Category: Uncategorized
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Making it official.
Growing up, I was often told that I should go to school to become a professor. Meanwhile, I read stories about and observed the lives of master teachers. And I started asking how they got to where they were. A pattern soon emerged, and it made a lot of sense to me: the master teachers–the…
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This week!
It feels like I could write separate posts for each thing that happened this week…The days are just packed, as Bill Watterson might say if he could see us. We returned from Mid-Winter Break for Oliver’s third week, Saylor’s first, and Aiden talking about adding a third day with us. @Bear was back from his…
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Broadcasting
It’s a behavior that various magazines I read as a kid attributed to pregnant women and children in the early stages of speech development. You’ve likely encountered it…”I want macaroni” or “I’m going to the bathroom” or “I’m drawing now.” These are all examples of broadcasting. Now, I’m not pregnant or celebrating a new ability to express…
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Playgroup
My parents moved to a new area when I was born. They were young first-time parents, and my mom especially was looking for community. They wanted community for themselves as humans looking for company and parents looking for advice, but also for my sisters (not yet part of the picture) and me as we grew…
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January 15th…week end…
I sat down to write with all kinds of snippets that I was excited to share, but in reflecting on them to find a theme for the week (an approach to blogging that I’d like to play with transitioning to rather than listing happenings each week) I found a deep feeling of contentment. Days are…
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Last (in school) post of the Year
Each school year–each day, really–brings expected joys and challenges. This year started with lots of challenges. Mostly growing pains in the sense that we started the year with a 4:3 ratio of returning to new kids. Even if all the established ones were culture keepers and all the new ones showed up with culturally neutral…
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On expectations…
This was a week in which I reflected on the difference between intentions and expectations. Twice, I set the intention with kids to go ice skating. I intended to reconnect with a friend who’s been off-grid. Intended to get new body art. To stretch. To blog. To clean. I called these my intentions, but they…
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Hip Hop Nutcracker
Two all-day field trips in a row! What an awesome week! Yesterday, I spent the day roaming Central Park with @agilealfie @pigsfly @serenagermany and @xxxxpgainzxxx, in search of rocks to climb and some tasty Two Boots pizza. Today, our trip involved less fields, more rain, and much more theater. We went to my neighborhood–to Washington…
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Psychology Meet-Up 11/17
At the beginning of the school year, @cammysherbert and @failspy started up an inter-ALC offering: weekly psychology meet-ups, using Crash Course videos from YouTube. We meet every Tuesday, discuss a video we’ve independently watched, watch a second video, and have a second discussion session. In recent weeks, we started discussing theories about our minds and…
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The Week! 11/9-11/13
We had such a full and busy week! We’ve been having busy weeks in general. Mondays have Set-the-Week, Spawn, Acro, Maths, Drawing (or this week…cake decorating!), and usually a Werewolves game. If you wanted to participate in scheduled activities all day, you easily could. I haven’t been. I’ve been spending much of my Mondays doing…
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On Consequences
The word “consequence” seems to trigger strong reactions from people, particularly in the context of adult-child relationships and school power dynamics. Over and over, I have found myself clarifying that “consequence” is not the same as “punishment.” A consequence is simply the effect brought about by a decision or pattern of decisions. We tend to…
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Slog Blog
I haven’t been blogging. I’ve been going through the past few weeks totally present during the school day, diligently responding to Slack/texts/emails/calls after school, showing up for lots of meetings, and simultaneously juggling some large happenings in my personal life. Frequently, I’ll stop and think about wanting to include something in my weekly blog post–a…
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Fundraising!
I’ve had plans for some time to start a crowdfunding campaign. The idea showed up last year, when I wished we had funds to cover more pricey field trips so that all students who wanted to go could do so easily. Since we’re a private school, we don’t receive state funding and so are dependent…
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Visions
There was a lot of talk at ALF Weekend about visioning. What is the ALC project? What kind of growth do we want? Where? How fast? Why? Who wants to be doing what? What would our mission statement for the network sound like (if it’s different from those of schools…but what are those)? The questions…
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Talking to Parents
You like and trust kids. You value play. You live the Agile Roots, honor your agreements, understand the power of authentic relationships, and are generally on-board with all this ALC stuff. It makes sense to you. So you head off to ALF Summer so you can get all trained up to be an ALF. Or…
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Who I Am and What I Do
(…right now…in the ALC context…) I’m Abby. Yes, it’s a nickname. Yes, with a ‘y.’ I’m NYC-based, presently Holding and co-facilitating at ALC-NYC with @ryanshollenberger. We play regularly with @tomis @abram @bear @drew and other roving ALFs who swing through our space, and we love hosting visitors from other ALCs. At school, kids come to…
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Blurry Week
Happy first week of Autumn!!!! The air is chilly and the leaves are changing. And I have seasonal allergy sniffles; time for honey and oregano oil (@kingthanos’ favorite). I got sucked into some legally, technicalish things Monday after Set-the-Week, while also trying to keep a pulse on the tempers of a few folks who entered…
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9/21
Monday I lived in the front and top of my head. I started a list of keeping-a-school-running tasks/logistics/legal requirements that I’ll use as a reference next summer, so I can get a bunch of admin work done before the actual start of school (unlike this year…where I wasn’t organized because I didn’t realize quite how…
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First full week!
And it was a visiting week! AAAAND it still feels likes summer outside! I…did a bunch of paperwork this week. Logged everyone’s permission forms and health forms and applied for new metro cards and made a parent directory and started working on student ID cards… That said, I also got to paint, do improv games…
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Week One, Year Three
That summer went fast…Colorado, dancing poets, an abundance of ALFs, mountains, paint, scaffolding, writing, music…It was fantastic. I’m excited to have a regular rhythm to my weeks again, though. And to be back with our spectacular young people. Monday and Tuesday, Ryan and I were in the space to get it cleaned up. We were…
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