As we entered into the second half of the cycle we noticed that Learners were beginning to fall off of some of the calls. At the morning meeting only eight Learners joined the three Facilitators. Facilitator Lauren started the meeting off with a review of the practices from the Community Awareness Board, set the conditions for the meeting via game shifting (one of our practices), and then asked everyone what practices they would focus on. An adolescent Learner typed in the prompt in the chat (one of our practices). Most of the practices focused on not speaking over others: active listening, mute when not talking, being prepared for the meeting, mute when not talking, n/a, none, mute when not talking, mute when not talking, being prepared for the meeting, keeping eyes out for weird creatures and mute when not talking, and staying muted.
Morning meeting
Facilitator Lauren then asked how they are getting connection with others during this remote period. The ways in which the Learners are getting connection with others while we are remote were more diverse: phone calls with friends and marco polo with sister; Discord; roommates, offerings, and discord; text people on Discord; IDK; IDK; meetings and Discord; meetings and Discord; Discord and hanging with friends; offerings and facetime with grandma; activities, meetings, and doing stuff with mom and dad.
After the morning meeting I had my weekly one-on-one check-in with an adolescent Learner. Facilitator Ariel would have a check-in with another Learner later in the day. Both check-ins were really nice conversations with Learners who are not always up for much conversation. After the check-in I led the daily 7-minute workout and was feeling pretty good about myself and the remainder of the day that lay ahead.
Coffee and read offering
I joined the other Facilitators for the coffee and read offering. Each of us continued to read books that we had previously read in this offering. The book I have been reading, Curious, has turned from interesting to very disappointing. The deeper I get into the book the more I want to write a book just calling out everything that is wrong with the author’s conceptions of how learning happens, and what happens in schools. But because this is a book that we are reading for the Education Conversations book group, I will suffer through the rest of it. Each of the other Facilitators are enjoying their book much more than I have been.
At 12:00 p.m. there were competing offerings, with an adolescent Learner hosting a game of Among Us while Facilitator Lauren hosted her second natural dyes offering. Facilitator Ariel and I both joined the Among Us offering, with Facilitator Ariel downloading the game before the offering and playing around a bit with it so that he knew what to do. Unfortunately, for some reason, the version on my phone would not work and after troubleshooting for about 15 minutes I left the two of them to play.
Natural dyes offering
The natural dyes offering was quite popular though. Three Learners showed up for it, two of who did not show up for last week’s offering, and by the time I dropped in to see how things were going there was a lot of activity going on. At one point one of the members of the call asked a Learner who had her camera off if she’d be willing to turn her camera on to show everyone how her tie-dye was coming along, and she turned on her camera and left it on. We honor the Learner’s desire to have their camera turned off, but Facilitator Lauren did comment that it was nice to see the Learner on screen.
Bike project offering
At 1:00 p.m. there were again two offerings, with Facilitator Ariel hosting a bike project offering and Facilitator Lauren hosting a nature connection offering. Several Learners have expressed their interest in biking, so Facilitator Ariel created the bike project offering as a way for them to work on bikes together. Unfortunately no Learners joined on Thursday. Facilitator Lauren created the nature connection offering as a way to get Learners outdoors so they could connect with each other and with nature, but the offering lured no Learners into it. Although no Learners showed up for either offering, because both Facilitators created the offerings as a way to invite the Learners into something they were interested in, they still found value in doing the offerings solo.
Nature connection offering
At 2:00 p.m. the only offering was free write, which one of the adolescent Learners showed up for. It was the second time I got to speak with the Learner that day, so we skipped over checking in with each other and just stated our goals for writing for the hour. She was going to continue working on her book, while I took on a much smaller task of writing a blog entry recapping the Abrome day from earlier in the week. We each settled in and focused, and when we checked in 50 minutes later the Learner said that she had made great progress on her story, and I had finished my blog post.
The Facilitators then came together at 3:00 p.m. to review another two chapters of Raising Free People. The chapters were titled “Recognizing Unschooling as a Communal Model for Collective, Long-Term Liberation” and “Leadership: The One-Word Bridge between Learning and Liberation,” and we probably could have done four sessions covering these two very important chapters. We discussed our own liberation journey and work through Abrome, the fears that some White parents have of raising racist children, and resources we could potentially create to help young people who don’t get to attend Abrome but who still wish to be free. We also talked about the practices and culture of Heartwood ALC, and Agile Learning Center outside of Atlanta that is referenced repeatedly in the second of the two chapters we covered.
With not enough time to discuss it all, we needed to jump off the call to go right into the afternoon roundup. Only nine Learners showed up for the afternoon roundup, but one of the families did send us a note that their young Learner was going to miss so they could spend time together outdoors as a family, which I felt was a fabulous reason to miss the meeting. Facilitator Ariel asked everyone what their favorite month of the year was and most everyone responded with the month their birthday was in: March, April, June, September, October (four times), November, and December (two times). Two of the people who chose October don’t have October birthdays, and I am pretty sure that one of them chose October because of Halloween, her favorite holiday.
Reviewing practices at the afternoon roundup
Facilitator Ariel then asked what people would do after the Abrome day ended and there was a mix of online and offline activities: take dog for hike, cook dinner, and relax; write a bit more and have a call with one of the Abrome guardians; either go on a bike ride or lay on ground outside; work on a scarf; play Minecraft, play Super Mario Odyssey and walk dog; play on the computer; let the chickens out and watch YouTube or play Minecraft; origami; Roblox; hop on VR with mates. Then we reviewed how we did on our practices for the day and then opened it up for announcements. Our oldest Learner shared her job search progress and expressed how eager she was to begin working full-time.
When the meeting adjourned the Facilitators had their end of the day check-in. We discussed outreach initiatives, some finance issues, our Covid-19 concerns for the Learner who is about to start a new job, getting N95 masks for that Learner and the rest of the Abrome families, and some photo and video initiatives that we could put in place. It was a good day, not a great day. We miss being with the Learners, and although we had a few moments of wonderful connection, we want to seek out even better ways of holding space for connecting with Learners.