Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
starting an ALC in aug 2019
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
share resources
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
rock tree sky
want to hire a male mentor
Anything else we should know?
no
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
We’ve been home educating for six years. During this time we’ve researched experimented with various educational models / philosophies / curriculum to find our fit. We’ve seen the most positive progress with interest led / Unschooling but we find ourselves desiring more community (help, support, resources, relationships). While reading I came across mention of Sudbury Schools and decided to google more info and that rabbit trail eventually lead to ALC’s. My husband is unwilling to move our family in order to be closer to an ALC for our children to attend so brainstorming through other options in efforts to have such a community resource available. Reluctantly accepting looks like I just have to do it myself.
I attended ALF Summer in ATL a couple weeks ago and my current intentions are taking steps towards finding local like-minded families and attempting to start up a local homeschooling co-op focused on building relationships / community with SDE as it’s core foundation, sharing resources, while using some ALC tools in our community learning times together. Eventually, maybe, a few years down the road, IF the right people come along, it would be fabulous to be apart of providing an accessible alternative to public school locally with a staffed building full of resources and support.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
Information, education, support.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
I’d like to observe, glean information on how others have gone through the process of creating SDE communities.
When I have questions it would be fantastic to have access to people who have experienced the process.
Currently I feel very alone in our home educating journey. Though I am surrounded by an abundance of homeschoolers, “unschooling” is treated like a dirty word around here. Someone even flat out told me “unschooling is child abuse and lazy unschooling parents should just put their kids back in public school or have CPS intervene”.
I’m making efforts to change my wording to Self – Directed Education which does help facilitate more discussion (What is that?) but so far not coming across people who “get it” or interested in learning more or changing from a very authoritative / conventional schooling mindset. So even if I can only find people online who don’t think I’m lazy, crazy, child abuser dooming her children to the worst uneducated life possible…. it’s something.
Anything else we should know?
You rock! I appreciate you and the efforts you’ve all made to spread awareness and accessibility of SDE communities.
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
Originally from Philadelphia, my family moved to Vermont four years ago. In Philly, we had a robust community of self-directed learners and lots of drop off day programming. Vermont has few of these resources and all of them are spread out. We finally enrolled our kids in a progressive private school, where I worked as an administrator for tuition exchange. But that hybrid model didn’t work for us. This past year, we tried public school, which didn’t end up well. After my 8 year old ejected herself from PS after 8 weeks, we returned to homeschooling. I started to dream of creating a space for learning together– but through self direction. In the winter I polled the local homeschool community to see what was possible and received a lot of criticism and decided it wouldn’t work. When I announced I wasn’t going to build something, a few families popped up and wanted to go for it.
So now we are 3 families. We’ve been offered an entire house for free for the year. We are scheduling for an ALF to come train us in late August and plan to open about August 27.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
I want access to the tools, knowledge and resources of the network. I want to learn from those who are practicing. I’d like support for when things get challenging. I’d love to share our work, experience and space with others.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
Since we will be a parent coop– at least for this year, I would like our parent facilitators to be able to learn the tools, processes, methods, etc through those with more experience. Given we have the space, I’d love to think about hosting a training for our community next year– so having access to skilled ALF’s who are willing to come work with us would be awesome.
We live in a spectacular place. I’d like to network with other families and ALC’s who want to visit us and experience rural life. In turn, our rural young people would love access to those who live in other places, as well.
Being part of an educational model that is fully legible, documented and readable is important to us. The methodology has the gravity of the full network of ALC’s, which I think legitimizes it in important ways.
Anything else we should know?
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
Cascadia completed its fifth year of operation this month and I completed my first year as the owner/director. The structure that I inherited was great in that it met many of the educational and social needs of the community. However, it created a situation where although we believe in choice and freedom and do not use discipline to force children to behave or participate, the kids did have to sit in on their age cohort's classes, whether they wanted to or not. This led to a lot of behavioral problems that our parent volunteers were ill-equipped to handle. I became aware of the ALC model and tools and believe that switching to this structure will allow us to better live the community beliefs we profess, as well as increase the quality of learning and engagement.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
I would like to have some support in effectively transitioning to the ALC model as well as ongoing support once we are using it daily. I would also like people who are interested in the model to have more of a chance of finding our cooperative online.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
The ongoing communication with people who are using the model on the ground is most appealing.
Anything else we should know?
I will be attending the facilitator training with a few of my parent volunteers this summer in Ojai.
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
We started this adventure about a year ago, in Greece. The Agile Living Community is originally composed of people from Greece, France, Romania supported by friends from Germany, Italy, India, Russia and Pennsylvania, US.
The intention is to move learning outside walls and across borders, foster the oneness of humanity and collective intelligence through deep democracy and spread freedom of education around the world.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
Agile Learning was a fantastic discovery and deeply fits with our ethics and sensitivity.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
We want to support you and honour your work. We definitely love ALC joyful, colourful esthetics and spirit. We are seeking to increase connections, networking and global outreach.
