Pandemic plan update for AY 2021-2022

Rejecting normal

Society is burnt out and eager to regain a sense of normalcy after two years of the pandemic. At least that is the message we are fed each day by the media, government agencies, politicians, and opportunists. And their proposed solution is to move on from the pandemic and “return to normal,” operating as if it were 2019 again. 

There are many problems with the proposed solution that we are being offered. First and foremost is that the pandemic is not over, and we cannot simply make it go away by acting as if it is no longer an existential threat to many millions of people who are at risk, unvaccinated, or members of vulnerable populations. Secondly, the crushing exhaustion many people feel is not solely a response to Covid-19 safety protocols, but to much more concerning factors such as: mass disability and death, and being told that disability and death should be deemed acceptable while protocols to prevent such harm should be seen as a burden; a heightened state of white nationalism coupled with state violence directed at historically marginalized and oppressed groups (e.g., BIPOC, trans youth, houseless); economic uncertainty; political instability; and a loss of a sense of connection and community in a fractured culture. Third, and particularly relevant to Abrome, normal was never good enough. 

Abrome is a liberation project. We aim to support young people by honoring the exercise of their autonomy within a context of co-creating a compassionate community with an understanding of our shared responsibilities toward one another. In order to do that, we must reject the notion that it is sensible to focus on what is best for us while turning a blind eye to the ills of society, as well as the ways in which we may be contributing to the harm of others.        

Thanks in large part to recently updated CDC guidelines, schools and other institutions are fast tracking their “return to normal.” We are likely the only remaining education community in Central Texas that still goes remote during periods of uncontrolled community spread, and we may also be the only one that has not gone mask optional. We have been put in the position of having to choose between what makes good business sense and what allows us to continue to center the needs of those most impacted by our decisions. We still choose the latter. 

Moving forward

This updated version of our pandemic plan was released on March 15, 2022. Since the original version of the AY21-22 pandemic plan was released, those ages 5 and above have gained access to vaccines, and we came back indoors for the first time since March 2020. We have also observed how much of society has been lulled into believing that we should not protect ourselves and one another through readily accessible mitigation and safety practices such as masking, staying home when sick or after having been exposed, and vaccination. Finally, we have watched in disappointment as schools and public health organizations have folded to public pressure to abdicate their responsibility to help protect the most vulnerable members of our communities. 

We are still masking whenever we are indoors, as well as when near one another outdoors. We may still go remote during the worst periods of spread, but we may be outdoors depending on local hospital capacity. We still have vaccine qualifiers to go indoors. The most meaningful changes to this updated pandemic plan include new triggers for when we enter into different risk levels; altered protocols for where, when, and how we meet; and adjusted isolation and quarantine protocols. We based the changes on a deeper understanding of the risks of spread in a variety of contexts (e.g., indoor/outdoor, KN95/surgical/cloth masks); renewed humility driven by the diversity of outcomes of recent variants; observing the measures of air quality at the Abrome facility since returning indoors; and improved studies of incubation and infectious periods. All changes were made with a deep concern for how we could best serve the Abromies without leaving others behind. This update also serves as a bridge between the original AY21-22 pandemic plan and the forthcoming AY22-23 pandemic plan. Thank you for continuing on this journey with us.

Day 113 of AY20-21: stumbling upon play

On Wednesday, March 31st, I started my day off by dropping by the cell that I was not in to drop off some items with Facilitator Lauren. While I was there one of the parents of one of the Learners showed up, which gave me an opportunity to have a conversation with them about frustration over some of our Covid-19 protocols. We recognize that we are one of the few exceptions to the rule when it comes to education communities and Covid-19. The rule seems to be to pretend it is not a threat once inside of the walls of a school, or on school buses, and pretend that students can’t take the disease home and into their neighborhoods. Our commitment to protecting each other and those outside our community have meant that we are entirely outdoors all year, even when it is cold or hot, and we are vigilant about quarantining, and we are vigilant about masking when around others. We had a good conversation about how to reconcile priorities within households that do not fully align with the priorities of the Abrome community, and the necessity for candor and open communication. It was a good conversation, but it made me late for the link up with the Flying Squad.

