Three teams have been up to Spark, the fourth goes today, and this morning the studio decides what happens next - whether this becomes a real part of the year and what shape it takes. Meanwhile the boats get a full sixty-minute final session - a real buffer, not a normal Quest block - plus an Exploration design review and their names.
By 2:40 today four boats are finished, named, and staged - and every learner has written down honestly whether they want to keep working with younger learners.
Whatever exists at 2:40 goes in the water. Teams were told that at 1:50 and held to it.
Commitment cards include at least one honest no. If every card says yes, the framing failed.
Exploration left a sticky note on each one. It stays on for tomorrow.
Standard rhythm. Thinking Puzzle up by the cubbies.
Standard rhythm.
Talking points, not a script. Hit these in your own words - the studio can tell the difference, and the ones that land are the ones you actually mean.
This is the conversation the whole Spark thread has been building toward. Three teams have been up; the fourth goes this afternoon and gets to hear everyone else's experience right before their turn, which is the best possible preparation. The question isn't "did you enjoy it" - it's whether this becomes a real thing D2 does all year.
The opener (3 min):
Read out three or four lines from the reflection journals. Anonymously, exactly as written, including the unflattering ones. "I got bored." "I didn't know what to say." "She wanted me to read the same page four times."
Then: "That's this week, in your own words."
The pattern (6 min):
Name what came up across all three teams - you read them last night, so you know. Usually some version of: it's slower than you think, they want attention more than help, and doing nothing is harder than doing something.
Ask: "Which of those is the actual skill?" Let them get to it. The answer is usually the waiting.
The real question (9 min):
"Here's the decision. This week was a one-off. It doesn't have to be. Do we want to keep doing this? And if we do - what would it actually look like?"
Put three options on the board and let the studio argue about them:
Be honest about the trade-off: option 1 means everyone gets the experience and nobody gets good at it. Option 2 means real relationships and a smaller group. There isn't a right answer and you shouldn't pretend there is.
The close (2 min):
"You'll each write your own answer this afternoon. Nothing gets decided today - it goes to Town Hall next week. Team 4, you're up at 12:55, and you're going up knowing more than any team did this week."
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
All studios together. D2 arrives having spent a week in Spark's room, which changes how they sit in there - name that before you walk over.
If there's a slot for a studio update, D2 should take it and a learner should deliver it. One minute on what the week has been. Ask someone at breakfast, not on the walk over.
Lunch and downtime, uninterrupted. Nothing is scheduled in this hour and nothing should be. Dilemmas run at 8:30 on the days they run, precisely so this stays clear.
12:55 - Team 4 leaves. The one exception, and it applies to the day's Spark team only. Everybody else stays at lunch until 1:00 as normal.
Remind Team 4 at the start of lunch, not at 12:54. They should be moving before the Spark learners do, so they arrive in position rather than into the middle of a transition.
12:55 - today's team leaves. Team 4 heads upstairs. They go up before the Spark learners move so they're already in position rather than arriving into chaos.
Their three jobs, in order:
Meanwhile in D2: everyone else runs D.E.A.R. as normal, 1:00–1:30. Nobody misses anything by going up, and nobody misses anything by staying.
Say it to the team on the way out, every single day: "You're not the guide. You're the role model. Notice, wait, and ask - don't fix.say this exactly" The failure mode for D2 this week is enthusiastic overstepping, and it comes from good intentions every time.
Ten minutes, bullets only, same four questions. Team 4 gets the short version today because the boats need the room - and they're the only team who won't have written a full entry.
They finish it properly on Monday, while it's still recent enough to be honest. Put it on Monday's plan now or it won't happen.
Everyone else, 1:30–1:40: the Boat Yard opens. Materials out, jobs claimed, working before the bell rather than after it.
Thursday is the only day this week the studio doesn't do its own 1:00–1:30 D.E.A.R. The boats have to be finished and this is the last session. Team 4 still goes up - Spark's reading time is the whole point of the rota and it doesn't move. Say the trade out loud so it reads as a decision rather than a slip.
A full hour instead of the usual fifty minutes, because four sessions is genuinely tight and Thursday is the last one. Whatever exists at 2:40 goes in the water tomorrow - say that at 1:40 and it changes how the hour gets spent. The skill today is finishing: deciding what's good enough, and stopping.
Where the extra time came from: commitment cards moved to the ELA block, Team 4's reflection compressed to a ten-minute capture, and the studio's own D.E.A.R. suspended for the day. All three are deliberate trades, not slippage.
1:40–1:55 · The Exploration design review (15 min):
Exploration learners come down. Their job is not to help build - it's to be the people who have failed at more things.
1:55–2:25 · Build (30 min):
2:25–2:35 · Names and riders (10 min):
2:35–2:40 · The fleet (5 min):
Some teams will genuinely be done by 2:20, and the buffer means that's now possible rather than theoretical. Do not let them add decoration to a finished boat - send them to the team furthest behind. A team that spends its spare twenty minutes on someone else's hull is the best possible advert for what this week was about, and it's worth naming at Callouts.
Big one today - the build zone comes down. Cardboard offcuts out, tools in, floor clear. The boats get staged somewhere they can be carried out in the morning without a scramble.
Rich day. Look for callouts around finishing rather than starting, around a team that accepted a hard piece of Exploration feedback, and for Team 4 who went up last with the most pressure.
One question: "What's the thing you want to remember about tomorrow before it's even happened?" Then logistics: what to bring, what to wear, what time we leave.
Send-off by name.
Talking points for this week's email. Drop these into an AI assistant along with two or three live notes from your actual week - a name, a moment, something that surprised you - and it'll give you a draft in your own voice. The specifics are what make it land; the structure below is just the scaffolding.
The draft underneath is an example of the shape and the tone, not a template to send as-is. A parent who gets the same email as every other parent can tell.
Subject: The boats are finished - and a real decision got asked
Hi families,
All four teams have now spent an afternoon with the Spark learners, and this morning we asked the question the whole week was building toward: do we want to keep doing this, and if so, what should it look like? I read out lines from their reflection journals - anonymously, and including the honest ones like "I got bored" and "I didn't know what to say" - and then put three real options on the board for them to argue about.
Nothing was decided today. Every learner wrote a private card with their own answer, including whether they personally want to keep going up. I was explicit that "no" was a perfectly good answer, because sending a reluctant mentor helps nobody. It goes to Town Hall next week.
The boats are done. Exploration came down to review them and left each team a sticky note predicting where their boat will fail. The notes stay on for tomorrow.
Tomorrow: swimsuit under clothes, towel, full change of clothes, shoes that can get wet. We leave promptly.
- [your name]