Day 36 of AY20-21: learning to understand each other through play

After a long week, last week, for non-Abrome related reasons (e.g., so is this a coup?), I was better rested and fully ready for a great week at Abrome. In spite of all that was going on outside of Abrome last week, what happened inside of Abrome was pretty great. As the Learners came in on Monday morning they filled out their intentions. Some Learners think about what they want to get out of the day and put down goals: relax, read, record; dig, dig, dig; conversate with people on the dock, finish inking comic; be with dogs, eat, go to lake film, talk to [two Learners], and swim. Other Learners rush through the intention setting process: no intentions; don’t die; fire. I feel I should have a conversation with the Learners about the differences between intentions and goals, and help them consider the value of intentions as they reflect on their experiences at Abrome for a day, or longer. One of the younger Learners volunteered to facilitate the morning meeting and I asked him to try his best to stay focused on facilitating the whole meeting. He began by asking several rounds of questions of everyone, and then toward the end his focus started slipping, which is not unusual for younger Learners, so I gave him some prompts to help him wrap up the meeting.

Perhaps they were talking about the large leaf they fished out of the lake

We then walked on to the lake where the Learners broke off in groups as they had the previous day. Two of the older Learners decided to collect more pecans, and then eat them on the dock. The oldest Learner came over to where I was sitting and set up her chair, and asked if she could read a letter written by someone who is serving life in prison, who she learned about and communicated with through an activist where she lived prior to moving to Austin. It was a long letter written by the incarcerated person, and she was able to get through about one-seventh of the paper before needing to take a break. We had a couple of tangential conversations about whether life in prison for 18 year olds are ever justified, especially for someone who did not directly hurt someone else, and whether prison itself was justified. I’ve had quite a few conversations with this Learner about issues around the criminal justice system to include policing and prisons, and while we do not agree on many of the issues, we find areas of common ground that allow us to discuss ways to mitigate the harm of the system.

Every day is a good day to cuddle Cuddle Buddies

The two youngest Learners had another full day of fun hanging out with each other, playing, climbing, and digging. This included digging a cave and going in feet first, and then going in head first. The Learner who wanted to go in head first asked me to film him doing it, and in doing so I learned that he’s not claustrophobic. Meanwhile, two of the adolescents came over to hang out with Cuddle Buddies Ingrid and Ivan, and cuddle with them. Then they decided that it would be a good day to jump in the water. They jumped in shortly after 12:00 p.m., and then waded while talking to each other, singing, and splashing around. I know that I tend to stand largely still when in cold water, as did these two Learners, which gave them lots of time to talk to each other and get to know each other. Perhaps the polar bear club is all about finding uncomfortable ways to enjoy being around each other?

One of the Learners said that day and the day prior that they had been feeling not so great because of some food and drink choices (i.e., drinking Monster) they were making as well as because of some medication they were taking. They felt they needed to go home so they arranged for their parent to pick them up, and because they had carpooled with two others, all of a sudden at 1:00 p.m. our group size was cut by nearly 40%. This was really unfortunate because we are already challenged with small group sizes due to the pandemic. We currently have a maximum of seven Learners per cell to limit the potential exposure Learners and Facilitators in a cell have, as well as to help contain the disease from spreading through the Abrome community and into our local communities should someone in our community become infected. Self-Directed Education benefits most when there are others around who can bring forth their unique ideas, interests, passions, learning differences, identities, and life experiences. This is partly why many unschoolers are so intent on organizing outings; and this is why schooling, if it was not so coercive and age segregated, and if it didn’t work so hard to prevent kids from interacting with each other, could provide a great environment for learning.

Fortunately, the Learners who remained were paired off and having a blast. The younger Learners kept playing around the beach and the adolescents were still splashing around in the lake. In fact, despite the water being quite cold, the two in the lake remained in the water for over two hours straight, with one of the Learners staying in for nearly three hours. I considered jumping in the water myself but I decided that to stay on the shore with the dogs. At 3:30 p.m. we began to wrap up our day with the afternoon roundup, then made sure we were not leaving any trash behind, and made our way to the pick-up location. The Learners who remained had a blast that day, getting to know each other and further building bonds. In fact, one Learner confided in me that another Learner was “the only one who understands me.”

