Holding Unfolding, episode 7 with Jean Finlay

Abby
Hi, welcome to Holding Unfolding, a podcast about facilitation. I’m Abby Oulton. I use she/her pronouns, and am based on unceded occupied Lenape lands, in New York City. I’m thinking about the politics of transcription and audio editing a lot these days, which is fun. And I have an interview for you this week, with Jean Finlay from the ALC in Philadelphia, which is a really interesting conversation. They have a really interesting story about how their community came to be and how it’s evolved over the past few years, particularly over this — this last year and not-quite-a-year-and-a-half, but, you know…their covid adaptations.

And so I’m excited to get to share that interview. But some quick notes before we jump in. Jean’s going to reference a tendency at Sudbury Valley schools. So those are self-directed learning environments, self-directed education environments, that are distinct from Agile Learning Centers in part because of, as she talks about, the ideas about how adults are expected to engage or not engage. And so just know when she’s referencing Sudbury, her kids’ transition, that that’s part of it.

Facilitators in Agile Learning Centers tend to be more active participants in the communities and we’re more allowed to recommend a kid a book we think they’ll like or invite them to take an online class with us that we’re taking and think they might be interested in. There’s space for our our influence more than in some self-directed spaces where there is concern that adults will inevitably exert their influence and authority in too much, in ways that don’t honor young people’s self-determination and own inclinations to explore.

So she’s going to talk about spawn meetings and having to figure out spawn in the Philly ALC. And so if that’s new for you, that’s just one of the many names for our morning and afternoon meetings that bookend the day. So the morning meetings, the morning spawns in centers that use that language because we have video game kids, those meetings are for reviewing the schedule and setting the intention of — setting our goals and intentions for the day and sharing together.

And the afternoon ones are for reflecting on and sometimes documenting our days. There’s a lot of variation, but that’s basically what those meetings are. There’s a part where she’s going to talk about having a roots and a branches program, and there are some Agile Learning Centers that have, because they’ve got distinct needs for very young children, they set up complementary programs. So it’s not age segregated, per say. But for kids in the Roots program, the really little ones, maybe a parent needs to be there, or maybe they’re in a part of the space where there are fewer stairs that they have to navigate or where the other — other resources and design choices and operation choices are tailored to the needs of very young children.

And so that’s — that’s what that program is. She discusses game-shifting at some point and students redesigning their game-shifting board. And so, the game-shifting board in an Agile Learning Center is — and in other spaces is — a board that makes the structure of a meeting clear and explicit. And so it will say, are we starting on time or are we going to wait five minutes for latecomers? Are we sitting? Are we standing? Are we in small groups?

Is somebody calling on folks with raised hands or are we taking turns speaking? She talks later about a speaking style that’s usually an option on that board, and it’s called popcorn. And the idea is that everybody talks once but before — before and after you say your piece, theoretically, folks say, like, “kernel,” because you’re an unpopped popcorn kernel, and then “pop” once you’re done speaking and have popped and are not going to speak again. But those meetings never are structured the same way twice.

And it’s almost kind of a game to see how many variations on a theme we can come up with collectively without losing the spirit of the format. So that’s what that is. And finally, there’s a part near the end of the episode where I mention waiting for the Department of Education to make some choices about their operations next school year before I can make communications to our local community that I feel, you know, in integrity signing people up for. It’s been really hard, because I want to only promise people what I can follow through on.

Right? But things are changing pretty constantly. When I recorded this episode, that — that was true and I was waiting. And it’s been a few weeks since then. And so if you are a New York person listening and you are freaking out, potentially, the DOE has released — the Department of Education has released their current plans. And I wrote and emailed out and posted the New York school’s plans for next year. So those are on our website. Yeah, those are more — that’s more up to date than my comment in this episode, which I didn’t edit out because it felt like a weird time-capsule thing to leave in.

And so all that said, let’s go ahead and get into the episode.

Abby
All right. Hi. Good to see you.

Jean
Good to see you, too.

Abby
So you want to start with an introduction, just your name, your pronouns and where you’re at in the world?

Jean
Sure. My name is Jean Finley. My pronouns are she and her. I work at Philly ALC, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And I’m also a parent of two students there.

Abby
And I’m actually just realizing I used to know what part of Philly the Philly ALC was in, but you moved.

Jean
We did move. Now we’re in, like, Bella Vista Queens Village area.

Abby
OK.

Jean
So just south of South Street.

Abby
Cool.

Abby
Did you move before the pandemic or during it?

Jean
We moved during it and we moved in order to be able to open this year. We needed, like, better ventilation, and we needed windows we could open, and we wanted to be near more green spaces. In Center City, like, we had a couple of options, but not very many. And we knew we would be in a more densely populated area. And it was a place that a lot of our students needed to take public transportation to, versus if we moved a little bit farther south, we made it possible for more people to walk to school or be dropped off, because you can’t be — driving in Center City can be can take up a lot of time and be super stressful.

Abby
Yeah, well, that wasn’t where I was planning to start. I just realized I couldn’t place you anymore. How… So can you share a little bit about your school community and your role in it?

Jean
Sure. I’m a facilitator and an admin there, so I’m keeping the doors open, paying the bills, bringing people in and stuff. And facilitating also to a greater and greater degree as we’ve been open. At first, like, I think we thought that I would just handle admin stuff, and my role has slowly evolved over time to be more involved in the day to day with students. We — our school was founded by parents, which I think makes us a bit unique in the ALC world.

Jean
We were at another self-directed school, in fact, and finding that, like, there were needs we saw that weren’t being met and we were wondering what other options were out there. And came across the idea of ALCs and were like, oh yes, that. That’s pretty much exactly what we were looking for. And ran with that model. We were founded by 15 founding families and yeah. Yeah, so this is an interesting exercise in, like, community building, community management in and of itself.

Jean
And we’ve evolved over time to, like, being a smaller grouping of those original families, and brought in a lot more people in the world. We’re in our third year now, so we’ve managed to survive and thrive. Yeah. Especially during a pandemic that feels like a big accomplishment.

Abby
Yeah, that is big. I — can I just ask what that was like getting 15 families on enough of the same page about what you wanted to start a new project?

Jean
Yeah, yeah. That was fascinating. The majority of us came from a self-directed school, like I mentioned. So we agreed about a lot of that stuff, but not all of us. And some — some of the families came out of public school at that moment. A lot of them were coming and had little kids who were trying school for the first time. So there definitely was a lot of — of brainstorming meetings where we tried to like, what can we agree on? What is really important to us? And…

Jean
You know, it’s a good thing we shared a lot of core values. And over time I think we found more parts that we didn’t quite agree on, and we’re able to, like, circle back. And in those moments, I’m like, OK, how do we want to go here? Because we’re — we’re not quite on the same page. What’s the right move? And often I think, and any community who has done this sort of thing knows, that means that we’ll lose some people and gain others in their place. So that’s happened to us a few times.

