We call it Journey Tracker and it’s a bit more nuanced than the title of this post – but not by much.

Eagles set goals every day, receive their quest, civilization and writing challenges AND post their work on Acton Academy’s Journey Tracker.  We parents have daily and immediate access to all of our children’s work and can see the status of their progression whenever we want.

But there is a catch. It takes my personal responsibility as a parent to be informed. The good news is that it’s not complicated.  And there is satisfaction, even joy, in being informed about my children’s progress and seeing the work they are doing. The bad news is that your guides aren’t going to spoon-feed you. We trust you to take charge of being personally informed.

Here’s how you can be armed to ask the best questions of your child and know exactly where they are in terms of moving to the next level or studio:

Login to Journey Tracker.  (Or ask your child to do this for you if you don’t yet have the login credentials.) Look at your child’s badge plan – the big map of their learning that you signed off on – and where they are in terms of completing their plan.

When you see green, you know that work is finished. Green = good.

When you see red, it means it was not. This is not always bad because there are different scenarios for why a goal was not completed. Red means it’s time to ask the question: Why is this red?

Now you get to have a meaningful conversation and inject some good old fashioned love, support, encouragement or trouble-shooting as needed.

Don’t do this every day. That’s called micromanaging and gets annoying for your hard-working Eagle. Once a week is a nice stride or even bimonthly.

Enjoy this amazing tool and thank Mr. Reed when you see him.