I’ve finished wading through my slips, journals, sheets, printouts, and idea maps that have collected through the past few months. It is time to plan the first day and I am struggling! I know what I did in past few years but this feels different. The stakes seem higher. We aren’t just making cool projects, we are learning a new way to approach school, possibilities, and learning itself.

After a few years of winging it (and getting almost pretty good at that!) I want to make it more concrete, approachable, and understandable.

Maybe I should start with what I would want a 5th grader to go home and say to their parents about the class. I know many of them talk about it at the dinner table, some talking about the class A LOT. What would I wish for them to say, to understand?

I have the new vital behaviors to teach, the core values, failure modes, and class structures that have all been developed this summer, however, these don’t really state the mission like the bold statement above.

I need to continue to distill this down to an even simpler core idea that can be the base. We will unpack that idea, support it, make it more complex, all of that… but what is that simple message?

What is the base of the pyramid, the center circle, the one bush that I have been beating around and around and around……