How Can Learning Feel Like an Adventure?
How can learning feel like an adventure? How do learners make growth and transformation as exciting as a three-act play?
What if your life felt like an adventure?
Learning arcs use the energy of narrative and drama to solve challenges together, while overarching questions tie these experiences to deeper, lifelong inquiries. Together, they create learning that inspires, equips and connects, as it builds towards transformation.
Learning Arcs
Imagine a Hero’s Journey as a three-act play, where the hero embarks on a quest, facing challenges and confronting fears in search of a Holy Grail.
Each day begins with a Socratic discussion, and feeds into individual and group challenges that feel like a three-act play, building to a crescendo in mid-afternoon, and ending with a Socratic close and reflections.
Each week builds in energy from Monday to a Thursday climax, with celebration and reflection on Friday.
Each week in each session builds on the last, until a public exhibition at the end, followed by a day of debrief and reflection. Then after a week’s rest, a new session starts.
The sessions each have an overarching philosophical question, tied to an Overarching Question for the year. Learners feel as if they are living in an adventure, practicing until life itself
becomes an adventure to be lived to its fullest.
Overarching Questions
Overarching questions are the philosophical threads that tie learning arcs together. Questions like “Does power corrupt?” or “What motivates a hero?” provide a lens through which learners connect their daily quests to a larger, ongoing narrative, with Socratic discussions that resonate far beyond the studio.
See Laura and Jeff discuss learning arcs and overarching questions at Acton.
Originally Posted #Y5-S1-W5-D3