Could this be school?
It’s time for me to brag on Brightworks. Here are a few snapshots of what his class has been up to the last few weeks, as they enter their last arc of the year, “by water.”
A few weekends ago, the Blue Band had the chance to board a historic ship, docked on the San Francisco coast line, to re-enact life on a 1906 ship. 
Ronan had an amazing time and came home with so many stories about ship life, as well as new sailor words and sea shanties. The only part he said he wouldn’t repeat was the “night watch.” Haha. His crew was roused from their warm beds in the middle of the night for a 2 hour silent watch shift. More sea stories can be found at the Blue Band blog post here 
Following this experience, the kids visited several museums, a master boat crafter, and the open sea, to learn how to row and how to build boats. Eventually they found themselves immersed in a series of experiments exploring buoyancy.
From buoyancy, they moved into the idea of floating, and eventually took on the challenge of building a boat strong enough to float one person (out of cardboard and plastic).
Just yesterday the kids went out to Stow Lake to test their boats on the open water. Ronan’s teacher wrote a great summary of the day’s events here, detailing all the project and social learning that went into the boat challenge.
The blog post that Mackenzie wrote is such an amazing example of her work as a teacher. The boat challenge is less about the outcome of the boat’s strength and more about the process of learning to iterate, make mistakes and work together as a group. She pours out positivity on the kids all day long, seeing the”good” in each of them while pushing them to grow further into their potential. Her work as a teacher seems deeply aligned with her vocation.
Much gratitude for this place that Ronan now actually calls his “home.”