When I showed up to the Flying Squad, I was thrilled to see a Learner who had been quarantining had finally returned. Unfortunately, two Learners stayed home for separate reasons, but I figured the smaller crew would allow for more connection between me and the Learner who had just returned. For the morning meeting I volunteered to set the gameshifting board (sans the board), and I said folks could position themselves however they wanted as long as they stayed out of the roadway, and that we would speak in the order of the day of our birthday: 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 20.

Facilitator Ariel then asked everyone what their intentions for the day and the week were, and then he asked, “what’s one way you can share space today?” He asked that question because it had become a concern how we are so into ourselves and each other that we do not realize how much space we are taking up that might take away space from others. For example, sometimes when the Learners are walking down a sidewalk they bunch up so they can all be together, leading them to unknowingly push others off the sidewalk. Of the responses, some seemed more effective than others. I’ll let you decide which ones might work best: give trees 6 feet; if someone is being left out, ask if they want to join; if we’re somewhere where someone comes over, don’t intimidate them; stay right, no more than two wide on trails; make myself smaller; use welcoming language.

When we started to walk off I noticed Ariel walking with a stiff leg. I asked if he was okay and he said he should be fine when it warms up with further walking. As I watched him struggle to walk, I raised the awareness to all, and asked to talk about it with Facilitator Ariel and the Learners. He admitted that he was in pain but that in the past the knee loosens up when it gets warm, and he said he wanted to push forward. Shortly thereafter, he hit toe while walking and he needed to stop. It was clear that he needed to go home, so I asked him to please go home and rest. The Learners agreed.

We then moved further down Barton Springs Road toward the food trucks where a Learner wanted to grab some lunch for later. I imagined we might be there a while, and that turned out to be the case. I was pleased to see how the older Learners went out of their way to pull an 8-year-old Learner into their circle at the food court. We were there long enough that I was able to break my 16 hour fast and eat my lunch at 12:00 p.m., with time to spare to help the younger Learner go over the menus of each of the food trucks. I also found time to drop my phone and crack the screen. That was an expensive lunch break. At some point I asked the Learners if we could move on, as I did not want to spend the entire day at the food trucks.

We did not make it far before we came upon a small convenience store that some of the Learners like to get snacks at. On this day, I forgot my battery pack so one of the Learners let me borrow theirs, but I needed to buy a cord at the corner store. The cord cost about the same as the organic candy that the Learner purchased. We decided that we would keep walking down Barton Springs Road until we got to the Long Center where we could potentially set up near the small pond.

When we got to the Long Center we found the fence around the playground that we had eyed up before had been taken down. And oh my, it was amazing! The layout of the playground was fabulous, with numerous places for young people to get lost in play without feeling like they were surrounded by a bunch of others. There were structures that challenged Learners of all ages to take risks and to come up with their own games.

The Abrome Learners launched themselves into the various swings, tunnels, climbing contraptions, and slides. One of the climbing structures was pretty daunting, and really stands out in terms of allowing kids to take on risk in a society that has insisted that children’s zones are engineered to eliminate risk. Kudos to the City of Austin for being an exception, in this case. The Learners made their way up the climbing structure, some slowly, some quickly. But at the top they all posed for a picture, proud of their ascent, and thrilled to have done it with others.

With all that fun came some struggle. It was difficult for one excited Learner to keep his mask on around others, and reminding him repeatedly wasn’t feeling good for me and it wasn’t working for him. So I asked him to sit down with me to slow down a bit until he could remember to honor our safety boundaries (one of our practices). He was not wanting to stop, but the break allowed him to gain control over himself and when he went back to play with others he had no problem keeping his mask on. He made great friends with a young learner who showed up with his sibling and his mother. I asked the mom about his schooling situation, and it seemed like they were just trying to find ways to get by. I wanted to tell them to look at Abrome but it was clear that finding alternatives to school was not high on their priority list, so I smiled, and let it pass.

