Akilah S. Richards — Blog

Thursday morning was a challenging one for me as I woke up still exhausted from the day before. Fortunately I didn’t have any driving around to do before the morning meeting like I did the day before. After spending a little too much time updating myself on what happened since I unplugged the night before, I brewed a pot of coffee and settled in for some writing. At 10 a.m. it was time for the morning meeting, so I logged onto Zoom and waited for the Learners to show. Each of them did. That morning we talked about who (other than our guardians) has had the biggest impact or influence on each of our lives: grandmother, aunt, brother (twice), therapist, me (honored), middle school teacher, and three friends. Then we talked about the non-person (e.g., incidents, pets, institutions) that has had the biggest impact or influence on each of our lives: pet dog (twice), Georgia Aquarium, arctic bumblebee, computer (“where I met a lot of friends and had a lot of fun”), the pandemic (not a good thing), and the Austin Police Department (also not a good thing). We finished up the call with each person identifying the practice they would focus on for the day, and then we adjourned the meeting.

After the morning meeting I moved into a check-in with one of the Learners. I had scheduled a weekly check-in with each Learner in the remote cell so that we could have some dedicated time chatting to each other. My meeting with the Learner was a relatively short one, but I did get to ask him about his interest in the arctic bumble bee. He told me the particular arctic bumblebee he was interested in was Bombus polaris, and he said that he learned about it while research arctic poppies, which the arctic butterfly pollinates. He told me how it survives in cold climates. While fascinating, I found the other arctic bumblebee, Bombus hyperboreus more interesting and far more disturbing. It enslaves other bee colonies because they do not have the ability to produce workers.

Meanwhile, the in-person cell also had everyone present. Facilitator Lauren said they had a different energy on day two of the cycle. They prior day they were all about socializing, but on Thursday they were all about socializing and exploring the unfamiliar place they would spend their day. Like the day before, the cliffs called them like a Siren, and the spent much of their day free climbing the wall or exploring around it. The Facilitators later said that some of the Learners had overestimated their climbing abilities, and those Learners soon discovered that just because it is easy to get up to a spot on the face of a rock wall does not mean it will be easy to get down. Those types of experiences tend to create some enduring lessons.

Three of the Learners decided to break away from the group and hiked downhill toward a bridge while everyone else walked up toward a rocky area. The former group, consisting of the older Learners, investigated a cave and socialized. Eventually they came back and rejoined the rest of the cell. The older Learners found Facilitator Ariel was hanging out with one of the younger Learners and the prospective Learner who was shadowing, and together they began to use the rocks that were all around as their medium for art. They created designs with the rocks by lining them up, and then they began constructing some impressive cairns. They even produced what I call fractal cairns, a cairn that is composed of multiple smaller cairns.

On Wednesday, for the first time in ages, I made an agreement to sit down and play Roblox with a Learner, and the time we set to do so was at 1 p.m. on Thursday. While I am no fan of video games myself, I know that they are a big deal to many of the Learners, so it makes sense that I spend some time playing video games with them. The problem has been, in prior years, that I always felt that getting absorbed in a video game with a Learner would take my attention away from other Learners, even though Facilitators highly value one-on-one time with Learners doing virtually anything else (e.g., reading, gardening, arts and crafts, board games). I have also long considered video games a waste of time, even though I know that they are extremely beneficial for many people in many ways. This dismissive mindset about gaming is something I have challenged myself to reconsider as part of my deschooling journey. So at 1 p.m. I logged onto a call with a Learner to play Rogue Lineage. I spent a good amount of time that morning deleting files from my computer to make space for Roblox. I was able to download the game and got all set up, but the Learner who was going to play was less than impressed with how little I understood of the game, and how to do even basic functions with my keyboard. The Learner thanked me for showing up, but said that perhaps I should review a tutorial on the game before the next effort, and he shared a tutorial with me..

After the attempt at gaming, I finished reading Debt: The First 5,000 Years by the late David Graeber. It was a fascinating but long read, and I highly recommend it. Then I opened up Akilah Richard’s Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work, in anticipation of the conversation I would be having about the book that evening with the Education Conversations Book Group. At 2 p.m. a Learner joined me for the free write offering I scheduled for 30 minutes each day during the remote cycle. She worked on her comics and I worked on writing some thoughts about Abrome and the pandemic. The 30 minutes flew by, and the Learner said it seemed like it was not enough time to really get into a groove. We agreed to meet for an hour each day moving forward.

At the afternoon roundup only two Learners showed up on time, and one joined a bit late. The prompts were, “what surprised you about the day?” and “what disappointed you?” The surprises and the disappointments were largely the same: technical issues, my ability to game, and attendance at the afternoon roundup. We reviewed how we did with our practices and found that no one had really stayed hydrated during the day. Then we finished the meeting with the counting game and everyone went on their way. After they all logged off I thought about how I had spent my day—mostly on my butt. I missed the vibrant nature of being outdoors with Learners, but I recognize the value of holding space for the Learners who are remote, and bracing for what seems certain to be a fully remote scenario in the coming weeks if we as a society do not quickly flatten the curve.