Jean
But we were really lucky to have one of our founding families is in this world, like helps nonprofits decide what their mission and vision are. And so is really good at facilitating sessions like that. So they facilitated a bunch of our earliest sessions to help us figure it out and told us, like, OK, this is, like, this is the part where you can’t use me, because I should be a voice in this conversation and it wouldn’t be right for me to facilitate it. And pointed to moments where it was important for us to bring in an outside facilitator for conversations.

Jean
So we did a lot of that early on. And learned a lot about facilitation, I think, in those moments.

Abby
Is there anything you remember that they did or were there any particular guiding questions they offered that you remember being particularly helpful?

Jean
I think I more remember, like, the mistakes. Like the facilitators we brought in were like, oh, you’re really well intentioned, but you don’t understand enough about who we are and what we’re going for to, like, for these questions to be meaningful for us. And that happened a few times. So we brought in so many outside facilitators. I also, like, from listening to your intro to this series, that really resonated with me, because there were a bunch of times we were like, yeah. Like, they thought they understood what the end goal was.

Jean
And were very much trying to steer us there. And when really we wanted more of a moment to, like, explore that. So I think in most — that’s always how I learn the most, is by seeing what went wrong. But that’s, I think, one of the earliest moments where I figured out you can’t really have a goal in mind when going to facilitate. You have to be willing to let whatever is going to happen to happen.

Abby
Yeah, awesome. Um, before I knew facilitation was a — I don’t want to say profession, but a profession…Like a thing you can do in the world beyond ALC contexts, I stumbled into a meeting where a group of facilitators were trying to find someone who could facilitate them having a meeting. And I remember overhearing one of them say it’s the hardest thing, to facilitate a room of facilitators. And I didn’t understand then. But now I’m like, oh, OK.

Jean
You’ve had to do that a bunch of times, and at ALC training sessions as well, right?

Abby
Yeah. And it’s interesting to be aware — and has been helpful for me to have to be aware — of the multiple layers of it. Both, what is how I’m facilitating doing for this group? And also, if I’m being critiqued and I’m being analyzed or someone’s looking to me to, like, hone their craft, I’m like, how is this? How does this work? It’s been fun. But we did not start with 15 families, so that’s really exciting that you, you know, were aligned in your values and had the people you needed.

Jean
We were pretty lucky in that regard. There were so many people who were passionate about this model and this school and putting something together. It was really energetic and kind of an amazing, energizing time.

Abby
Had your kids been like, how long had you been self-directing as a family prior to that?

Jean
Since my oldest son, who is now 11, was four years old. So I had a good friend who is on staff at the Philadelphia Free School, so would have engaged him in conversation all the time. Kind of as a skeptic in a lot of ways, but also as someone who was really fascinated with this idea. Like I remember reading Summerhill in college and going, yeah, that. That’s what I needed, what I needed and never had. And kind of being interested in providing that for my oldest son, who also, though…

Jean
…like, always seemed very intelligent and very like he would do really well in the school system. And always did well in preschool, in class situations. Like, he liked learning and wasn’t afraid of it, which I think a lot of people end up in self-directing schools at first because there’s something about the school system that doesn’t work for them. And in our case, I don’t think that would have been true. But he was four when most of his friends were a little bit older and his birthday put him outside of the cutoff for, like, entering kindergarten that year.

Abby
But we didn’t want to keep him in preschool when all of his friends would have aged out and he would have been starting over with a whole new crop of people. So I thought, hey, I have this year to play with. And I’ve been interrogating my friend Joel here for, like, years now. Why don’t we give it a try? So I sent him there fully expecting that we do it for a year and then move on to whatever our eventual goal would be.

Jean
And he loved it. He thrived in that year. He knew how to read by the end of the year and, like, had figured out all of these different processes about how to get what he needed and how to handle it when he messed up and how to learn from those experiences. And he would cry at the end of the day, when I came to pick him up. I’m like, that’s great. That’s exactly what I want from a school for my kid.

Jean
He’s so happy he doesn’t want to leave. So he was going for years. And then I was super excited to send my youngest child to Philly Free School also. And then that was such a learning experience for me, because my kids are, I think, possibly a different species from each other. They’re very different. And for Dylan all the things that went so well for Wyatt…It was so hard. And were, like, the things that he — that he just couldn’t figure out. Like the — the part of ALCs that are about making the implicit explicit and like… Yes, this is exactly what Dylan needed at the Free School, because he couldn’t figure out all the unsaid stuff.

Jean
And that’s where he was struggling. He really needed someone to make that stuff clear for him and to help provide him with a little bit more structure in his day than was available at a Sudbury school. So after his first year, I was considering options. Coincidentally, it was a rough year for the school itself, and that had me questioning a lot about power dynamics in schools and how — how do — like, how to think about that and organize that.

Jean
And to use that to empower kids and not just to say that they’re empowered, which…that’s what it felt like to me. Honestly, though, rethinking that situation now, as someone who has worked in a school for many years, my opinion is completely different.

Abby
Well, so can I ask how you ended up working in the Philly ALC? Like were you like, I will admin as a supportive kind of part time thing, or were you, like, on staff and in it?

Jean
No, I thought — I thought I would work there for a year and help them get off the ground, because I think my original plan was we had a bunch of people in our community who were going to be great facilitators. And I’m like, yes, I want them to do that. That’s awesome. They’re going to need a little bit of help, and I have time I can give right now to make — get this project off the ground. And it was building a little bit off my previous experience.

Jean
I had helped start a play school here and had worked in their leadership committee, their governing body, for two years. Coming into this experience, I’m like, OK, I have a bit of a skill set that I can use in this environment that will be helpful. I’ll get the school off the ground and then I will phase out and move on to my next project. But by the end of the year, this was it for me. I remember I went to a lot of our initial community meetings, like, in school and when school started, thinking like, I’m mostly here in my admin capacity to, like, observe how this works so I can talk knowledgeably to parents in our community and to to prospective parents about how it works and what we’re going for and how we’re doing things.

Jean
And then, like, just making observations about the process and like, oh, what if we tweak this and what if we tweak that? What if we did it this way…and then like sharing those ideas with my teammates when we would have meetings and then trying those things — that those things would work. And I’m like, now I’m just focused on the process all the time, focused on how to — how to do it a little bit better. And slowly and slowly stepped more into doing more of that piece of work.

Abby
Having been in different governance groups, in different settings, are there clear things that you saw or experienced that you’re like, remember never to do that? And conversely, are there things where you’re like, I will always do this in governance groups moving forward?