At the afternoon roundup I asked the Learners for their highlight of the day, and requested that none of them repeat what someone else said. The Learners’ highlights were the slide, the park, scaling the climbing structure and hanging out at the top, and soccer. My stated highlight was when a Learner allowed me to borrow his battery pack. But then I looked at the Abrome Slack and noticed that Facilitator Ariel thanked me for “advocating for my needs and safety.” That was the highlight of my day.

The other cell had a pretty fabulous day, as well:

Walking Hunter

Chilling on the dock

Chilling in the wikiup

Gathering flowers

Dinosaur tracks?

One year into “pandemic schooling”; let’s never return to normal

One year ago today, on March 30, 2020, we ‘returned’ remotely after an extended three-week spring break that allowed us time to better understand the threat of the burgeoning Covid-19 pandemic. Given the rapid spread of the disease; concerns of medical systems being overwhelmed; the ballooning number of heartbreaking stories of harm in places as unfamiliar and familiar as Central China, Northern Italy, Iran, and New York City; and the uncertainty about the longer term effects of the disease on those who survive; we realized that we could not wait around for local, state, or federal agencies to determine our response to the pandemic. 

At Abrome, we have always sought to center the needs of those most impacted when making decisions. While that most obviously meant that we would need to prioritize the wellbeing of the members of our community who were most at risk of serious illness from the disease, because we are all interconnected we would also need to concern ourselves with the impact of our decisions on broader society. In time, and unsurprisingly, it became apparent that in addition to the elderly and those with certain underlying medical conditions, the worst consequences of the disease disproportionately fell on Black, Indigenous, and people of color, as well as those without material resources. It was this expectation that led us to our April 1, 2020, decision to remain remote through the end of the 2019-20 academic year. 

In June we published a living contingency planning document that would uniquely allow us to be together more safely this 2020-21 pandacademic year. We took everything outdoors (in physically distant small groups, for three week cycles at a time). Because we are a Self-Directed Education community that has never been stuck to the practices and structures of schooling, we were able to transition to being fully outdoors rather seamlessly. As a result of our community's dedicated efforts (and some luck), one year in, no one in our extended community (Learners, immediate and extended families, Facilitators, housemates, and dedicated pod members) has contracted Covid-19.  

Now, as vaccinations roll out and as Covid-19 numbers trend down, it seems everyone wants to "return to normal." However, "normal" was never good enough. That "normal" prioritizes academics over relationships, and success over solidarity. It tends to have some combination of age segregation, forced curriculum, personalized learning apps, homework, testing, grades, and forced exhibitions (with some Covid-19 security theater sprinkled in); but what it has never had was a respect for the autonomy of children. "Normal" also ignores the cost of schooling on young people and on communities, especially during this pandemic.  

Our approach to the pandemic has been a continuation of what we have always done at Abrome--prioritize community care. We believe in the power of community, and centering the needs of the people most impacted is one of the hallmarks of a strong community. We are proud of the way we have put community over convenience, and people over profits during this pandemic. Post-pandemic, we will continue to reject the "normal."

——

Cover photo by Taylor Wilcox on Unsplash

The Emily Oster problem

Yesterday, unfortunately, Emily Oster’s latest essay “Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma” was published in The Atlantic. The subtitle declared, “Parents should bet on vacations with their kids this summer.“ I’ll explain why this essay being published is so unfortunate after I properly introduce you to the author.

Even if you haven’t heard who Emily Oster is, you’ve surely heard people parroting her continued dismissals of the risks of Covid-19 in school settings. Emily Oster belongs in a grouping with people such as Scott Atlas and Heather Mac Donald who peddle Covid-19 misinformation with no regard for the harm they cause.