Good conversation while standing in cold water

Day 35 of AY20-21: creating a stronger culture, together

The first week of our third cycle was a lot for many of us. The election that some of us had feared would be a black swan event had exhausted us long before election day, and as expected, election night amped everything up. At least by Friday it looked like the worst possible outcomes were not going to materialize. It seemed that a sizable proportion of the voting population was coming to terms with the outcome, and much of the rest of the country/world was cautiously letting their guard down hoping that things were going to start getting back to a sense of normalcy in the coming months. Although it needs to be said that the old normal was violently oppressive to many populations, and it would be nice if we could to fighting for the liberation of all people.

Friday the exhaustion was palpable, even among the Learners who do not follow politics. The intentions the Learners set seemed to reflect that: don’t die, freetopia, freetopia, talk to [two Learners], relax, chill, cuddle with dogs, pet the dogs, record, drink Monster, dig, to have no intentions, and maybe swim.

Being Friday I tried to make the morning meeting as short as possible as I expected that we would need to settle into longer Check-in and Change-up meetings, and I was right. Four awarenesses were raised that morning, with two of them being the standard awarenesses of masking/social distancing and drinking water. Two other awarenesses were raised, one about how much time we were spending at the lake, and the other a concern about a name that some of the Learners came up with for a turtle that we always see on our walks to and from the lake. The awareness about the time at the lake was universally shot down in terms of it needing to be added to the Community Awareness Board, and there was just a general agreement that we would be mindful of the wants of people who may not want to spend all day, every day at the lake.

The other proposed awareness took a long time to work out. The name the Learners came up with was ‘disabled turtle,’ as it would always sun on a tree with it’s legs stretched out behind it. It may have in fact been disabled, and the name seemed descriptive, but one of the Learners pointed out that it seemed inappropriate. The Learner was alone in her position, with some of the other Learners thinking it was fine because it was not made with ill-intent, and many of the other Learners not caring about the issue. The Learners who sometimes used the nickname for the turtle made clear that they were not doing it to be mean, and that it was done in fun and that as it was a descriptive name that no one should be offended by it. But the Learner who raised the awareness did not waiver, and we eventually shifted the conversation to the use of ableist language, and how even with good intent how sometimes the language that we use can be harmful. Particularly when we aspire to be a anti-oppressive, psychologically safe community. Eventually the Learners who were opposed to adding the awareness to the Community Awareness Board were persuaded by the arguments, and they agreed to the practices of calling the turtle by a different name (Greginald, a compromise between Greg and Reginald) and to be mindful to not use ableist language. I was super proud of the willingness of the Learners to challenge their own beliefs, and to be open to shifting their choice of words, and I was especially proud of the courage of the Learner who raised the issue.

That branch was a threat that we couldn’t bring down

By the time we finished the Friday meetings we were already an hour into the day, so the Learners made a beeline for the lake. Much of the rest of the day was standard socialization and play. Two Learners jumped in the water and enjoyed each other’s company, two Learners began to re-dig their hot tub, and two others continued their various forms of play along the lakeside. The oldest Learner, who just joined the community this year, approached me to have a discussion about what it would mean to “graduate” from a Self-Directed Education community like Abrome. After the conversation she focused on taking pictures and recording video for her YouTube channel.

During the day I called on two of the older Learners to try to help me dislodge a large, loose branch that was hanging over the trail to the lake. I feared that the branch which seemed to have broken loose from above, and got caught on the way down, could eventually fall on someone’s head. We considered throwing rocks and sticks at it, and also tying off a rock or a stick to twine that would hopefully catch the branch so we could pull it down. While we were trying to prevent someone from getting seriously hurt, we had to be mindful that maybe throwing rocks up into the air was not all that safe either. So we made sure that we were all well positioned and paying full attention each time something went up in the air. We tried for a long time, but ultimately our efforts failed. We will probably come back to attempting to bring it down at a later date.

As the day was coming to an end the older Learners needed to fill in the hole they dug. Filling in a hole is easier than digging it, just as walking down a hill is typically easier than climbing up it. But it was still hard work, and one of the younger Learners decided to led a hand to help them complete the job. We then held our afternoon meeting on the dock, with one Learner volunteering to be the game master and another the facilitator. As the meeting ended a young Learner who typically presents as unemotional turned away from everyone and began to cry. Immediately the other Learners jumped into action asking him what was wrong (he dropped his water bottle into the lake and it was drifting away) and they assured him that they would retrieve the bottle for him. It was beautiful seeing all the Learners concerning themselves with the needs of the youngest Learner, and seeing how this community continues to jell across ages.

