Friday morning was day 83 of the pandacademic year and the last day of the first week of cycle six. Still remote because of local Covid conditions. I started the morning meeting with a review of the calendar. Then I highlighted two practices that were on the Community Awareness Board that we could all benefit from that morning in the morning meeting, the Check-in, and the Change-up: actively listening and minimize apps. Next I opened up the meeting to announcements, and then we shared what we were celebrating in our lives right now: celebrating myself and taking time for myself; Abrome and our approach to the pandemic, and our commitment to youth rights and liberation; being with you guys; how much joy I have in my life; food; playing Minecraft or YouTube; my birthday next week—reflecting on life, journey, and relationships; being with you guys and my dogs; going to beach in March; my birthday in three days; celebrating pizza and movie night tonight (Jaws); I’m starting a book soon and hope to finish it by new years.

Everyone stuck around for the Check-in as expected. We cleaned the slate clean for this cycle and started anew. A Learner came up with the awareness that sometimes folks don’t show up for meetings or check-ins, which we had as a prior awareness. Facilitator Ariel also raised an awareness, but after our latest guardian workshop he chose to frame it in a positive manner (i.e., offerings are more fun when Learners show up) as opposed to a negative one (i.e., not enough people are showing up for offerings).

When we adjourned the meeting most people dropped off, but the two Learners who most consistently show up for the Change-up stuck around and helped us come up with practices for the awarenesses. The practice of setting an alarm that we came up with for showing up for meetings and check-ins was also recycled, but this time we were being serious about it. Although the three Friday meetings can sometimes run on quite long, on this day we wrapped up with plenty of time to spare before the 7-minute workout.

I did not have much time to spare around the morning workout routine so we pushed ourselves hard for seven minutes, gave each other virtual high fives, and then I dropped off for a call with the team at Dent Education. Dent Education is a non-profit in Baltimore that was co-founded by my Harvard roommate Rajan, who was at the Kennedy School (government) the year before enrolling at the Stanford Graduate School of Business while I was getting an Ed.M. at the Graduate School of Education). We had a great conversation that covered different purposes of education, theories of change, navigating supporting young people who may see harmful professions as a necessary pathway toward financial stability, Self-Directed Education, and issues of oppression and liberation. It was such a great conversation that it ran over time and I asked a Learner I had a scheduled one-to-one check-in with if we could delay it ten minutes, and then if we could reschedule it for Monday.

Next up was a Learner’s Among Us offering which sometimes gets lots of people joining, and sometimes gets none. On this day one Learner showed up to join him. Facilitator Ariel sometimes joins the Among Us offerings, but on this day he was meeting with a Learner in-person at a local park. Facilitator Ariel decided to meet the Learner (masked up and socially distanced outdoors) because it was really difficult connecting with the Learner online. It’s hard enough for long-time Abrome Learners to get excited about joining us virtually, but this Learner joined us just in time for the city to go to risk stage level five, meaning just in time for us to be fully remote. The Learner had only made it to one meeting all of the prior fully remote cycle, and it looked as though the situation may repeat itself if this cycle was fully remote, so the meeting was a priority for Facilitator Ariel. When they met up they hung out on some prominent rocks in a prominent park, although the Learner was not fully present as he was focused on communicating with folks online. But when his phone died he gave Facilitator Ariel more of his attention, and they even took a couple of loops around the park.

Facilitator Lauren’s plant medicine offering at 1:00 p.m. was not sparsely attended, as we needed commitments from people to show up since we needed to deliver the necessary ingredients and materials earlier in the week, although one unfortunately did not show up.

Facilitator Lauren had harvested yarrow, and added it to the supply bags that also included bees wax, oil, and aluminum tins. She led us through each step of the process to include heating up the oil to seep the yarrow in, straining out the yarrow, adding in the wax, and then pouring the finished product into the tins. Some of us added essential oils at the end. I even tested out the product on a fresh cut I had on my knee that was the result of my rushing to join the offering.

But the plant medicine offering was more than just the experience of preparing yarrow salve for future use. It was also about connecting with each other. We had a blast just chatting about anything and everything, and somehow the conversation led us to pulling up a John Prine video that about half of us started dancing to.

The next hour I had my daily free write and I found myself writing by myself. But about ten minutes in an older Learner dropped into the Discord channel to work on some of his music lyrics. Meanwhile, another adolescent Learner was leading the third 75-minute workout of the week. A Learner who showed up for the Monday workout but not the Wednesday workout was able to join in on the fun, which was great considering Facilitator Ariel was not able to make this workout. Only four total attended the workout, but I promised them that I would join in next week if we could focus on finding times that worked for everyone in the Set-the-Week meeting on Monday.

Between the free write and the afternoon roundup I had two one-to-one check-ins, to include with the Learner who had met up with Facilitator Ariel earlier in the day. Considering he had only checked in once the entire prior cycle we were thrilled to have had connected with him twice in one day. We chatted about different gaming offerings that he might want to join, and I reminded him that if he joined Discord he may find it easier to connect with folks. He joined Discord and started posting messages that afternoon. Facilitator Lauren also had two check-ins on the day, as well.

Facilitator Lauren opened the afternoon roundup with a quick review of practices and shared announcements. Then each of us answered what we could do for ourselves over the weekend that would be really good for our personal wellbeing: start a new book; cook something new and deliver it to a friend; practice some mindfulness exercises; play video games; breath; human interaction; go outside; clean my room; get outdoors and ride my bike every day. Unfortunately there was low attendance for the roundup, but three Learners stuck around for gratitudes after the roundup, in addition to the three Facilitators. Gratitudes are always a nice way to finish up the week and head into the weekend, and it was great having more Learners involved in that. When the gratitudes were finished two of the Learners wanted to stick around even longer. The Facilitators just pushed back their review of the day to give the Learners time to hang out with us. We ended up talking about the confusing English language and how a sentence can repeat a single word several times over and remain grammatically correct. One of the Learners claimed that one such sentence was: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. No one believed him. I did an internet search and found this sentence though: John, where Steve had had “had”, had had “had had”. “Had had” had had a better effect on the teacher. None of us could make sense of it, and then we all said goodnight, and wished each other a great weekend.