Wednesday morning we had low turnout for the morning meeting with only eight Learners showing up. Facilitator Lauren started the meeting by asking if anyone had any announcements. We decided to give the announcements at the beginning of the meeting a try because one of the younger Learners had been frustrated recently as he would join the meeting excited to share some news but then would have to wait until the end of the meeting for announcements. Sometimes he would start talking over others, and sometimes he would begin asking if the meeting could just be finished already. It was frustrating for him, other Learners, and the Facilitators. The Facilitators felt by allowing him to share immediately when we started the meeting that the struggles might end. During announcements I shared that it was a palindrome day, meaning that the date forward and backward were the same if using the mm/dd/yyyy format: 1/20/2021. I then asked when the next palindrome date might be, and the best answer I could come up with on the spot was in November or December, depending on if you used dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy: 12/11/21.
Next Facilitator Lauren used game shifting to help everyone understand how we would approach the meeting. When we are in person in the Abrome facility we use game shifting boards that allow us to set roles for the meetings, the group intention, how we are going to use our bodies, and how we are going to talk or share with each other. Being outdoors this year we have used it only occasionally when we were really struggling with meetings, but being remote we felt we needed to use it more because Learners were often not present in meetings (e.g., distracted by Discord chats or gaming) and some would too often speak over others. One manner of sharing is to “pass the ball,” wherein one Learner at a time has an imaginary ball while they speak, and then they pass it to someone else. That’s what Facilitator Lauren offered up, and then we stumbled our way through the meeting as each Learner answered what they would do if they were the outgoing President as their final act, or if they were the incoming President as their initial act. Some Learners answered the prompt with sincerity (e.g., commute sentences of low level drug offenders, provide a friendly reminder to treat everyone fairly), and some made a joke of it and provided some pretty cringey responses (e.g., rally supporters to break into the Capitol, nuke the world). It was not a terrible meeting, but it certainly did not help us start the day as we would hope.
After the morning meeting I had a one-on-one check-in with a new Learner that it has been difficult for me to connect with outside of gaming. I asked him how things were going as a new Learner who was stuck at home during this remote period thanks the the state of the pandemic. He said that he and his family have had some conversations about the decisions he’s been making around gaming, and that they believe he has been making some bad decisions. I asked him what that meant and if he agreed with them. He said that they felt he was gaming too much and that he did agree with them. At that point the conversation evolved into what good decisions would be, the process of deschooling, and why gaming can seem so enticing. We talked specifically about how gaming companies engineer the games to provides hits of dopamine, and motivation theory. We then moved onto ways that he might be able to better understand how he responds to the urge to game, and I suggested maybe having a journal that he could track the time that he spends playing, how it affects his emotions and his body, and if he finds himself neglecting certain needs (e.g., bathroom, eating, sleeping). He said he would think about it.
After the meeting I did a quick 7-minute workout with the other Facilitators and the guardian of a Learner. After the workout we gave each other a virtual high five. I then spent much of the rest of my day thinking and writing a blog post I’ve been tinkering with for the past several days. I did not finish it, but I made great progress on it.
Facilitator Lauren meanwhile had a check-in with an adolescent Learner and then hosted an art and fart offering wherein folks could join her as they did some sort of art project or anything else of their choosing. It was more just an opportunity to hang out, and with the name of the offering there were high hopes that some Learners would drop in. But none did.
Later in the day an adolescent Learner hosted her Minecraft offering where each person could show up to play Minecraft while hanging out with each other on Zoom. The goal was to be together but not actually play together on a shared server. One younger Learner and Facilitator Ariel showed up to play along.
Facilitator Ariel then hosted the online gaming offering which is essentially the same thing as the Minecraft offering but for any game, and it was on Discord instead of Zoom. The same three who had participated in the Minecraft offering ended up participating in the online gaming offering.
We then came back together again at the afternoon roundup where we had a much better turnout than we did in the morning. Facilitator Ariel led the meeting with announcements, and then said that we would share using the popcorn method of communicating (“kernel,” answer, “pop”). He then asked a wonderful question: when do you feel the most free? The answers were pretty varied: when I have a day that everything I do is planned and liked by me without obligation, when I get to play my favorite position in soccer, in book group discussions, when I’m with family, when I am just being myself, in a creative video game or in nature, when I am wearing a sticker that says ‘free’ for price, when walking through beach and woods like island forests, when doing art, when having fun, and when making music.
The afternoon meeting really helped make the day feel special, even if much of the rest of the day seemed underwhelming in terms of Abrome days. When we adjourned the meeting some of the Learners stuck around to chat. Slowly they started to drop off but three of them really wanted to hang out, which was a bit awkward because the Facilitators always follow up the afternoon meeting with a Facilitator meeting. When we told the Learners we were going to have the meeting they effectively said, ‘great, we will watch it play out.’ So we all gave our rundowns of the day without talking about specific Learners, and without being able to really dive into some of the issues and concerns that arose during the day. We decided that while we appreciated the Learners hanging out, that in the future we would need to ask them to leave before we begin the meeting.