Jean
I had lots of time to observe people who are really good at manipulating meetings, who understood all the rules and use that to their advantage. And very clearly know to check myself now. Meaning if I have more skill and have more ability to to work that system, to be like, that’s not the point, though, I have to step back. That was a learning experience, but also to be the opposite. The opposite of that.

Jean
I learned when to step on the gas as well as to step on the brake, which I think is something I didn’t know about myself until being involved in these leadership bodies, is that I’m good at getting things done and making sure people are working towards goals. And know when to use that skill and what not to. Which I find, like, working with our parent community or with our assembly, I’m much more prone to step on the gas. And when facilitating children, I’m much more cognizant of the fact that my job is to, like, I’m just listening and I’m making sure that you’re listening to each other and to not step in actively at all.

Jean
Which was hard for me, but that was a — that was a key part of my learning experience.

Abby
Yeah, I appreciate that distinction. And so as you’ve been facilitating more with young people, and that’s…What, a this year thing?

Jean
It’s been gradually over time. I think the first year I did hardly any actual facilitation. By year two, I did have my own spawn and stuff like that. Like year two I would do the occasional offering or two. I had a spawn and would facilitate larger group meetings on occasion. Year three, I’m pretty actively in the mix.

Jean
I do a lot of offerings. I do a lot of meeting facilitation. I have a spawn.

Abby
How does that feel?

Jean
That feels good. That feels good.

Abby
Being something very different than what you had imagined originally…

Jean
Yeah, yeah, I’m kind of surprised that I’m better at it than I would think I would be. Like I… I remember early on in our big group conversations about what the school should look like and who can help out in which capacity. I never would have said, like, I’m going to be good with working with kids, but…I think I am good at amplifying quiet voices is definitely a way in which I think I improve the community. And I’m good at, like, actively thinking about how I am acting in the space and how I’m facilitating a meeting and what tweaks I can make to make the process run better.

Jean
And that’s such an important part of working in an Agile School is being willing to make mistakes and willing to say, oh, I totally mess this up, how can I do it better in the future? I’m surprised. I like it so much more than I thought I would. I had to, like, really kind of play around with tools to figure out how they worked for me. Like I remember being — really not understanding spawn or really not feeling like I could grasp how to use it at first. And had to, like, meet a bunch of Agile Facilitators and hear the different ways that they handled that meeting to find a way that worked for me. And once I…

Jean
Once I was willing to release the, like, the idea that it was strictly productive and was more about community building than it was being productive, I found it such a powerful tool and such a useful thing. Games! I became really into games. I remember going to my first training with you guys at ALC-NYC and I think I cracked a couple of times about, like, ugh the camp counselor-y parts, those are hard for me. Even though I am a former camp counselor.

Jean
But that was stuff that initially I didn’t feel like I would jive with. But now I see the power of games. I see. I use that.

Abby
Do you do games in your spawn?

Jean
Yeah, we do games in our spawn. We’re big fans of Poison Dart Frog.

Abby
Don’t know that one. Is it like, a card game or a theater game?

Jean
Oh, no. It’s — it’s kind of like mafia. Like, there is a murderer. There’s a detective. And the detective sits in the middle of a circle of people. And the murderer is one of the people on the outside of the circle. And they’re slowly killing off the whole circle. And the detective needs to figure out who it is.

Abby
OK, that sounds really fun. You mentioned being uncertain in the first year and now feeling more confident in your facilitation. Do you remember the growth moments for you as you changed roles, or anything, any thing you sought out for yourself as you were trying to figure out how to be effective in a different role?

Jean
Yeah, let’s see… Some key growth moments… I think it was important for me to really learn and understand — and from an experience point of view — how important it is to let kids fail. And not have the right answer. And I think learning how to do that… I learned a lot about that from the second ALF training I went to in Charlotte, from this woman, from — who was talking about sociocracy. Hope. Hope led a session on sociocracy, and provided that, like, that easy to remember neumonic.

Speaker 2
It’s “good enough for now, safe enough to try.” And that — that is really helpful for me, to like, to know that I can, as long as it’s safe enough to try. That I’m willing to let you do whatever you want right now. And we’re not… We don’t have to come to the right answer. And that I used to, I think, kind of sink into meetings and really want to, like, help them see where they should be going eventually.

Speaker 2
And we didn’t — we had this early, early, because a lot of our kids came from a Sudbury school. Right? Where they don’t like any sort of imposition of schedule. All of that stuff is hard for them. It’s stressful. So they wanted to basically do away with all meetings. So you make all meetings entirely optional, which is not an agile — it’s — they’re typically a part of the schedule. These are things that we do, because we’re actively community, community building,

Jean
we do together. And trying to explain that to them was not really effective. And what we eventually had to do was let it happen. Like, OK, your point of view is that the fact that you have to come to meetings is ruining this experience for you. You don’t think we have to do that? Fine. Let’s — let’s do away with the meetings. Let’s experience it. And we did that for a while and found no one knew what was going on.

Jean
Offerings wouldn’t happen, because people wouldn’t realize that that was supposed to happen at the same time as this thing, and they would go out of the building and be on an adventure. This is — they’d miss this thing that they really wanted to to be a part of and they wouldn’t understand. Check in and change up wouldn’t do very much, because we as facilitators, we were the people who would attend that meeting normally, or maybe one or two students as well. And we were so conscious of, like, we don’t want to make decisions for you.

Jean
So even if you’re still writing awarenesses — and they definitely were — we weren’t making changes based on their awarenesses very often because we didn’t have any agreement. Like, there was nobody talking this through together. So they would realize the things they wanted to improve weren’t improving. And slowly — it took like two months — but they’re like, oh, yeah, we need meetings and meetings are helpful. Let’s — let’s start adding some more back in. Just this meeting will be mandatory.

Jean
Now, we’ll just — just set the week. We’ll all go to set the week. That’s important. And then check in and change up is important. But maybe you don’t have to be at the whole thing. Maybe you just have to be half of it so you can, like, make sure you understand what’s going to be talked about at the meeting and understand what was decided at the last meeting. And then the other part can be entirely optional. So if you don’t want to make decisions, you don’t have to make decisions.

Jean
Leave. And slowly, spawn came back, too. They’re like, I was really having trouble remembering, like, what I want to do from day to day. My schedule is getting away from me. So let’s — let’s bring spawn back and give that a try. And it was such a slow process. And kind of frustrating from the perspective of, like, I see how this works. I see how it’s helpful to you, but you need to see how it’s helpful to you. So we have to stand back.

