A Day in the Life of Wendy, a 1st Year Learner at The Future School

Today was a Monday at The Future School and that means that we worked on our projects, as usual, and we also worked with Ms. Christine. The day began with our Morning Chant and Ritual Dance. Our Morning Chant is one that is unique to our incoming cohort; we created it. That was after we researched that kind of stuff and came up with our own chant and dance. The Morning Chant and Ritual Dance is a way for us to get energized and focused for the day ahead.

After that we had our Morning Meeting to review the agenda for the day. I then met with my team to explain and get feedback on my goals for the day. Today one of goals is to figure out how to edit my video from 6 minutes to 4 minutes. Another goal is to ask at least 3 questions during our Book Circle later on today. I will have to meet with my team at the end of the day to explain what I accomplished and my next steps. My team is lit’. They push me, but always encourage me.

Next, I meet with Ms. Christine for Core 1. Today during Core 1 we worked on understanding how adding and subtracting with decimals is not different from adding and subtracting with whole numbers. We learned strategies that will make doing mental math easier. I am going to need this for when I work in The Future School Cafe and have to calculate change for people without a calculator!

Then it was time for my Core Collaborative. During Core Collaborative we work with others on a project of our choosing. My group has been studying how pictures and music can be used to tell a story. Being that I am a 1st year, I didn’t get to come up with my own project, but had to pick from a few that were offered. I am learning a lot. At the end of the project we each have to create a video that uses pictures and music to tell a story. My story is going to be about homelessness in Bridgeport. My friend, Jackie, who is in my group, is making a video about fast cars and why people love them. I am learning how to take better pictures and about different kinds for music from all over the world. I am learning how to edit videos and how to upload them. Jackie is helping me with the editing. It is fun.

Now is it lunch time. I wonder what Chef Crew made us today. I can’t wait to get on to the Chef Crew. I love to cook and you learn about nutrition, different foods from different cultures, how to plan out meals for large groups of people and even some chemistry. But you have to be at least 2nd year to be on Chef Crew. Today I was eating with my team and Raiden asks me how I made out on editing the video. I told him that Jackie helped me and it was going well, but I was not finished yet.

After lunch it is meditation time. I never understood what meditation was before coming to The Future School. But it is not as hard as I thought and it helps me calm down and refocus for the afternoon.

Book Circle time and I am so ready to find out what happened next. Today Cecil is going to read the chapter. We each have to take turns reading a whole chapter or sharing the reading of a chapter with someone else. We are reading, Dear Martin by Nic Stone. It is an interesting book; it seems real. This was Ms. Christine’s turn to pick the book. Next month we get to pick. Our group decided to make a movie trailer about this book as a way to get other students interested in reading the book. We are going to send it to the author. I hope he likes it. It would be amazing if he visited our school, but if not, at least we got a few others interested in the book and they could have some good conversations.

Foreign language time. All of us have to work towards learning to speak another language other than English or the language that we speak at home. I wanted to learn Japanese. It seemed cool and I like Pikachu. Today, Leslie and I are just going to work on DuoLingo together and do a few lessons. I can’t wait until Wednesday when we can video conference with Kaito and talk Japanese with him. Kaito is American, but his family is from Japan and he speaks Japanese. I hope to visit Japan one day.

The day is almost done. I have my Core 2 with Ms. Christine. We are doing a science experiment about how the chemicals in different foods react together. Knowing this stuff is going to help me when I get on Chef Crew. I really enjoy science time, hard words and all. My teacher makes it fun and I get to try stuff out.

End of the day and it time to check back in with my team. We have more time now because we have to D-Squared (discuss and document) what we did today and set our goals for tomorrow.

Finally, we have our Closing Circle with our teams and then we organize and clean up based on what we were assigned.

I stay after school because I want to finish editing my video. Tomorrow I will join the others that stay after to exercise or dance.