Challenge Accepted

A preview of my next book

Yesterday I hit send on the manuscript to my next book, called Challenge Accepted. It’s in my editor’s hands now. What a strange feeling! A book baby about to be born. So I thought I’d tell the story of how this book came to be, and the ideas I hope it stirs about what school is all about.

The story began a decade ago, back when I was part of a small team starting Millennium School. We were on a quest to re-imagine middle school from the ground up, with university research partners to form the foundation, and as few assumptions as possible to carry into it. I began to wonder, what would a fully experiential middle school curriculum be, with no explicit mention of academics? It was kind of a crazy thought experiment.

To inform this, I began asking people what their most meaningful experiences were from their middle school years, especially those experiences that gave them a lasting sense of how capable they are, or of who they are. We collected many, many ideas. Getting a first job. Starting a business. Repairing a friendship. Going on a solo camping adventure.

We winnowed these ideas down and ended up with what looked like a giant bingo board of experiences. Up these went on the walls of Millennium’s classrooms. Then a mentor suggested we turn them into a deck of cards. That proved a better format, and made them playful and accessible to many students. Imagine shuffling and drawing out “challenge a limiting belief about yourself” or “care for an infant.” That’s some high-stakes poker!

The second iteration of these ideas - the “Essential Experiences”

Fired up by all this, I decided to write a book about the challenges. This was 2019. In those odd fragments of time when I was not working or parenting, I was writing, writing, writing. I finished the manuscript just as the year turned to 2020, found a literary agent in New York, and then — everything went sideways. The agent couldn’t find any publishers. COVID hit. And two weeks after lockdown began, my third child was born. The manuscript took a back seat — maybe not even in the same car. It was out of my mind for a long time.

But some things have a way of coming back around again. Trying to make sense of the pandemic, I ended up starting Argonaut, offering online advisory groups for middle schoolers from around the world, and suddenly the challenges came into play again. Stuck at home, students took them on with even more gusto. One amazing student even turned the 50 challenges into a 3-dimensional online game board, complete with traps and secret tunnels, to add more play and chance to how we used them.

In 2024, I finally looked at the manuscript again. With the distance of 5 years from it, I decided to completely re-write it. The original text felt too adult now, too wordy. The final blow was delivered by my now 6^th grade daughter. She went through the chapters with a brutal honesty. If her “cringe” radar was activated, out it went. She skewered adult language, unnecessary vocabulary, and much more.

So here we are. January 2025, and a fresh, lean manuscript, with a new title — Challenge Accepted — and a great editor to hone it further. I’m as excited as I’ve ever been about these ideas. The book is organized around 50 short chapters, each offering a short introduction to one challenge and tangible steps for how to make it happen. I’m collaborating with an amazing illustrator, Rye Hickman, whose visuals are giving the chapters even more life (see below). It’s choose-your-own-adventure, read-in-any-order, and 100% written for middle schoolers.

Test illustration for the Open Your Own Bank Account challenge, by Rye Hickman.

Here are a few of the challenges…

• Start a journal

• Grow your own food

• Spend time in a group where you stick out

• Professionally publish your work

• Change a bad habit

• Travel independently

• Challenge yourself not to use any negative language for a full day

• Forgive someone

• Find an awe spot in nature

• Build something from the beginning

If you’re intrigued, keep your eyes out for a Kickstarter campaign coming in the next month, to help fund the book production and build some energy around it. I’ll send the first copies out to Kickstarter backers likely mid-summer, and then it will become available to buy online and in stores hopefully in August.

I still wonder about all those assumptions we carry about middle school, and school in general. 7 hours per day of school. Homework. Relatively minimal attention to physical movement or social and emotional development. Core subjects found in textbooks. Are those really the core? What if challenges like these — ones to discover more of who you are, how to be among others, how to contribute to the world — were the real work of middle school?

I’d like to see that future happen!