Emily Oster is an economics professor at Brown University who has made a name for herself by wading into parenting and education topics and taking contrarian positions. That in of itself is not necessarily a bad thing given how parenting and education narratives are so often off the mark. However, when it comes to Covid-19, her contrarian positions are wrong, and have slowly become mainstream, and therefore have become a threat to public health.

Early in the pandemic she began to track the rate of COVID-19 spread in a small sample of schools, and has used this data to push for the reopening of schools. There were a whole slew of problems with her survey though, starting with it being self-reported because the schools that were most eager to participate would most likely be the ones to take the pandemic more seriously. How do I know there were problems with the survey? Well, I originally tried to participate in the survey because I wanted Abrome to contribute to anything that could help us better understand the threat of Covid-19 to educational settings and to the general public.

When I signed up to participate in the survey I was disappointed by the very narrow options that were available to describe our approach to bringing Learners (“students”) and Facilitators (“teachers) together outdoors (“at school”) during the pandemic. I emailed them to let them know the limitations of the survey and never received a response. I did, however, receive endless follow up emails asking me to complete the bi-weekly survey.

What I did not know at the time was that the survey was strictly a reopen school propaganda campaign under the guise of "science." She would use the data collected to push her reopen schools argument, as opposed to using the data to help inform her whether or not schools should be reopened.

Boasting a data set that includes more than 3 million students and 422,000 teachers and other school staff, she has repeatedly used the data to show lower rates of positive COVID-19 cases among students and teachers than among the rest of the local population. What she does not explain is that the data is not a fair representation of what is happening in schools nationwide, nor does she give context to the numbers. For example, in even the most nonchalant schools they have implemented at least some Covid-19 protocols, which should decrease the rate of infection relative to say bars, restaurants, and office settings.

But, at least before variants such as B.1.1.7. came on scene, yes, younger people tended to contract the disease at lower rates, suffer less serious consequences from it, and there was for a long time a belief that young people may also spread the disease at lower rates than the general population (this last claim seems to no longer have merit). And when students make up the majority of the schooling population, the risk to teachers in schools with safety protocols should be lower than say the risk to bartenders, waiters, or office personnel. So is that an argument for reopening schools? No. It is an argument that perhaps bars and restaurants should be closed before schools get closed, which she has said, but it is not an argument that schools should reopen.

Wait, how do I know that it was a propaganda campaign? Well, because she essentially admitted it in a recent Freakonomics podcast (h/t @wsbgnl on Twitter). She said that she was tired of having her kids at home when schools shut down and “was eager to dispense with them to an outside location.” And that her role is to advocate for the reopening of schools, as opposed to allowing the data and the developing scientific understanding of the risks of spread in school to shape what she uses her platform for.

Oster was pushing for the reopening of schools right up until and through the latest wave that shot us past 400,000 and then 500,000 deaths, and she continues to push for it. Even though this has been in many ways a “lost school year,” she continues to argue that schools should reopen for the last few months of the year. But with so little time left in the school year, isn’t the window on her reopen school grandstanding coming to a close? Nope. She is just going to shift her focus to what happens over the summer. And the article I started this essay with is a great example of that shift happening, and because she has become so influential, it will be to the detriment of public health.

In the article she argues that although those under the age of 16-years-old cannot yet be vaccinated, that young people should be treated as if they are vaccinated, so go ahead and bring them to BBQs and take them on vacation! She is wrong. Let’s break down some of her claims in the essay.

But the best available research indicates that families with young children don’t, in fact, have to live like it’s 2020 until 2022. Parents can go ahead and plan on barbecues and even vacations. The explanation for why lies in the resilience of kids to COVID-19, and in herd immunity.

Response: The best available research does not support her claims in this essay. But it has become commonplace for people to make broad statements like this without pushback, in large part because so many people are like Oster, tired of having their kids around. Or maybe they are business leaders who want their employees to come back to work.

