I don’t know if it was a super active Monday, coming down off of the emotions of election week, or all of 2020 hitting people at the same time, but on Tuesday I started getting messages fairly early that Learners were not going to be at Abrome that day. Two decided to spend the day with their mom. One had a headache. One was up very late and was too tired to come in. One was not feeling well because of medication changes. One found out that other same aged Learners were not coming in so they stayed home. For a group of seven Learners who had been absent collectively for only two days, all of a sudden six Learners were going to be absent on day 37. The Abrome day was going to consist of just me and one other Learner.
Colorful and curious
I showed up at the drop-off location to meet a prospective Facilitator at 8 a.m., and that conversation lasted until close to 9:30 a.m. I then had some time to write some thoughts down in my journal until about 9:50 a.m. when the lone Learner for the day joined me. We did intentions, and then we talked about what we wanted to do that day. With only two of us the morning meeting took about a minute to complete, and then we spent about 20 minutes throwing rocks at larger rocks. He then showed me a leaf that he found with a bunch of colorful spheres on it. We questioned if they were seeds or some sort of eggs. We then sat on the largest rocks at the drop-off location, and he seemed to be okay with being there without other Learners. He ate from his lunch as I collected some softball sized rocks, and we debated where we wanted to spend the day, and then we walked toward the lake.
Half of the large branch, broken in pieces after falling to the ground
On the way to the lake I asked him to stop where there was a large branch hanging over the trail. I had tried to knock down the branch with two of the older Learners on Friday, but we could not get it done. With him standing back I launched the first of the large rocks toward the branch and hit it, breaking it in half. The half that broke loose was pretty sizable and it would have been pretty terrible if it had fallen on someone walking down the path. Unfortunately, the next four rocks all missed their mark, and we will need to come back to the task another day.
At the lake the Learner and I were near each other, but on most days he likes to maybe engage with me jokingly only a couple of times a day, and spends the rest of his day playing with others. But today it was just me and him. He chose to spend his time spinning in circles to see how dizzy he could make himself. I encouraged him to do it longer to see if he would fall, and then I challenged him to a race across the field. While it would not be a fair race even without him spinning, with the spinning it was laughably unfair. We both laughed at how the race played out with him doing his best just to run in a straight line.
The Learner then spent a good amount of time testing his balance around the edge of the lake, or over the lake, on retaining walls and trees, respectively. We then moved to the dock and set up and enjoyed the peculiar weather of the day. It was warm enough to feel comfortable in shorts and a t-shirt, but there was heavy cloud cover and gusts of winds that made it seem like a storm was going to break out any minute. The winds were bringing down the leaves that had changed colors on the trees all around us, and were blanketing portions of the lake. It was a pleasure just to sit and take it all in.
With no other Learners for him to play with, the lone Learner stuck around me and we talked about varying topics and observations about what was going on around us. Eventually a woman and her dog walked toward the dock and engaged us in a conversation about Austin, the part of Austin we were enjoying at that moment, and about what we were doing there in the middle of a school day. At some point in the conversation, the Learner indicated that he would be okay with going home earlier. I asked him if that meant he was asking to go home early, or if he would just be okay if his mom decided to come pick him up. He said that he would like it if I sent her a message to see if she could pick him up. We discussed the possibility that she might not be able to, and that he would need to be okay with that. He said he was. I then reached out to his mom and she agreed to pick him up at 1:45 p.m.
Suddenly finding myself with no Learners at 1:46 p.m., I returned to Abrome and contacted Facilitator Lauren and told her that now that I was no longer at the park I could take over the roundup for remote Learners that afternoon. At 3 p.m. I logged onto the meeting and proceeded to have an hour long conversation with a Learner who is not in my cell this cycle. We discussed a wide variety of topics from our dogs to the election to the likelihood that he would be well suited for several career paths.
The two of us got to enjoy this view during our one-on-one day
At 4 p.m. I wrapped up the roundup with the remote Learner and jumped on the afternoon call with Facilitator Lauren, where we talked through the happenings of the days. Then I jumped on a call with another prospective Facilitator, and then I jumped on the Agile Learning Centers book group call. By the time I got off the ALC book group call I was ready to call it a night. While I was happy to have spent some one-on-one time with just one Learner, I was hopeful that Wednesday would mark a return to lots of Learners showing up, along with all the benefits that practicing Self-Directed Education in a community of Learners brings.