“The Hero’s Journey” is the name we give to the universal journey into risk and fear to achieve something important. All of us grow when tested this way — whether or not we succeed.
Those challenges can run the gamut. For one boy, 11, doing his Let Grow Independence Experience in Santa Fe, New Mexico, his challenge was…finding an item at the grocery store.
In the half-minute video below, Kathleen Murphy, the young man’s teacher at the Fayette Street Academy charter school, explains what happened. She also told us that though she was assigning the Let Grow Experience every-other week — a (FREE!) homework assignment that has kids go home and do something new, on their own — she overheard some of her students admitting they’d told their parents that it was EVERY week. They wanted twice as many heroes’ journeys.
Watch on YouTube here.
The Let Grow Experience materials for schools are here.
I love it!
For those wringing their hands over kids being out by themselves, remember at this is a normal childhood task. Stop keeping kids in prison and restricting their normal movement. It’s stunting their growth and ability to be self reliant, rather than depending on a “parent figure” to do it for them. They don’t just magically develop self reliance and self confidence on their 18th birthday.