Tip #14: Fully embrace the fact that children educate themselves and each other.

This is the most freeing fact about life as an Acton Academy parent.

No longer must we worry that our child gets the best teacher or is in the best school with the best resources or gets the best grades.

Children are born to learn and are infinitely resourceful when set free to do so.  At Acton, they have the trust and respect of adults, a well-designed environment for individual work and refined processes for peer interaction and accountability. Each person is a learner and a teacher – the teaching and learning are reciprocal experiences.

As I walk through the studios, it is during moments of peer-to-peer teaching that the joy of learning is tangible.

While there is much research and literature to read on this topic, I enjoy the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “I pay the schoolmaster, but ’tis the schoolboys who educate my son.”