Raising Free People — Blog

Thursday was day 75 of our pandacademic year. We are only about 3/7ths of the way through the year as our year ends in mid-July. I was leading the morning meeting and I immediately started with announcements. Building off of yesterday’s announcement that it was a palindrome day, and a discussion of when the next palindrome day would be (we said November), I argued that actually day 75 was a palindrome day, depending how you choose to order the date. If we go dd/mm/yy or yy/mm/dd and lop off the zero at the beginning of the month then 21/1/21 is indeed a palindrome.

We tried pass the ball for game shifting on Wednesday, but as it was the first time for some Learners, and the first time not doing it in person, it did not go very well. But I figured it was a more engaging way of participating so I tried it again, and this time it went over much better. For the prompt I asked, when do you feel least free, or unfree, and do you believe you can change the conditions that make you feel unfree? The answers were interesting: when stuck in a conversation I don’t want to be in, paying rent, trapped indoors waiting for something to happen (e.g., DMV, phone store), in public school, put to work for chores or cooped up in public school, when I kill something in Minecraft and another one spawns, when I have a price tag on me, morning and afternoon meetings at Abrome, when I am in an argument with someone who thinks they have power over me and every time I talk or defend myself they won’t let me speak, when I have to do something I don’t want to do, and when playing Zelda. Minus the people who responded jokingly to the initial prompt, the overwhelming majority who identified when they felt unfree said they could change their conditions entirely or to some degree. I made a note to have a conversation later in the week with the Learner who said that he felt the least free during morning and afternoon meetings.

After the morning meeting I had a one-to-one check-in with an adolescent Learner and then I joined the 7-minute workout with the regular crew. I then quickly moved into Facilitator Ariel’s coffee and read offering. Once again it was just the Facilitators, but we made the most of it. I finished the book Curious, which I think is one of the worst books I’ve read in quite some time, and Facilitators Ariel and Lauren finished Raising Free People in advance of our discussion planned for 3:00 p.m. that afternoon.

The next offering of the day was an unscheduled Among Us offering. When we went over the schedule that morning a Learner asked why the offering was not on the schedule. I reminded him that he left the Set-the-Week meeting early, at the beginning of the week, and so he was not around to schedule an offering that day. He said that he wanted to host the offering and invited anyone to join him at noon. When the time came, only one other Learner and Facilitator Ariel showed up. One thing we’ve learned about Among Us is that it’s really not that great if you don’t have at least five people playing. Uninspired, they ended the offering early. Hopefully the Learner who organized the offering will choose to stick around for the entirety of the next Set-the-Week meeting, next cycle.

Facilitators playing an intense game of Jeopardy

At 1:00 p.m. Facilitator Lauren hosted a trivia offering on Zoom. Trivia has played well with the Learners at Abrome in the past, so we were hopeful to get some turnout for the offering, but again only the Facilitators showed up. Facilitator Lauren chose an online Jeopardy website for us to play off of, and we set the difficulty to easy enough for everyone to have fun without letting our competitive nature taking over. It didn’t work for me, as I always take trivia games way too seriously. But we did have a good time.

At 2:00 p.m. I hosted my daily free write offering and I was thrilled to see a Learner join me as she does most days. It’s been challenging for us Facilitators to not have Learners showing up regularly for our offerings, as we want to find ways to connect with them, and we feel limited in our ability to build relationship with them. But we continue to make ourselves available, inviting them to offerings, and having one-to-one check-ins with them in an attempt to stay connected as we bridge the gap between now and when the risk stage level drops to four (when most will choose to come back to in-person), and later to stage level three (when the rest will come back to in-person).

Speaking of one-to-one check-ins, Facilitator Ariel had a really nice one with an adolescent Learner who does not share much. Not all Learners are eager to share their feelings or their interests in group meetings, so the one-to-one allows the more introverted or shy Learners a chance to open up more with an audience of one. They ended up talking about comic books, comic book history, movies they like, books and struggles with reading. It was a great opportunity for Facilitator Ariel to get to know the Learner better, and it spurred him to set a comic book offering for the coming week.

At 3:00 p.m. the Facilitators finished discussing Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards. This entire year; first in-person, outdoors, in small cells; and then remote; has made the ongoing daily conversations about facilitation much more difficult to have given that we are almost always physically separated. We took advantage of the unfortunate situation of being entirely remote this cycle to work through this book slowly and discuss for a half hour twice per week. Unfortunately, that was not enough time as there are so many gems within the book, and so much reflection and processing to be had.

Facilitator Lauren facilitated the afternoon roundup where we started by reviewing our practices and identifying what we each were doing well and what needs work. Then we each answered what is something we need to feel safe: humanity, people actively working to make space safer for all, connection with people I trust, having a roof over my head, stuffed animals and mom and dad, family, people I trust, trust, friends and family, people I trust and dog in bed at night, a “fire arm” (written into chat), and for people to trust me and I need to trust them. Once again someone’s attempt to be funny fell flat. Facilitator Ariel overrode the joke with talk of how having an arm on fire isn’t going to make anyone feel safe. If we were in-person it would have been much easier to pull the Learner to the side and talk about that after the meeting, but we are stuck being remote. Being remote is clearly starting to wear on folks. Thank goodness that once we drop back down to stage level four that we can be together in-person again. Too bad too many people continue to go to shops, restaurants, bars, salons, gyms, and schools. We are going to stay home for now to help protect others.

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.

Day 75 of AY20-21: being remote is starting to wear on folks

Day 49 of AY20-21: energy differences between cells