Day 34 of AY20-21: but what about socialization?

Sometimes when families are considering homeschooling they get the question, “but what about socialization?” The argument is that schooling is where children become socialized, and taking them out of school will deny them that opportunity. There are many problems with this argument, of which I’ll quickly highlight three of them.

The first problem is that there is very little socialization that happens at school. There is lots of socialization that may happen around school (e.g., coming to school, in between classes, lunch, extracurriculars, leaving school), but schooling is about schooling, and schooling is decidedly anti-socialization. In school, students are expected to be good students, which means not socialization with one another.

If this is socialization, schooling is problematic.

The second problem is that the practices and structures of schooling promote behaviors that are anti-social. Schooling is about testing, grading, and ranking students against one another. It is a race to the top where there is limited room for winners, but there is plenty of room for losers everywhere below the top. In fact, you cannot have winners if you don’t have losers in a competitive game—one must create losers to anoint winners. What schools squander in their game of pitting students against each other or against arbitrary standards is the opportunity to promote empathy, collaboration, conflict resolution, self-regulation, teamwork, and a sense of self-efficacy.

The third problem is that schools operate nothing like society, at least the functional parts of society that uplift people and allow them to lead meaningful lives. So the behaviors one must develop to do well in schooling do not translate over to broader society. For example, in broader society we should be able to interact with people old and young. In schools students are typically stuck in rooms with children all the same age. In broader society we should be able to interact with people who are different than us. Schools literally wall children off fro those who are different than them: children not their age, adults, people with learning differences, and people outside of their segregated school zones. Schools limit students’ universe of daytime interactions to same-aged students from largely homogenous communities in a competitive atmosphere.

So what does this have to do with my daily blog about Abrome during this pandemic year? Three of the seven Learners in my cell listed some form of socialization on their daily intentions: get to know people, hang out, and maybe talk to [a specific Learner].

Some Learners are eating pecans while other Learners are deep in conversation.

When all the Learners had arrived I began the morning meeting with a series of questions that would allow me to get to know them better, and that would help them better know each other. The most serious question was ‘how do you want to be treated at Abrome?’ The responses centered around respectfully, fairly, and kindly. After the morning meeting we made our way back to the lake where two Learners positioned themselves on the dock, two Learners went looking for pecans to harvest, and two Learners began shoveling holes in the sandy beach. The Learner who had intended to ‘get to know people’ then made her way to the dock to be around the two Learners who positioned themselves there, including the Learner who had an intention to ‘maybe talk to [the Learner who joined them on the dock].’ I was not close enough to observe how the conversations began, but soon enough they were all engaged in “awesome conversations” as one Learner later relayed to me.

The older Learners came back to the beach after collecting pecans and began breaking them open and eating them. I appreciated that they kept their masks on while doing so, lifting them just slightly to take in a pecan at any given time. They offered me one and I ate it, and they tasted just like they do when I buy them from the bulk section of the grocery store. As I walked away they continued to ‘hang out,’ which was the intention of one of the Learners.

The two younger Learners continued to dig their holes as deep as they could, which was complicated by the lake pushing sand back into their holes. One of the older Learners reminded one of them to wear their shoes if they were going to dig with the shovel, or to dig from their knees, practices that we highlighted at the beginning of the day when that Learner arrived with shovels. When the younger Learners tired of the digging, the older Learners asked if they could borrow the shovels to dig a large hole that would double as a hot tub. While most of this part of west Austin is a tiny sliver of topsoil on top of limestone, they happened to find a spot that was mostly sand and they dug quite deep until they ran out of energy. It was a great workout and a great bonding experience for them. Note: all Learners refilled their holes by the end of the day.

