Explore: Y7, S6, W5
Learners Taking the Lead
Click here to see pictures from this session.
This week in Explore, the studio carried a growing sense of learner ownership and initiative.
Small but meaningful examples of this kept appearing throughout the week. Learners organized elections for the Exhibition Committee. Others independently began redesigning the Studio Maintenance system after noticing inefficiencies and imagining better ways to organize responsibilities. Nobody assigned this work. Nobody required it. Learners simply saw opportunities to improve the systems around them and stepped forward to act.
That same sense of ownership showed up in many corners of the studio this week.
Lunch Club returned for its second week with a menu featuring chicken and rice, along with a dessert that quickly became a studio favorite: sweet tacos. During Spanish Lunch, the kitchen transformed into something closer to a family gathering as learners made fresh corn tortillas and refried beans while rancheras played in the background. Several learners began improvising with leftover ingredients from Lunch Club, experimenting with salsa, cheese, tortillas, and their own combinations.
We’ve also loved watching learners grow in the way they support one another. Some learners who once worked mostly within their own goals are increasingly stepping in to help fellow travelers stay focused, organized, and encouraged. Others have been stretching into areas that previously felt uncomfortable or unfamiliar, showing a growing willingness to participate, contribute, and try new responsibilities.
On Tuesday, Black Slopes visited the Blanton Museum of Art, where learners explored a striking contrast between contemporary interactive art and classical European works. Downstairs, learners moved through immersive modern installations that invited viewers to physically engage with light, sound, and space. Upstairs, the tone shifted dramatically as learners studied Greek vases and Italian paintings from centuries earlier. Armed with notebooks, learners sketched, wrote observations, and documented questions as they moved through selected galleries together. It was especially interesting watching learners move between these two very different artistic worlds and wrestle with questions about beauty, meaning, craftsmanship, and expression.
Quest this week focused heavily on preparation for the Exhibition and the final stages of the Story of Energy Quest. Monday became a studio-wide reset day as learners organized binders, updated trackers, completed unfinished challenges, and reflected on their work from the session. On Wednesday and Friday, the increasingly elaborate Energy Game simulation that learners will play publicly during the Exhibition was introduced.
The game has quickly become one of the most ambitious studio simulations of the year.
Teams gathered wood by running between trees across campus, mined coal by digging through the sandpit, and drilled for natural gas and oil through a large-scale Battleship-style strategy game spread across the studio. Learners had to balance teamwork, speed, communication, mapping, market thinking, and resource management as they began to think like competing energy entrepreneurs. The game also introduced a deeper layer of strategy as learners began realizing that gathering the most resources does not always lead to the greatest profit once markets and conversion costs are introduced.
Writers’ Workshop brought a very different type of energy this week. Learners read The Girl’s Like Spaghetti and explored how punctuation can completely transform meaning. From there, they continued refining memoirs centered on moments such as strange foods they’ve eaten, times where “nothing happened,” and deeply memorable experiences from their lives. The editing process also became increasingly collaborative as learners worked in “Communities of Editors,” each taking on specialized editing roles while giving and receiving feedback from peers and Writing Buddies.
Learners also completed their IOWA standardized testing this week. Reactions varied widely. Some learners genuinely enjoyed the challenge and structure of testing, while others found it more mentally tiring. Either way, learners showed strong focus and perseverance throughout the process, and everyone successfully completed their exams.
As we move toward Exhibition and the close of the session, one of the clearest themes emerging in Explore is the growing confidence learners have in shaping the culture, systems, and experiences around them. More and more, they are noticing what needs attention, proposing improvements, organizing one another, and stepping into responsibilities with greater maturity and care.
