. 

To end the day, we went on an exciting field trip to an environmental research station. We learned a lot about the Hudson River and aquatic environments. We went into the river and caught fish using a net, learned about and looked at plankton under a microscope, and lastly tested the water for its oxygen content, salt level, and temperature. It was very exciting and informational and I think everyone really enjoyed it!

Thank you for reading again this week! Hope to see you next time!

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