Tag: alf

  • Psychology Meet-Up 11/17

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    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…

  • The Week! 11/9-11/13

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    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…

  • On Consequences

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    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…

  • Fundraising!

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    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…

  • Visions

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    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…

  • Talking to Parents

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    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…

  • Who I Am and What I Do

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    (…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…

  • Blurry Week

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    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…

  • 9/21

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    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…

  • First full week!

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    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…

  • Week One, Year Three

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    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…

  • ALF Summer 2015: Week 1

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      I started this week super excited to be in Charlotte, North Carolina to meet new ALFs! I right away got a couple pieces of bad news about some friends, and I was worried about being able to hold a group’s energy while working through my sadness. But both because the group this year was…

  • Penultimate week of 2015

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    TheWeekTheWeekTheWeekTheWeek I spent a lot of time outside this week. On Tuesday, I went to Central Park with @douglasawesome and @failspy to play improv games all morning. On Wednesday, I gave @lillaw and @failspy a map of Red Hook and told them I’d meet them at Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies. They met @agilealfie and…

  • Kid Imagines the Final Battle Between Horace and Seth

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    Doing homework for my comic hero MOOC (Last week @douglasawesome!), I started researching Egyptian deities. I was talking with @thewitchqueen908 @shadowjack and @jacobcb about Isis, Orisis, Seth, and Horace, and @thewitchqueen908 asked whether Horace kills Seth. The internet (and Jack) wasn’t sure…apparently there are lots of different accounts of how the final battle between Horace…

  • Graduation Process Proposal

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    Back at the last assembly meeting, I committed to hold a series of discussions with kids–and open to parents–to elucidate a graduation process. The goal was to have a proposal ready for the the next assembly meeting (tomorrow), where it could be amended and [hopefully] approved so it can be presented officially in September. The…

  • The Beginning of the End (of the Year)

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    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…

  • End of May

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    I have to admit, I wasn’t excited for another visiting week. Initially I was stoked, because there had been plans for @theanchor to bring two QIVC teens I like to the city, along with @themadhatter, to join Bear and the ALC-NYC crew (including @Tomis!!!) for the week. But then the teens bailed. Before the week…

  • The Week That Went To Saturday

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    It’s 11 pm Saturday, and I’m finally settling down to write my blog post for the week. It’ll probably sit in my draft pile overnight so I can polish it in the morning as a more alert being, but I want to get everything down before I forget. Sunday night, I found out that my…

  • Brooklyn Museum Trip!

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    Last weekend, I had a very art-and-music-filled Saturday. The Whitney was throwing a block party for the grand opening of their new building in the Meatpacking district and it was the first Saturday of the month, which means free admission and lots of music/lectures/workshops at the Brooklyn Museum through the evening. I had a blast at…

  • Suggested adventures for while school’s closed this week!

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    Check out the NYCxDESIGN festival (*cough* @shadowjack *cough*)! Dig through this hard-to-read website to find cool events for Bronx Week! We saw Basquiat’s work last week and talked about his friendship with Andy Warhol. Now you can go see Warhol’s work at MoMA… …or Frida Kahlo’s work at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden! Another Botanical Garden…