Jean
And our parent community was really upset about that one. So I spent a lot of time explaining to parents as well, like, this is — this is how you learn to make decisions, right? By sometimes making bad ones or letting them make the bad one. We’re going to see what they learned from that. Maybe, maybe there’s important data we’ll get out of this process. And we did and it was really slow and really frustrating, I think, for a lot of the adults who were watching the process.

Jean
But I think in the end it was super powerful and 00 and convinced them that there was a point to this meeting. Because if you have the power to do away with all the structure, then obviously the meeting has power.

Abby
I love that story, I’m imagining, like, trying to talk down parents who are like, ARGH! And you’re like, just a little more patient. No more patient than that.

Jean
Yeah, really. And they were like, explaining the model to me a lot of times. I’m like, no, I’m on board with you. I like the meetings. I think those things are really useful, but they don’t yet. And we’ve got to wait and see.

Abby
OK, well, what was that experience like as a parent?

Jean
My kids, I will honestly admit, are two of the biggest forces for chaos in my school at all times, because they have always been self directed. Dylan was one when Wyatt started going to PFS, and I think that very much altered the way we handled our household from that moment on. So they’ve always felt like they can make decisions for themselves and are always very skeptical of any — any moment that feels like that’s being taken away from them. So they’ll always speak up. They’ll always — they were definitely arguing for the meetings to go. And yeah, it’s frustrating because I want my kids, I think… I think I have this feeling like I want my kids to be little ambassadors for the program. Like, come on, you were, like, there from the early days! You understand what we’re going for. You were enthusiastic about this part of it. Remember? Remember why? And that’s not their job. And I have to remind myself of that all the time. I think at this point, my biggest achievement this year is, like, I’ve noticed, there’s a lot of moments where I’m interacting with my kids in an offering or in a meeting, and I’ve forgotten that they’re mine entirely. Like it occurred to me after the fact.

Jean
I’m like, oh, wait. I was really impressed with how that kid was behaving in the offering and that insight they made about that short story we’re reading. Oh, yeah, that was my kid, isn’t that awesome? That’s — that’s .great.

Abby
So I think my understanding is that you had pods this year and kind of a hybrid situation where you have some groups in the space and outdoor days and online time.

Jean
Yeah, yeah. We were truly agile this year and we tried all of the things and saw what worked for us at any given moment. So we started the year fully in person for — for like two thirds of the community, and one third was purely online. We had one designated online facilitator and three facilitators in the building. And David, who was kind of unofficially kind of pinch-hitting in the online universe while providing some logistical support to the school, the in-person school. And we very carefully monitored how covid was doing in our area. Then around Thanksgiving, when covid numbers were spiking in Philly, we made the decision to split into pods with two facilitators in each of them. And lost some in-person people who entirely — decided at that moment to go entirely virtual, while a decent amount stayed with us to do the two person two day a week thing. And then we gradually altered that to give people more time in the building.

Jean
We did two days a week in person. Sorry, losing my voice a little bit. Went to two days in person, two days online. And one day that was like, half in the building and half entirely outdoor days. And of course, at that moment it was January. So nobody’s ideal time to spend three hours outside. But we made it work. We learned so much from — from that experience, which was useful in moments later in the year when we felt like it was prudent to spend more time outside.

Jean
We like, we had all the skills. That plus nothing’s harder than being outside when it’s 20 degrees. And if we survived that, then we can do 40 — 40 degree days outside, no problem. And find ways to entertain ourselves with even more people around.It will be great. Yeah, I remember panicking last spring when we made the call to close down and we made the decision, like, 12 hours before Governor Wolf ordered the schools closed. We were not very much in advance of them, but it decided — for us, it didn’t it didn’t feel safe to to keep holding school in person.

Jean
And we immediately knew, OK, here’s — we had guidance from, from you, actually, you were really helpful in giving us our original kind of starting point about how to go online. So we already were like OK, we have Zoom ready. We know we’re connecting to the network and are able to rely on all these other centers that are sharing programing and that’s — that’s going to be clutch. We took your original Glide app and altered it to meet our needs, which was really helpful. And we were off to the rails, and just kind of like made the decision early on that we were prioritizing connection over coercion and opportunity over obligation. So we told families, we’re here for you and we’re going to continue offering programing. And if you — if your child opts to show up for none of it, that’s fine. It’s not a problem. We’ll check in periodically to make sure you’re getting what you need and that’s it. And so we kept rolling and tweaking to meet the needs of the people who kept showing up. And they did. A majority of the school kept showing up. But we kept finding ways to engage and in ways that they wouldn’t when they were in the building, like offerings that wouldn’t be their interest when we were all together, because I think, really, when you get a group of kids together in person, socializing is, like, their their major motivation. Like, they’re going to find ways to hang out together and to do and to create their own games. Which is great. Like. All that is valuable learning experience, too. And we’re all for that. But when they couldn’t do that, when they didn’t have that tool, offerings filled that need for them because they were a way to connect with the community and hang out with their friends and learn new things and fill some time. They were bored. So we did all sorts of awesome things. And we tried to have a wide variety of options available to everyone, because some people were really into Zoom offerings, and some people would get online with us to play a game.

Jean
And some people wanted to get online with us to read books to each other. We had three students learn how to read over — over last spring, which is amazing to me. Just from the process of reading to each other on Zoom, they figured it out. It was pretty great. We had — we also offered like, OK, if you’re, if getting into a group Zoom session is too overwhelming for you, with, like, all of these kids, that’s cool.

Jean
If you want to meet one on one with a facilitator, we can do that, too. So for three months, I played Victorian parlor games with one kid one day a week. Which was super fun, because we would spend an hour together every Tuesday and just find a new word game really to play, and it was great. And Jessie spent, like, a similar — did a similar thing, spending one hour a week with a kid playing video games. Like he would teach her a new video game. Because she would try to engage him like, OK, let’s — let’s do some planning about your academic future, what your goals are.

Jean
And he wasn’t into that. So she was like, cool. Tell me about what you’re into. Like, well, I’m playing this game now. She’s like, great, teach me. So he taught her various games over a period of time. It was awesome. But also, we played a lot of Among Us online. Tons of that. We did — we found that spawn worked amazingly well online. We figured out — we did so many tweaks and so many iterations of what spawn should look like online and eventually came up with a formula that pretty steadily worked for us, where we would have, like, everybody would gather together in one Zoom room first and then we could use breakout rooms to have, like, an energetic breakout room that would really create — like, have a creative prompt and usually do a drawing of that sort of thing collaboratively together.

Jean
And we’d have one more conversation-focused breakout room. And we put the people in the correct place and either have a conversation with them or let them draw and create this like magical hybrid monster robot dude. And everybody was really satisfied with that. At the end of the day, all of us very successfully could gather together and just, like, here’s how I spent my time. And it was amazing to hear how kids were filling their days and what they were getting up to.