Children are not at high risk for COVID-19. We’ve known since early in the pandemic that they are much less likely to fall ill, especially seriously ill. Although scientists don’t quite understand why, kids seem to be naturally protected. As a result, you can think of your son or daughter as an already vaccinated grandparent.

Response: What constitutes “high risk”? The same nonsense is pushed by Covid-deniers who claim that Covid-19 has a 98% “survival rate” (down from their prior claims of 99.97%, 99.7%, and 99%). Young people do fall ill, they do fall seriously ill, and some of them do die. The fact that kids have these bad outcomes highlights that kids are not “naturally protected.” And no, you cannot think of your child as an already vaccinated grandparent.

Think about a grandmother who’s received, say, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Trial research indicates that the second shot reduces her risk of serious illness by about 95 percent. …

Being a child aged 5 to 17 is 99.9 percent protective against the risk of death and 98 percent protective against hospitalization. For children 0 to 4, these numbers are 99.9 percent (death) and 96 percent (hospitalization).

Response: Here Oster focuses on hospitalization and death as a distraction from infections so that she can say that being an unvaccinated child is akin to being a vaccinated grandparent. But why would she do that? Because,

The central goal of vaccination is preventing serious illness and death. From this standpoint, being a child is a really great vaccine. Your unvaccinated first grader appears to have about as much protection from serious illness as a vaccinated grandmother.

Response: WRONG. While vaccines help prevent serious illness and death, the larger goal of vaccination, as the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services highlights, is to “help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and bring this pandemic to an end.” Oster conveniently focuses on the individual benefits of vaccines while ignoring the population benefits. That is why she talks about hospitalization and death rates, but not infection rates. Vaccines help prevent the spread of the disease that ultimately leads to serious illness and death. Just because kids are far less likely to be hospitalized or die than elderly folks does not mean they don't spread the disease.

Oster knows exactly what she is doing with this sleight of hand. Her persona is now wrapped up in dismissing the risks of Covid-19 to children, and to the people children come into contact with (e.g., teachers, parents, grandparents). She did not care if your children spread the disease to their teacher, and she does not care if your children spread the disease to older people while on vacation to Disney World or Costa Rica, or at a family reunion where grandma is going to want to hug little Jane and Johnny.

Later in the essay, after Oster makes her argument that kids should be treated as if they are vaccinated, she acknowledges that unvaccinated kids are “more likely to contract it than a vaccinated grandmother,” even thought it is a certainty at the population level. But she buried it enough in the essay that her talking points will get repeated without the necessary context. She also waives off the buried semi-acknowledgement with a herd immunity defense, for anyone that reads that far.

When you think about socializing or traveling with your children this summer, remember that you’ll likely be traveling around in a low-disease environment with the equivalent of your vaccinated older parent. But with more whining. Maybe.

Response: Your unvaccinated kid is the equivalent of your vaccinated older parent only if we focus on the risk of hospitalization or death to the unvaccinated kid and vaccinated grandparent while ignoring the risk of either contracting and spreading the disease to others. This is reason enough to ignore what Oster has to say about Covid-19 and kids. She does not care about the impact of an infected kid on the rest of society.

Also, we should make it a practice of not listening to people who dislike kids (whether they whine or not).

——

Cover photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash

——

Update 3/19/21 @ 4:10p: it looks like lots of people are responding with similar outrage to the profoundly horrible essay by Emily Oster. For example:

Day 84 of AY20-21: pandemic fatigue and movement

Trending toward stage level four

On Sunday morning I sent out the weekly update to families telling them that it was likely that Austin Public Health was going to drop the city back down to risk stage level four in February, and the numbers are trending in the right direction, although I doubted that they would do it this week. But to be prepared.

