The Contract's wording gets agreed and locked today - and then nobody touches it until Friday, when they sign it in front of their families. Today's job is to be certain: read it aloud, take the genuine out if you need it, and name your own hardest promise where only the tribe can hear it. Then six weeks of artifacts come out onto the tables and get sorted into done, needs a fix, and not showing this.
By 3:15 today the Contract's wording is locked and unarguable, every learner has named the promise they'll find hardest, and the studio has a written fix list for everything it intends to show on Friday.
Read line by line, last objection taken seriously, then closed. If a learner can't say what's in it, the reading was too fast - and Friday is too late to find out.
Last, with a real answer. The guide signs alongside the learners on Friday for the same reason.
At least one artifact can be withheld without argument. Makers get to decide what they exhibit.
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.
The opener (3 min):
Hold the Contract up. Don't read it yet.
"On Friday you're going to sign this, in front of your families. Today we lock the words, and today is the last day anybody can change them. First I want to be clear about what signing means, because people sign things all the time without meaning anything by it."
The core (10 min):
"Signing this doesn't mean you'll keep it perfectly. Nobody keeps a promise perfectly. It means you agree we can hold you to it - and that you can hold everybody else, including me."
Read the Contract aloud, slowly, all of it. Then the part that gives it teeth:
Then the genuine out, and mean it: "If there's a promise in here you don't think you can make, say so now and we'll talk about it as a studio. Signing something you don't agree with is worse than not signing - and Friday, with your families watching, is far too late to find out."
Hold a real pause. If nobody speaks, fine. If somebody does, that conversation is worth the morning.
The close (5 min):
"This afternoon we lock the wording, and then we start going back through everything you've made. If anything needs changing before Friday, this is when you say so. Including the film."
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm. Schedule ownership continues: math sits inside it, so the block may move - what doesn't move is that it happens and the PWG opens first.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
The Contract gets its final wording today so that Friday is a ceremony rather than a negotiation. The vulnerable part - naming the promise you'll personally find hardest - happens here, in front of the tribe only. What happens in front of families on Friday is the signature. Then the week's actual work starts: going back through six weeks of artifacts and deciding, as their makers, what's finished and what isn't.
1 - Locking it (20 min):
2 - The artifact review, round one (30 min):
Everything the studio has made comes out and gets laid around the room. Learners walk it with sticky notes and mark each item one of three ways:
What goes out: Standard of Excellence v1 and v2 · Rules of Engagement · the Studio Manual draft (it gets compiled properly tomorrow, but the offcuts should be on the table today so nothing is missing) · both Trading Card sets · PWG v1 and v2 · Spark journals · boat photos · the Lip Dub banner · the storyboard · both mirrors · the chosen Lip Dub take. Plus, if the studio ran them: the Portrait Wall and the Chain Reaction film - both are Week 4 backup activities, so they may or may not exist. Don't leave a gap on the table for something that was never made.
Then the question that has to be asked out loud: "Does anyone want another go at the film?" Ask it plainly and without steering. A studio that quietly wanted another go and never got asked will remember that.
The honest position, and they should hear it before the hands go up: "If we reshoot, it happens tomorrow afternoon and it costs us the fix list. Thursday is the room and it can't move. So the real question is whether the film is worth more to you than the wall."
Why Thursday genuinely isn't available. Thursday is the room build plus the technical rehearsal - and a film that changes on Thursday invalidates the check that matters most on that day, which is playing it on the actual screen, at volume, in the actual room. One Wednesday Quest block is a real second attempt. Two days is not on offer.
Decide it now, together, rather than letting it fester as a private disappointment - and if they vote for it, say out loud which fix-list items are being given up.
Carry forward: The locked wording goes up on the wall today so everyone can read it all week; the signed copy replaces it on Friday and stays there all year. The fix list drives Wednesday and Thursday.
Note the time: if the ten minutes have been handed back, this block runs 1:50–2:50.
Standard rhythm. Artifacts stay out - the room is a workshop for the rest of the week.
If the ten minutes have been handed back (see W5D1) - this block is 2:50–3:00 and Quest ran to 2:50.
Callouts around the signing - particularly whoever named a genuinely hard promise rather than a safe one, and anyone who spoke up at launch about a promise they couldn't make.
One question: "Which promise will be hardest in November?" Not this week - November. Different answer.
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 Contract is locked - they sign it on Friday
Hi families,
The Studio Contract has been built in pieces since the first week - drafted, argued over, cut down, rewritten. Today the studio locked the wording. Nobody changes a word from here, including me.
Then, one at a time with everyone watching, each learner said a single sentence: the promise I'll find hardest is ___. I went last, with a real answer of my own. We did that part today, in the studio, rather than on Friday - naming your own weak point is a vulnerable thing and it belongs to the tribe, not to an audience.
They sign it at Exhibition on Friday, in front of you. Each learner reads one line of it aloud, then everyone signs, and it goes on the wall for the year.
Then everything they've made in six weeks came out onto the tables, and they went round marking each thing done, needs a fix, or not showing this. That last one is a real option - they made these things, so they decide what gets exhibited.
- [your name]