Jean
And a lot of that was engaging with the larger community and making friendships and making forming relationships that they never would have otherwise. I also, come to think of it, that’s a key moment where I learned a lot about facilitation. Because I would just go to people’s offerings and say, hey, I’m actually just here to watch. I’m going to figure out how you’re doing this and, like, what’s working and what’s not. Cool? So I would mute my mic, turn off my camera, and just kind of experience how they were running this online offering. Learned a lot from that. And I would take those things forward when I was doing them and see what would work with our community and what didn’t.

Abby
Yeah, it was such an interesting experience of being new at facilitating again. Trying to be like, all right, I’m really good at this when there’s the hallway and these six rooms and the park across the street. But what — what works and what doesn’t if there are siblings popping in or cats or someone’s just listening, like, how do — you know…And I’m a big advocate for people being able to keep their cameras off if they want. I feel like that’s really important, you know? And so also it was like, how to make it feel connected and good when we’re in a room of all of our little avatars, you know? And everyone’s just sleepy. Are you doing…Have you done any of the online offerings this year?

Jean
Yeah, I’ve hosted and continue to host a few of them. And they’re, I think, more challenging this year for me, because I’m in the building. So I also have to have my attention there. I’m in this noisy space, normally, and figuring out how to find a quiet corner to facilitate stuff. And trying to, like, both meet the needs of people who are with me in person for that offering and, like, the one or two people who are joining remotely. That was super challenging, don’t know if I ever really got the hang of that. And now, luckily, it seems to work out that, like, either there are people who want to do it in person or there are people who want to do it online. So I’ve been able to, like, pick and choose. But yeah, we’ve kept doing creative writing and we were doing that as a hybrid for a while. Super hard. But people kept coming to it, so that was useful. We’ve really had a lot of luck with, like, doing languages online, using Babble and various online programs.

Abby
Can I ask how you facilitate the creative writing offering?

Jean
Yeah, so I like to start with a little warm up, just to get people to kind of really give starting conditions and try to make it… I tell them, like, my — my goal always in these warm ups is to box you in as much as possible. So you’re not really thinking about creating something great. Like, you’re just — you’re trying to work your way out of the box. And I give them like 10, 15 minutes to do that. And then we usually would — sometimes we would read something by a published author, depending on who came up, showed up. And I never really would know who would show up. So I would have to have a few different plans in mind. It’s like a choose your own adventure novel. Like you… If this person comes today, we’re going to have to do this. This person comes in and we’re going to do that. So sometimes there was some reading involved in it. Sometimes there was a collaboratively created prompt, because there are some kids who really got into that. And there are some kids who were, like, really serious about the writing process and wanted me to have a firmer lesson plan in place, so I would do a lot of that as well. So I actually studied creative writing in college, so I went back to all of that stuff, pulled out all the books again. I’m like, OK, cool, what worked for me? This work for me? Let’s — let’s try that. Let’s try this. Let’s try this exercise, which I feel like gives you something interesting. And I tried to also use it as a way to, like, help you be a person. Like I did a lot of… When it seems like dynamics were tough for people, I would throw in a writing prompt about switching perspective. Rewriting a fairy tale from another perspective of the story and explaining really why Cinderella’s evil stepsister was right and Cinderella was kind of a spoiled brat. Let’s redo the whole thing that way. And the kids, like, did so well. I was really impressed watching them grow as writers over the course of these, of the months in quarantine. And this year as well. Like, they became really good storytellers, really dope storytellers. Yeah, the part where we’re still working on, I think, is getting people to be willing to edit. Our kids are so into the original creative explosion, but I’m like, OK, and next? What’s the next idea we’re going to work on next? And getting them to kind of want to circle back with things and see that they could make things better. You can keep trying to fix the same thing…That’ll come in time.

Abby
I know adults who still struggle with that.

Jean
I know, right? I’m like, this is actually what we’re doing here. This is what this is all about, is like trying to do the same thing better, a little bit better every time. But OK, that’s cool. That’s cool. And when that’s useful to you, let me know. And sometimes it is. Like, I have a couple of those kids who now mostly write independently but will come to me occasionally, like, here’s what I wrote, what do you think? And I can do a more active critique of that piece. I’m like, well, this part’s great. Here’s where you can tighten it up.

Abby
Oh yeah. To speak of iterations and experiments, you know, I’m a little jealous of that giant park space that you all have been going to, which I may need you to explain for people who aren’t familiar with Philly. But I would love to hear about the evolution of the pizza oven and how that came about. Like, now it’s pizza. You started with…melting crayons?

Jean
Yeah, it’s a solar oven. We actually haven’t done pizza yet, but we do do s’mores a lot. But we did just start with melting crayons. Yeah, we had some kids who, like, wanted to learn, were wanting to try more science things. Like, they started talking about more science things and they were tinkering in that way in the space and with one of them in particular who wanted more invitations to engage in science. I just kept trying different experiments with him and one day I’m like, hey, do you wanna build a solar oven? And he’s like, let’s build a solar oven. So — and we, because it was just him and me was the whole plan, we started with a really small model that we were going to build. And slowly as we sat in the makerspace, which is in the center of our space, more and more kids kept jumping in like, yeah, I want to do that. You’re making a solar oven? That sounds amazing. I want to jump in on that, too. How can I help? And I’m like, OK, well, now that there’s eight of us, we can’t build this tiny shoebox, solar oven that I was imagining. What can we build now? How can we do it? OK, cool. Here’s this giant box. We’re just going to take this original idea and we’re going to scale it up. We’re going to make a giant — Find this in the space! Add that! Who’s going to do this? Cool, cool. Let’s do it. And so we ended up with this ridiculously large — it was like a computer box — solar oven that we take with us places now, including to South Philly Meadows, where we spend a lot of time. But we took it out to the playground the first day. And they’re like, OK, so we made this thing. It’s not going to work. Like, it just looks like a box. It has a sheet of plastic over the top. It’s lined with aluminum foil. I don’t understand how — nothing’s going to happen with this thing. So we took a little metal pot with some crayons. And it was like 50 degrees, not an ideal solar oven testing day. But I’m like, we’re going to try. We’re just going to see what happens. We’ll see where we can tweak this design. And already I was looking at it going, like, this…There’s probably ways we can make this a little better. But we tried it. It took like two hours, but the crayons melted and I kept just having them check it. How does it feel? Put your hand in there, does it feel warmer? And they got super into it. And then they were doing other solar heating experiments with, like, magnifying glasses and starting little fires with leaves. It was a fun day. And we’ve just kept building on it since then. We make improvements pretty much every time we use it. We’re like, oh, it’d be better if the plastic top was a little bit more firmly secured, because we keep having to, like, hold it back up. How can we fix that? And someone will come up with an idea. So it’s — it’s kind of an awesome living growing thing that we use all the time. But yes, we take it to South Philly Meadows a lot. South Philly Meadows is the spot in FDR Park, which was a golf course that closed down about two years ago. And it’s slowly been reclaimed by nature and over the pandemic, kind of purposely so, like, they were returning it to the wild and now it’s this big wild space that people spend a lot of time in and are improving with various projects, like public art pieces and stuff in the space and, like, making shelters and creating invitations for other people to engage in the space in that way. Yeah. So we, um, we started going down there just as a kind of an experiment to go down there every once in a while. And then we also, as part of a larger conversation, we started to have in the space about screentime and about people feeling like they weren’t fully in control of how they’re spending their time because they felt magnetized towards screens and ways in which we could, like, handle that and make it — make it feel better for everyone… We decided we would try a weekly outdoor day, which we’ve been doing now for months, and they absolutely got into that. And at first that was always at South Philly Meadows. And then after — I think it was week five or six — they’re like, well, what else is out there? Why do we have to always go there? And so they would start making proposals about other green spaces in the city that we could spend a day at and we would try out. So we’ve spent days at Bertram’s Gardens at the Navy Yard. Last week at the Wissahickon. We’re always willing to try something new. And there’s a lot of learning experiences there, too. Like, I’ve never been to the Wissahickon before last Thursday, when I arrived there with 20 kids.