Anything else we should know?
We love you! 🙂
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
I'm a marketing professional who left a career in the tech industry and became a maker, aspiring artist, and most recently, design thinker and educator. What started as a process of personal exploration and creative cultivation became a path down the hero's journey. Along the way, I battled the norms of thinking to live more intuitively, learnt to de-school the mind to reclaim curiosity, and experimented unschooling to gain a fresh view of what modern education can look like.
Having seen the magic of self-directed learning, I'm ready to take it one step further to cultivate a community of learners and families who can learn together and support one another along the way. I'm very new to the ALC model but looking forward to integrating the experience into our programs.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
I'm looking to learn from the community on how to structure and run an ALC supported learning environment.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
I'm interested in learning from best practices and gain support from network of learning centers.
Anything else we should know?
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
Our foundational values are to cultivate, for our children, a small group environment of play, respect, consensual enthusiastic learning, mindfulness & compassionate communication. We started as a homeschooling cooperative Spring 2019 and this semester, Fall 2019, are moving into a fee-based option homeschooling collective of impassioned facilitators, parents and learners.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
I resonate with several of the tools in the ALC model and feel it is only appropriate to contribute financially to those tools so generously made available.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
I have enjoyed reading the Starter Kit Volume II and find its facilitation guide and culture creation to be spot on! I appreciate getting on the "map" for other like minded homeschooling parents and students out there. I appreciate a complementary membership to AERO as well.
In terms of support, it would be in regard to conflicts (parents, facilitators, and learners) experienced and advice in navigating those.
Anything else we should know?
I would love for an online (zoom workshops/ conferences) way of connecting for learning opportunities, since I am unable to go to the July training in 2019. AEROx did their first zoom conference this year and it was very helpful in exchanging dialogue in interest based chat rooms.
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
I am an educator and parent looking to fill an unmet need in the Grand Rapids, MI community. I want to create a modern, respectful, and collaborative educational environment for my son and the children in my community. I intend to launch a self-directed learning community in August 2020. Currently, I have a few supporters that will help the business aspects, launch and marketing in the community but am in need of a diverse group of individuals with the same vision. I also have a location secured, and now need funding for location updates.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
I would like to collaborate with other ALCs and learn more about launching a start-up ALC.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
collaboration, information for start-ups, marketing assistance
Anything else we should know?
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
I and the founding members of our learning community have been interested in starting some type of self-directed education community for some time. I first started learning about SDE from Peter Grey's Free to Learn, and have been learning about the many options for self-directed education that now exist. When I encountered the agile learnign center model, with the agile learning tools, I was struck by the coherence and compelling nature of the start in trusting students developing into the four assumptions, and then branching out into the principals of agile learning. These resonate deeply in their deep commitment to protecting and supporting the agency of each student in their own education, rather than using a misapplication of self-directed education to manipulate students into thinking that they have agency while driving them towards predetermined educational ends.
Very quickly in the last month, several factors have come together in the local area to make starting a learning community viable: we have a mentor, a location, and most importantly, several interested students. We are very much laying the track directly in front of the train to be ready to open in the fall, but we are excited about the challenge. We will be holding our first information/recruitment meeting next Saturday, May 18.
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
We would like to become an ALC member because we are committed to agile learning tools and because learning and growth within a community is so critical to long-term success and flourishing.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
Being part of a larger community of people and organizations passionate about self-directed education supported by the agile learning model is very appealing to me. I've already read through the Starter Kit, but being able to bounce ideas off others with more experience working towards the same goal seems absolutely invaluable.
Anything else we should know?
Tell us a bit about your story and where you are in your process of starting a self-directed learning community.
Neil and Frances co-founded Mosaic in 2013. Daruma Ecofarm (Neil's other project) already had the start of several open plan buildings intended as an ecological learning center. Together they realized the farm and these buildings created an opportunity for incredible place-based education in a home schooling style. They offered this opportunity to others in the community and Mosaic opened with only Frances' two sons and one other student.
Within a year and only through word-of-mouth, the enrollment was six. The next year, we started the paperwork to become an official, accredited 'Learning Center' however, the reluctance to be conventional made this process take a long time. Finally, in 2018, Mosaic received a complete accreditation and has the autonomy to function without emphasis on curriculum, testing and conventional school methodology. Not surprising for ALC members, when our students do take standard national testing (parents sometimes want this) they have always scored in the top 95% which delights us.
Student enrollment continues to grow. At the start of the 2019 school year we officially have over 70 students. Some have begun online US High School programs offered through University of Nebraska and have been doing excellent (honor roll).
Why do you want to be an ALC Member?
ALC has excellent resources and it is always important to stay connected with innovative methods Fromm around the world. It might also be interesting for other ALC members to connect with us and arrange group visits.
Which aspect(s) of ALC membership are most appealing to you and what kind of support do you desire/need?
Resources including the forum.
Anything else we should know?
