Brave Learner Conference Post 2 "Paper Crane"

Session One at the Brave Learner Conference was all about collaboration!  Julie says, “The most important person in your home school is you!”  She talked about how collaboration is the super turbo boost, not about teaching a skill, but coming alongside your child and partnering with them to learn together.  She taught that we can be more interested in supporting growth than enforcing lessons when we collaborate.  We can also learn to recognize needs or to work at being a “detective mom” to figure out what will “flip the switch” for our child’s learning.  I totally agree with Julie on this and have done this many times over the last thirteen years of home schooling my own children.  There is this pressure that I feel about having my kids learn independently more and more as they grow older, but we have really enjoyed it more when we are connecting and learning together.

In typical Julie fashion, she had us try a learning activity right there in the conference, in the middle of the session.  Our task was to take a sheet of origami paper and try to learn to fold it into a paper crane.  I have limited origami experience or skills, but I was up for the challenge!  I looked at the visual diagram directions in our program booklet and started, but I quickly found myself watching the video demonstration on the big screen instead.  It seemed easier to follow.  Then, the video streaming got stuck and then it skipped ahead a little bit and I was suddenly lost!  My neighbor started to pull up another paper crane video on her phone at the table and we would watch part of it and then she would show me what to do. Somehow, this worked well enough to make something resembling a paper crane!  We were so proud!  

Many people in the room found that they preferred working with another person on this project instead of working on their own.  What was the point of this exercise?  Collaboration!  Julie went on to point out that our kids feel just like we did when we ask them to learn something new.  When we leave them to figure it out on their own, they feel overwhelmed or give up.  When we work on a difficult task together, we can accomplish so much more!

After I originally published this post, the photo below was released from the professional photographers from the conference and wouldn't you know, there is me and my neighbor, Kelly, and one of our paper cranes!