Tag: school
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Template for Student Notes
I’ve written a lot about documenting as a facilitator in self-directed learning spaces. Every update of the ALC Network website or Starter Kit, I rework the section on documentation based on what I see day-to-day. There are always more questions for facilitators to consider: How much documentation should be from you versus from the young…
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First 30 Days of School
It’s year… 13. And I’m grateful to have new staff in both schools prompting me to reflect and share more about the foundations of facilitation. For myself, I used to keep a notebook with checklists for each phase of the school year, but I upgraded to using Trello in 2016. I have a “Run [Org.…
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Summer 2024 ALC Gathering Reflections!
In June, 23 people gathered for an 8 day learning lab at the Heartwood Agile Learning Center. The hosting team included adults from Heartwood and from ALC-NYC, as well as 3 kids from Heartwood. My pre-covid summer gatherings were designed as 3 training days + 5 practice days with local ALC kids joining to do…
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Agile E-Book References and Resource Recommendations
In posting the audio versions of each chapter of my Self-Directed Education and the Agile Learning Approach e-book, I realized there was no good way to make sure folks could find the people I was citing without literally spelling out each name and title…so I copied the recommendations at the end of each chapter here…
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“I’m Bored” Toolbox
@catmooy and I opened this old draft blog post and asked people to help us finish it. We asked what people do when they’re B O R E D and they (@kirkorovfan @thewitchqueen908 @serenagermany @simoneboss @theanchor @heartabby @aidenstarwars) helped us come up with this list: Read a book. Play with stuff that’s here. Look at…
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A Day-Trip: Franklin Institute and Bresslergroup Debate
Last Thursday morning, most of the ALC-NYC crew headed towards East Harlem for a day of philosophy, visitors, Japanese, wrestling, music, and more. Meanwhile, I texted with my co-conspiritors and packed a notebook into my field trip bag. Learning is natural and happening all the time. I’m generally a fan of our foundational principles at…
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Earworms
This one is for @thewitchqueen908 @yapyapwizard @pigcraft8 and everyone who went “HUH?” when I used the word earlier… We have our own ever-evolving language at ALC-NYC, and much of it is comprised of earworms. PenPineappleApplePen MakingBaconPancakes I’mNeverGonnaDanceAgain, TheWayIDancedWithYou Cuz,BabyYou’reAFirework It’s a real word. Wikipedia has my back: An earworm, sometimes known as a brainworm, sticky…
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The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of the Kanban
“Individuals and interactions over processes and tools…Responding to change over following a plan…” When I was first looking for information on Agile Software Development, I found these lines and smiled. It makes so much sense: meet people where they are, pay attention to relationships and dynamics, have tools but don’t get attached to them, plan but…
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I need a nap ;)
Started the week like this: (Thanks @abram) Mittwoch like this: (Thanks @creeperclaws @heartabby @starwars @beths10 @muffinsthecutest and @pigsfly!) Ended it like this (with woodworking and Minecrafting and improv games and cooking and and…):
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This week!
It’s very exciting to set up new students with blogs 🙂 Especially when they jump into writing independently, leaving me 10 minutes to write alongside them! We had three students visiting this week. They jumped right into offerings and games with other kids, which was great to see. I spent a lot of time working…
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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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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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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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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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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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