Abby
Your kids — I’m trying to remember, I think it was one of your kids who was explaining, like, walking to Dunkin Donuts from the old location as an adventure.

Jean
That’s possible. Dunkin Doughnuts was a big part of our original space, because we were near not one, not two, but three different Dunkin Donuts, which all had their own advantages. So people would go to different ones and learn the different routes to them.

Abby
Yeah, the route was a discussion. I remember very much appreciating listening to the deliberations about how we were going to get to this Dunkin Donuts.

Jean
Yeah, that always was an ongoing conversation with us. Because as adults, do you want people spending all their money on donuts? Not so much. But it’s their choice. So we wouldn’t — They’d ask you to take them to Dunkin Donuts. We’d go to Dunkin Donuts. But David especially, who has big feelings about food choices and, like, trying to encourage kids to make better ones, would use that walk to discuss why he himself did not want a donut and who wouldn’t opt in for that. And he wouldn’t buy you a donut. But sure, he’ll walk with you to Dunkin Donuts.

Abby
I do that, uh, on our walks to, like, the KFC. I was like, I’m not going to partake, but I’m going to really enjoy this quality time with you. I’m like, let’s see what happens on the way.

Jean
Yeah.

Abby
Yeah. Oh, have you… I’m assuming that your outdoor day bag and personal prep has evolved a little bit throughout the year. How has that changed? Is there anything you’ve learned?

Jean
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. At first, the goal of my outdoor supplies was totally to, like, make it not suck. You know? Like I was making kids be outside. It was really, really cold. Nobody was really in favor of doing that. And that included facilitators, like this felt uncomfortable for all of us to be outside for this period of time when it was cold. So the only thing I would bring with me really on those days, when we were spending three hours, like, a half day in the park was — at your suggestion actually — was hot chocolate. Yeah. So I started out just briberies, really. And slowly as our days have gotten longer outside and the, the goals have changed, it’s not just, like, make it not suck. It’s to help you engage with your environment and also to be prepared for anything we need. So now we pretty regularly bring the solar oven, which requires some more supplies. Almost always paper towels. Gloves, because we are creating food in the time of covid. It’s always hand sanitizer. And now at this point, because we’ve spent so many days there, I’m like, what are all the things that people have asked me for that, like, oh yeah, I should have that? So now masking tape is always in the bag. String of various kinds is always a part of it. Scissors, magnifying glasses are always…Paper. Markers. Yeah, now, most recently, because they’ve gotten into to nature and trying to catalog what’s around there, now there’s an iPad in the bag to identify — but that only really has apps on it for identifying birds and different plants in the areas where — and also but I’m not the only one who has a bag that we take on these trips. So Trish has another one. And Trish is another facilitator who is new to us this year, and she primarily focuses on our roots kids, on our younger kids. So she always has simple board games that you can do out anywhere. And she’s always great for having extra warm items that I feel like I would never remember to bring, but Trish always does. And a storybook of some sort. There’s a couple of options there to read to kids. Oh, oh my God, there’s more. But also, Justin always brings hammocks at this point. That’s our go-to.

Abby
The teenagers have my hammock right now. But I’m a big fan of that.

Jean
Yeah. And he brings three of them. And so they’re, like, wherever we are we set up camp. Basically. I’m also loving to watch how the kids’ supplies are evolving. We had a couple of kids last week bring a tiny tent. Like, that’s perfect. You do need that. We’re going to be somewhere for six hours. You might as well have your little tiny tent. And they bring, like, blankets. They’ve — they fully going to — make this process kind of amazing and homey.

Abby
OK, I always bring the tent and it’s not the lightest item. I’m like, oh, the kids brought their own? Hmmmm…

Jean
It’s this tiny, like, I think intended for a single person backpacking tent. So it’s the perfect thing to do. So good, especially since we arrived at the Wissahickon going, we’re not exactly sure where home base will be. So we might need to walk for a while, and all your stuff has to really fit on your back. What is — Mel has a good line about that? Right? Like, never more than you can carry, which I always think about when I’m telling, telling kids about what you should bring to these days. You should definitely have your water. You should definitely have food. But also you shouldn’t have any more than you can carry.

Abby
I love outdoor days and usually get home and have a moment where I’m like — like how do people who also have children do this after-period? Because there is usually a solid 40 minutes, if I’ve done six to eight hours outside, especially in the winter when it was cold and come home and… My brain was just useless for a solid chunk of time. How have you negotiated that moment?

Jean
I totally feel that way. But also I think I feel that way every day. Like it’s exhausting being with kids all day. I’m lucky in the fact that my kids are older, they’re eight and 11, so they are pretty able to take care of themselves when we get home. So I can…I can chill out and they can take care of themselves. They find things to do, play games themselves, go play in the backyard. And I think, like we’ve said a lot of time, because we’ve been together so much over the pandemic, really thinking about what we need and want from each other and having really explicit conversations about that and talking a lot about my stress about their screen time and, like, what they find really rewarding about that and stuff…And I’ve kind-of like, come up with my kind of stepping on the gas a little bit more about encouraging them to direct their time and direct their education. But also as part of that, seeing like, yeah, no, I totally get that. There’s times when you just need to play that video game over and over again or when you need to watch those YouTube videos. And I used to, I think, fixate too much on the specifics of that. Like, OK, I understand why you want to watch this TV show, which has a story arc and it makes sense to me and I’m OK with you vegging out doing that. But the YouTube videos of someone playing a video game? That feels really hard for me, and that really feels like a waste of time. And now at this point I’ve let that go. If you find it valuable to to watch a video game, to watch somebody else play a video game, you feel like you’ve learned something from that? Great. Go do it. As long as you’re making some proactive decisions about how you’re spending your own time. So, like when they were home during the pandemic, my rule for them was — we collaboratively came up with a checklist of things that they should do every day. And my request on there was that we, you try something every day. Try one offering. Pick anything you want. I don’t care what it is. Try it and go for it. And they found a lot of things that they love that way. So now that’s useful data for them to have. And so they can make more decisions like that in their regular school lives.

