Trusting relationships are central to our learning community. Our culture of the Building Space in the East Wing is that everyone works on one idea. After being together for some time now, various children have chosen to play exclusively with each other. With this intention for collaboration in place, their dyad is challenged.
Mila, Ren, Sebastian, and Sy started with research through the book How Do Things Work? as a reference to develop a structure together.
Sy: Look at this. We can build this ship. It’s a submarine diver.
The group begins to place materials and a structure surfaces.
Mila: Where’s the part you drive the submarine?
Sy: You just press a button and it drives by itself. Actually, there is sixty-eight hundred buttons.
Mila carries over a keyboard: The power is working. 
Sebastian: What about the air? How are we going to breathe under water?
Ren brings over wire: Let me show you. This has to clip so we can tie it.
Ren and Sebastian begin to intertwine the wire through the structure.
Ren, pointing to the trail of wire: The power can come up through here to help us breathe and shoot up from there.
The group spent the entire morning working together on the submarine creation. More concepts emerged about mechanisms for breathing and designs for defending themselves from sharks. New connections were fostered as ideas took shape.
Ren: Sy, I never worked with you in the Building Space. We are working together and making lots of stuff!
Sy: We’re not done. We still need to have ideas. We need more ideas from everyone else to add to the submarine to make it cooler. Can we share at reflection meeting?
The dialogue and vignettes shared highlight how children were able to build upon each other’s ideas. The experience of working towards a joint design created an awareness of their own strength as a group. This was made evident in wanting to invite more members of their community along for the ride. As we extend our journey as active learners, the teachers wonder: Are the new relationships strong enough to engage in disagreement? -Teacher Silvana