I also addressed the issue of pandemic fatigue:

It’s been a long year. A really long year. Continuing to take the pandemic seriously while much of society has relaxed their approach to protecting others gets harder by the day. But with over one million people being vaccinated per day it seems that the end is finally in sight. Unfortunately, we are not going to hit herd immunity until the summer at the earliest, so it really is incumbent upon us all to keep engaging in safer practices even if schools are reopening and people are going into restaurants again. Please note that the B117 variant is here and it is 43-82% more transmissible than ancestral variants, meaning that we run the risk of a fourth wave breaking out. The best thing that we can do at Abrome is continue to meet outdoors when the risk stage level drops to four, continue to mask up when near each other, and do our daily screenings each morning. The best thing that we can do at home is to avoid going out if we do not need to, to mask up when we do leave the home, and to not congregate indoors with people outside our home (e.g., restaurants, bars, religious services). 

And then I threw in an appeal to families to please skip any Super Bowl gatherings:

[T]oday is Super Bowl Sunday. A day when people come together to eat and drink a lot, and unmasked, and to scream and yell. It is an ideal setting for the spread of Covid-19 and if there was ever a year to watch it at home or to skip it altogether this would be the year

Day 84 of the pandacademic year started at 5:00 a.m. with me packing N95 masks into paper bags for four Abrome families, and then setting out at 5:30 a.m. to deliver them. We had already delivered masks to most of the families at Abrome the prior week, and would only have a couple more after my early morning run into the furthest west communities that Abrome families live in. With the premature relaxing of Covid-19 safety protocols (I’m also talking about last May and June, not just in the present) and the growing threat of the B117 variant, I wanted to get N95 masks into the hands of all Abrome community members who would be coming into contact with others over the coming couple of months. While we are super excited about the vaccination drive that is happening and the prospects for a post-pandemic late summer or fall, we also know that now is a dangerous time because of people who are going to let down their guard thinking that the worst is behind us.

As I was driving home from my deliveries I noticed lots of school buses driving around in the moonless, dark winter morning. At 6:42 as I was nearing home I drove by two adults and three schoolchildren standing on the side of the road waiting for a bus. I felt awful for the kids who were forced to wake up way too early for the daily routine of schooling that strips them of their autonomy and, in most cases, undermines their learning. But I felt even worse knowing that they were doing so during a pandemic, and in the process being forced to potentially contribute to the suffering of others.

By the time I got settled back at my desk, I still had three hours left before the Abrome day started. An hour later I jumped on a zoom writing session with a friend, and we each wrote for about an hour. When that writing session ended, there was still an hour left before any Abrome Learners would log on. At 9:30 a.m. the Facilitators jumped on our Monday morning call to talk about the week ahead and to review each of our schedules.

At 10:00 a.m. Facilitator Ariel started the morning meeting. He told everyone the agenda for the meeting, reviewed the Community Awareness Board, and opened up the meeting for announcements. After announcements, using pass the ball for the game shifting method to improve our communication in the meeting, most of us shared one negative way and one positive way to communicate. The negative ways included talking over people, walking away or closing the app that you are communicating on, holding a lot of energy in wanting to be heard and understood (as opposed to hearing what the other person is saying), screaming, yelling, talking behind someone’s back, not being a team player, and telling someone they suck at something. The positive ways people shared often offset the negative ways: acknowledge someone before moving on, put more energy into hearing and understanding others, speak in a more monotone manner, sound interested in what someone is saying (and he followed that up with “be interested”), compliment them (“if sincere”), be calm, don’t say bad things about people, try to let everyone else fit in, tell them they are great at something.

Our struggles with people being present at meetings continues. We have raised multiple awarenesses around the issue such as actively listen and minimize apps, but some Learners cannot help but to focus on their phone or games in the middle of a meeting. On this morning, even though we wrote the prompt in the chat and 11 others answered the prompt before her, the last Learner who was passed the virtual ball asked, “what’s the prompt?” If we are still virtual this Friday I will be sure to raise it as an awareness, again.