Abby
Were there moments where they tried a thing and then were like, no? Or started and then quit and…?

Jean
Yeah, and that was fine. And my rule of thumb was like, you go and you stay for like, ten minutes. And you get the lay of the land. And if you hate it, you can politely explain that you’re, you need to go. Yeah, that had to be OK. I think if you’re encouraging someone to try, encouraging someone to bail is — is part of that. Making room for the exit…

Abby
Yeah, I think that’s a learning for new facilitators often. It’s both the, like, I can deliberately be choosing to numb out for 20 minutes watching some junk TV and that’s a valid choice. And I can choose to say no more of something and quit it or put it down. And that’s also a valid choice. Sometimes that’s — that’s a change from regular, kind of regular schooling environments. Yeah.

Jean
We had some of our older kids in the space this year who I think are really starting to think about how they’re making decisions and think about what they want out of their education. And that led us to do, at the request of one of our students, like, I was running two very regular, very academic-y offerings. One was was English class, we called it. But really we just read a short story. We can critique it and talk about it. And the other one was history lessons, where we would go through early American history. Because that’s the time period she was focused on. And we did those for…I think it was three months that arc lasted. And then she got to a point, she’s like, OK, I’m going to finish out this week and then I’m done. And slowly over time, her offerings had developed a following. Like they were developed for her, but other people had started coming, too. And then she was done. And that had gravity, too, right? Like her deciding that I’m ready to move on meant that other people were like, maybe I’m ready to move on, too. So those are on pause now, which is hard for me because I was really into that, enjoying that. But also like… Yeah, if I want, I would want her and other students to engage with something like that and to, like, commit to doing homework and projects and reading on their own time like that, they have to know that they’re not committing forever. They can stop whenever they want. Because they did a lot of work, that was really kind of an impressive amount of work. And the stuff that they read and understood was amazing to me. And the fact that, like, that they got so into it and really kind of developed an ear for what they enjoyed about a story and were able to request things based on that was such a valuable experience.

Abby
I’m realizing I’m having a hard time figuring out how to ask about your facilitator team dynamics, because in the time of covid, I’m like, how often are you like… What does co-facilitation look like? So maybe the trick is to ask more about B.C. But you would know better how that’s changed. But I’m .ike, in a space where a bunch of you are facilitators and founders and parents, and your kids are there, and you’ve got facilitators who aren’t…that’s not the case for in and out…How do you make that work and how do you support each other?

Jean
Yeah, that’s that’s been quite the journey. That’s a really good question. Year one I think one of our biggest struggles was, like, how to manage facilitating a school, facilitating a school where your children went. That was definitely a challenge. And we spent a lot of time, the three of us who were parent facilitators — because at our school, me and Justin and David all had kids in the program — so we spent a lot of time, especially among the three of us talking about it and coming up with very explicit asks. Like mine was that I would be able to, like, pass on anything that involved my kids entirely. Like, I never would do a culture circle with my children in it. If it was, like, an offering that my kid was very interested in, I wouldn’t facilitate that offering. I had to be very much hands off, I think, for my kids at first. If my kid was obviously getting into a conflict with someone, I would signal. I didn’t want to jump in, because I feel like I would see things that other people wouldn’t see, but also, like, it didn’t feel — I didn’t feel like I had my legs yet there about how to step in and have that feel good to everyone involved. My kids will tell you or definitely would have told you that first year that I was hardest on them than on anybody else. And I think that other students would say the opposite, that they would say that, I would think, my kids got away with murder. And I think it’s funny to look back on that now, because it’s not an issue at all this year, when I was there all the time and very actively facilitating. No one has complaints about that, including my own children, this year, which is fascinating. But that took so much practice and time. And I think waiting to see and making sure other people are handling those things until I felt like I had learned the lessons of other people’s kids about how to — what I wanted to say in that situation and how I could check myself when it was my own kid and how I could kind of disassociate from my own kids, which I think I’ve gotten good at. You know? This year, we have three parent facilitators and three non-parent facilitators. And two of us who are parents are in the space all time. We’re the only two full time people. We have two non-parent facilitators who are part time spending either two days a week or three days a week in the space. And then there’s Jessie who’s entirely remote at this point, although starting to come back into the space a little bit right now. It’s funny, all the time spent together in the first year, I think, that me and — me and Justin and David and Jessie have a really tight bond. And still can work really well together even if we’re not occupying the same physical space. Like can have a conversation on Slack and really, like, work, work through it. And come up with good — with a good plan, and know what everybody’s needs are there and make sure we’re communicating very well. And we’ve had to learn how to incorporate new brains into that hive mind this year, which has been interesting. Because it’s been a reminder to, like, make the implicit explicit again on the facilitation level and to like, make sure we’re making more actual physical checklists of things that we would just know to do because we’ve always done them. And how to model the behavior, to actively model the behavior, like, we want to see from from our team members in the space. But it’s also meant, like, a lot of great conversations from outsiders who are in the mix for the first time, who could observe our dynamics and observe the way we handle things and ask really interesting questions about it. So we’ve been able to reflect on processes. Again, new point of view. It’s also the first year that we tried roots and branches. So we’ve had all of that to discuss.

Abby
Are there things you find yourself — are there reminders you find yourself giving new facilitators on a fairly consistent basis? Or where you’re like, oh, yeah, I had grown out of needing that reminder, but here it is again?

Jean
Yeah, I think at first I wasn’t doing enough of thinking about what — what people needed to hear and see other than, like, they did this initial training. And I’m like, but now you’re cool… And not realizing that… In that first year we did so much. Daily check-ins and so much, like, reflecting about what we tried that day. That part of the process is so key to learning about how to facilitate that the new people needed that as well. So we started more actively engaging in that and making sure that I was, like, staying behind at the end of the day to talk to the person who is closing and like asking, how did this go? And we have — I mean — maybe try that? And to like, say in a meeting, no, it’s OK. We can let there be silence. We don’t have to fill the noise…is one I’ve — I’ve definitely had to do a few times this year. For people who are not, not used to that and people who are not used to letting kids facilitate meetings, you know? We’re going to let them do it however they want, really. And that’s going to — it might have interesting effect. We might do this — it might mean that we’re playing this game that you don’t understand the purpose of, but that’s going to be OK.