While the Learners were digging, they were stacking the sand on a pile next to the hole. The two younger Learners found it fun to run through the pile in between each shovel of sand was moved. The older Learner who was digging patiently waited each time to make sure that the Learners cleared out of the space he was throwing the sand so that he did not hurt one of the younger Learners. The six-year-old Learner recognized that their fun was creating a minor inconvenience for someone else, even though the older Learner was okay with the inconvenience. In a show of self-regulation and leadership, the younger Learner decided that it was best to simply stop the inconvenience and turned to the other Learner and said, “we’re making the process slower for [the Learner who was digging], let’s stop.”

These two friends decided to take a cold dip.

Toward the end of the day, the two Learners who wanted to be more social decided they wanted to jump in the lake. It was a cold plunge in the lake, but they did it together, so that took away some of the sting of the cold water. I decided that I should take advantage of jumping in the lake, as well, considering that there may not be many more days of swimming left as we go deeper into the fall. I chose not to touch the cold water to prevent myself from changing my mind, and jumped in from the roof of the dock for good measure. It was really cold.

By the afternoon roundup it seemed that everyone was really happy with how the day played out. Although we are operating in small, physically distant, age-mixed cells during the pandemic, which limits the number of people each Learner can interact with each day (because pandemic), it would be absurd to argue that they would have more opportunities for socialization in a conventional setting, whether that setting was online during the pandemic, in-person during the pandemic, or in-person during non-pandemic times. At Abrome the process of socialization is not directed; it is organic, in an anti-oppressive, consensus based community that centers the needs of each Learner.

But what about socialization?

Imagine if we treated lab rats like school children

Imagine the following experiment. Researchers place hundreds of rats into a large cage. The rats are then separated into groups of about 20, and each group is placed in their own partitioned space within the cage. The rats are not permitted to move around in that space; they are each assigned to a specific spot, and must remain stationary for 40-minute blocks of time. If they move from their assigned spot, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.

The rats are not allowed to socialize with other rats while they are in their assigned spots. Instead, they are given menial tasks that they must perform to a time-based standard. They have no control over which menial tasks they are to perform. If they are caught socializing with other rats during the 40-minute block of time, or if they fail to perform the assigned tasks, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.

At the end of each 40-minute block, the rats are released from their stationary positions for five minutes so they can be moved to their next assigned spot in a different partitioned space within the cage. They are allowed to socialize with other rats during the move, but if they are not in their assigned spot and performing their required menial tasks within the five-minute time limit, they are subjected to a stress inducing sound.

These 40-minute blocks make up the bulk of their day, with two exceptions. For 40 minutes each day they are permitted to roam free in a designated portion of the cage that may or may not have a beam of sunlight that falls upon it. And for another 40-minute block, they are permitted to eat processed rat food.

The sequence of these 40-minute blocks do not change over the course of the year. Each day is virtually identical to the day before it, with only a slight variation in the menial tasks that the rats are expected to carry out.

How do you think the rats in this experiment would fare in terms of physical, emotional, and mental health relative to a free-range rat? Physically, they would suffer. 40 minutes of free play per day cannot offset a sedentary existence. Cardiovascular health and muscular fitness would likely deteriorate, and the rats would probably begin to gain weight. The processed rat food would likely accelerate the weight gain, unless the rats lost their appetite for food. The poor quality of the processed rat food would likely contribute to malnourishment and longer-term health complications. The rats’ physical health would be further debilitated by emotional and mental stress.

Emotionally, the rats would have been prevented from socializing with other rats for a majority of their time in the cage. Rats are social animals, and the inability to socialize would lead to harmful behaviors during the small windows of time they would be permitted to interact with one another. It would not be surprising to see increased aggression and violence from select members of the rat community, especially in their attempts to exert dominance over one another, as is common among animals that spend much of their existence being controlled by others (e.g., researchers). The emotional stress experienced by the rats would negatively impact their physical and mental health.

Mentally, large number of rats would likely suffer from depression, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, or behavioral disorder, among other negative mental health effects. Their confined conditions coupled with a lack of autonomy and control would lead to serious mental illness for a significant number of rats. The resulting mental health complications of these rats would contribute to a degraded experience for the other rats, threatening their emotional and mental health, as well.

Now imagine that these rats are children. The structures and practices outlined in the experiment mimic the conditions children are subjected to in traditional schools. If it is inhumane to subject lab rats to such an experiment, it should logically follow that it is inhumane to subject children to traditional schooling.