Postcards for Friday’s offering

We then held our Set-the-Week meeting where Facilitators and Learners placed offerings on the calendar, and scheduled them around the needs of others, and in a couple of circumstances asked for firm commitments from people to attend. One such offering was Facilitator Ariel’s postcard making offering set for Friday. He created blank postcards out of water color paper that are ready to be designed (drawn on, painted, etc.) so that anyone who joins can mail it to someone they cared about. By asking for commitments we know who we will need to deliver them to by the Friday offering.

7-minute workout

At 10:45 a.m. we jumped into our 7-minute workout with the usual crew, again. But on this day, the 7-minute workout was not the only way we got bodies moving during this remote experience (it is pretty easy to get moving when we are meeting outdoors). In addition to the 7-minute workout, Facilitator Lauren was hosting a yoga offering in the middle of the day, and an adolescent Learner was hosting a 45-minute workout at the end of the day.

Following the 7-minute workout I hosted my daily free write offering, while Facilitator Ariel hosted a breakfast chat offering. The Facilitators are doing their best during this painfully extended remote experience (all of January and all of the first week of February) to hold space for Learners. I choose to do it through regularly scheduled offerings such as the 7-minute workout and free write, while Facilitator Ariel opens up an unstructured block of time so people can just drop in and chat. Neither are drawing many Learners, and that’s okay. Facilitator Lauren dropped in for Facilitator Ariel’s offering and they spent the entire hour chatting, and they followed that up with Facilitator Lauren’s yoga offering and then chatted some more post-workout.

An offering that I thought might be helpful was ‘questions/puzzles/mysteries we want answers to,’ where we could share things that confounded us that we could dive into together. I was trying to recreate something that happens pretty naturally in-person, online. Looks like I will have to wait until we are in-person again.

Later in the afternoon I had two scheduled one-to-one check-ins with Learners, and then I rolled into my first extended workout led by an adolescent Learner. The Learner chose to host these workouts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of this cycle. Last week, the first week of the cycle, she asked for a 75-minute block of time which prevented me from joining, and I regretted that as the reviews of the workout were great, meaning pretty challenging but leaving people feeling really good. One attendee even claimed that the workouts were more intense than our daily 7-minute workout. So more intense and 11x as long?

45-minute workout

This week, at the Set-the-Week meeting held earlier that morning, the Learner said that she overestimated the time it would take to complete the workout and only needed a 45-minute block of time. I could commit to that and together we reworked the calendar, shifting some offerings up or back, to include the workout offering, and moving around one-to-one check-ins, so that I could attend all three workouts this week. A Learner who has only showed up for gaming offerings also committed to joining for the workout that day. And everyone who said they would show up then showed up. And yeah, it was more intense than the morning 7-minute workout was. Hopefully our bodies will recover sufficiently for the Wednesday workout session.

Fortunately I had thirty minutes to recover before the afternoon roundup. I started the meeting with a review of the Community Awareness Board, and then I asked everyone what practice they have prioritized, and if they did not have one prioritized which practice would they prioritize tomorrow. We then shared announcements, and for game shifting we went back to pass the ball. Then each of us shared a situation that was hard, difficult, or painful, but that made us stronger because of it. Mine was a no-brainer—when I called out two cops I saw assaulting someone in 2012, even though it led to a false arrest and years of harassment and follow-on arrests by the police. Some of the other difficult situations included not graduating on time from their master’s program (taught him a lot about empathy, resilience, and learning); leaving their past job because of Covid-19 concerns (but that allowed her to find Abrome!); leaving Houston and his old school (because of his friends); moving away from Houston (and leaving two friends); leaving Amarillo (because of relationships), giving roosters away (because they were picking on hens); and leaving Houston (because of friends and family). We have a lot of folks who left another town to move to Austin.

That evening I dropped off final masks that I would be delivering to an Abrome family, and I handed off another bag of masks to Facilitator Ariel that he would deliver to the last family the next day. In return he gave me the postcards that needed to be delivered to Learners west of Austin.

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

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.

Coffee and read

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.

Among Us

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.

Raising Free People

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.

Afternoon roundup

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.