The Beginning of the End (of the Year)

We’ve hit that point…Our guests have left. Plans for big field trips start with “Next year we should…” Change Up conversations and Spawn Point reorganizations focus on laying plans for next year more than implementing major changes for the next two weeks. Kids are starting to talk about who’s coming back or not. Ryan and I are starting space projects (him building, me cleaning) for our reset in September…It’s the beginning of the end.

And yet, everything is as vibrant as always.

This week, Chuck was with us until the end of the day Wednesday. @theanchor offered book-making and grommet ring making (easy to make but difficult to size) while he was here, and he came with us to The Uncommons 🙂

Highlights from my week definitely included watching Heavy Metal Askani headbang and play air guitar on Monday (@thewitchqueen908), our field trip to the Uncommons, and singing/dancing with @lillaw today while attempting to sew myself some pockets. Askani headbanging doesn’t really need explaining, though if she does it again I may photograph her so I can make a gif 🙂 The field trip was to our favorite board game cafe, just south of Washington Square park. Usually, only two or three people want to go, but this week we had nearly everyone! @douglasawesome and @failspy got to teach @thewitchqueen908 @lillaw @timotree and @theanchor how to play The Resistance, while @agilealfie taught me to play Uno and @kingthanos and @shadowjack made up their own rules to a superhero game. Then, @headsintheclouds and my friend Cindy both joined us as we moved into a second round of games. @theanchor played a really intense game of Monopoly with @kingthanos @agilealfie and @shadowjack, which I played for an hour before divesting myself of my properties. I jumped tables and went to play Super Munchkins with @thewitchqueen908 @failspy and Cindy. @lillaw and @headsintheclouds were playing Qwirkle. It was so sweet to have enough people that we were playing three games simultaneously the whole time! With about a half hour until it was time to head back uptown, we all ran out to Washington Square Park to listen to musicians, play ninja, and do some acro tricks. And the singing/dancing with Lyla was just that: us spending lots of today singing Into the Woods and Hairspray, practicing swing dancing, and imagining who we would cast everyone at ALC-NYC as if we were to type-cast a production of Into the Woods. She’d be the Baker’s Wife and I’d be Cinderella 🙂 Bummer we don’t have more time, or we could maybe actually throw a show together.

We’ve had a lot of conversations this week that were really juicy for me. In Philosophy of Dictators, we talked about Idi Amin. And we had a Philosophy of Death two days later, prompted by a gratitudes circle debate about whether we feel grateful for death. I have blog posts about both of those outlined, and I’ll publish them this weekend. The third conversation has been around Douglas’ new spawn point–the Dark Pumpkin Order (DPO). It’s awesome that kids are running their own meetings, taking each others’ attendance, updating each others’ trellos (and doing all these things well). It’s led to discussions about responsibilities of spawn point leaders, the existence of culture keepers and the importance of sharing them across spawn points, and how to have team spirit without needing to get competitive or antagonistic. Based on some conversations this morning, it seems as if the kids are asking to run their own (thoughtfully composed) spawn points next year, with Ryan and I in them but not leading them. Ryan and I are both pretty excited for that.

That’s it for now!