Abby
I think my favorite time a kid meeting has had an interesting effect is one of our kid facilitators changed the board of options for our Gratitudes meeting. And so in the column that was like, what is…are our bodies relaxed? Are we at attention? That kind of a thing. Or are we raucous? They added upside down. So now there is an option to activate the upside-down meeting. Whatever version of that is comfortable for you.

Jean
I’d forgotten all about that. I think we did that when we were at training at the ALC NYC and yeah, that’s awesome. We should add that back. Redoing the game shifting board has been so big this year. Like, kids are really into that, especially since we have a few kids who are, like, are coming from regular conventional public schools who are with us just for this year and, I think, are fascinated by the process of being able to facilitate a meeting. So pretty much once a week, someone has entirely redone our game shifting board for our spawn and they can go for it. So options are added, or most often subtracted, and it’s become really streamlined and kind of interesting. And there’s been a lot of talk about how much freedom and how much control a facilitator can have over that meeting. Like do we need to include the game or not? Is that a necessary component or is that something a facilitator can choose to use or not use in different…? I love — I love the way popcorn as a talking style evolves at all times. Now there’s Crackle as, like, the opener and, burn, is how you know you’re done talking.

Abby
I love that. Yeah, It usually just switches, like, people are like, I’m popping. Am I a kernel? I don’t really know. But they say a thing and then talk and then say a thing, and it’s just perpetually going. You also facilitate the, you know, facilitate the Monday ALF calls for the network.

Jean
Yeah, I do, mostly because I I missed them. I really wanted an opportunity to more actively talk about facilitation with a grander audience. So I was, like, poking Mel and Amber to, like, get back on. And I’m like, oh, but also I don’t want to assign you work. I’ll help. I’ll jump in on that, too. But that’s been great. It’s mostly been an opportunity to connect with, with Mel and Amber on a regular basis, who are such great facilitators and always have such great perspective on things. It’s nice to talk.

Abby
Have you found yourself needing to actively facilitate those calls at all this year? It sounded, when I checked in with Amber last week, like it’s essentially a dinner meeting at this point.

Jean
Yeah, it’s super casual and most often the three of us, maybe an occasional fourth or fifth, jumping in to talk about stuff. And sometimes it’s there’s someone who’s new to the game and is really coming for, like, a “but how do you handle this? This, this and that?” And that’s those are actually… Really those are my favorite kind of conversations to be involved in. Like someone who’s, like, really excited about it and is thinking about the place that each and every tool plays in their school and what’s going to be useful and what’s not. That’s great stuff to think and talk about, but it’s also great to just connect with people and share like, yeah, sometimes this feels really hard. And it often does. Operating a school during a pandemic is not for the faint of heart.

Abby
Yeah, I feel that. Re-enrollment stuff should have gone out two weeks ago, but I’m still waiting for the Department of Ed to update a bunch of their requirements so that I know what I can offer families next year. Sort of even knowing that, like, whatever we do is going to have to change anyway by August, you know?

Jean
Yeah, I think, like, all that pandemic stuff has really made parents and community members, I think, have a better understanding of how agile, of how agile it feels to be at school. I know we’re like, we’re going to try this for now. And then when we like — when we’ve tried it for a while and figure out doesn’t it work, we might need to — to try something else. Like we’re no longer doing a long, extensive symptom checklist. When you come in, we’re like trusting that you understand those things now and are not going to come in under those circumstances. And learning and growing.

Abby
And are there spaces that you feel like you’re a facilitator in or other spaces you facilitate in that you feel like parallel or feed your ALC facilitator experience?

Jean
At the moment, not so much. I think most of my universe is being an ALC facilitator or being a parent. But I do have some past experience of, like, managing group dynamics, like, as a summer camp counselor and a director of the writing program there that I think back on. A lot of the, like, tools you use in that sort of environment, especially since, like, my brother had the same responsibilities that I had there years before me. So it’s always interesting to, like, talk to him about how you handled, how he handled those things, and — and to think about how we both handle those things. And then put, like, the lens of, like, being a self- directed education facilitator on and going, well, I would do that differently.

Abby
Thank you.

Jean
Thank you.

Abby
Are there people or resources or experiences that you would be excited to shout out?

Jean
I’m telling everyone right now to read Akilah Richard’s Raising Free People. Which I think is a really great book, especially if you are a parent considering sending your kid to this sort of space, because it’s a pretty thorough deep dive about, like, why they ended up where they ended up. And how they are constantly interrogating that process of, like, here are our goals and our — is what we’re doing really meeting those goals? That’s really fascinating. And I think that really helps parents understand what they’re getting themselves into and how much active work it’s going to take from a whole family perspective to engage in this kind of a universe. What else? That’s the big one for me at the moment.

Abby
Are there things that you’re reading for you that you’re loving?

Jean
What am I reading for me at the moment?

Abby
That’s one of those where I’m like, I know it’s pandemic times. And for some people, that’s meant, like, much less reading than usual. Right? Like, no judgment if that’s the case, but…

Jean
It’s been — it’s funny, it’s come in spurts of like, I’m reading everything and then I’m not and then I’m like watching all the things and… I’m definitely not at a moment right now where I’m reading all the things. I’m reading things that are like that, feel useful to a goal. So I’m reading short stories that I want to give to kids and — reading a lot of short story collections. And reading about the pandemic, a lot of journalism about how to handle this.

Abby
Yeah, yeah. It’s been super… I’ve been alternating between how do you handle collective trauma? And let me read some, like, N.K. Jemisin because I need inspiration. And then actually I’m going to go read some Joan Didion because I need to be in an old, familiar, sad, nostalgic book.

Jean
Love Joan Didion. Joan Didion’s one of my favorites…Yeah. I just read The Nix, which kind of really fit my pandemic mindset a lot.

Abby
I don’t know that one.

Jean
The Nix is about like, an adult writer investigating his mother’s past during the sixties and especially around the Chicago riots around that — the Democratic primary. It’s a good thing to have read before you get into watching The Trial of the Chicago 7, the Aaron Sorkin movie. It’s good to have all of that information.

Abby
Yeah, that makes sense. OK, well, is there anything I should have asked that I didn’t? Or anything you were hoping I would ask?

Jean
No, I don’t know. Felt pretty thorough to me.

Abby
Thank you so much for your time, especially after a school day.

Jean
Thanks for asking. This was fun.