Weekly Edventure #1: Building Confidence
"EXPLO is one of the first places where Alison really stepped up and started advocating for others... that was for her a start in real confidence, in terms of [Alison thinking] 'This is how I should behave as a citizen of the world.'"
Christine and Brett Rogers, parents of three Exploration students discuss how EXPLO has helped their children find the confidence to advocate for others, face problems head on, calculate effective and worthwhile risk-taking, and transform themselves.
ON BUILDING CONFIDENCE:
At EXPLO, we encourage the pursuit of lifelong learning — which means we are constantly doing our own studying up, reading on, or relearning the concepts that we teach throughout the summer. Here are some fun links that we've been recently reading on building confidence:
- Three questions to ask yourself if you're teetering on the edge of speaking up or quieting down.
- Our job isn’t to teach students creativity. It’s to help them rediscover their own creative confidence.
- A lesson on the strength of community from an unlikely source: army ants.
- A friendly reminder that worth-while ideas sometimes end up in the trash.
- Yes, you're an impostor. So are we. So is everyone else — as long as you find the confidence to work on something that might fail, you’ll find the confidence to keep going.
- Trailblazing astronomer, Maria Mitchell, on how we co-create each other and recreate ourselves through friendship
- A board game where you get to be a disease-fighting scientist advocating on behalf of the future of all human kind (count us in).
RELEVANT EXPERIENCES
At EXPLO, confidence-building takes many shapes, forms, exercises, and events. Just a few EXPLO experiences Alison and other students have tried that help to build confidence in a summer at EXPLO include:
- Weekend Trip: Test your courage at Tree Top Adventures Zipline + Ropes Course (grades 4-7, 8+9, 10-12)
- Course: Navigate through concepts of compassion and empathy in Social Psychology (grades 8+9, 10-12)
- Course: Learn how to advocate on behalf of (or against) the legal system in Mock Trial (grades 4-7, 8+9, 10-12)
- Main Event: Showcase a new skill on the historic stage of Schubert Theater (over 100 years old!) at EXPLOpalooza Night (grades 10-12)
- Club: Stand up on behalf of your neighborhood in Community Service Club (grades 8+9, 10-12)
- Student Life: Encounter world-views — and stretch your own — at breakfast with your residential advisory (grades 4-7, 8+9, 10-12)
- Workshop: Confidently and effectively interrogate your suspect as a detective in the Great Case of EXPLO’s Murder Mystery (grades 4-7)