Frequently Asked Questions

Click through these questions and see if we answer yours!

No. Each ALC is its own independent community, legal (or unincorporated) entity, and is managed and operated independent of the ALC Network organization. Learn more about our structure in our Ecosystem Charter.

The Agile Learning Centers educational model is grounded in the same understanding about how people learn as expressed in the concept of Self-Directed Education (SDE), with the distinction that we explicitly emphasize the importance of reflection and community in the process. We recommend checking out this primer on SDE from the Alliance for Self-Directed Education.

In lots of ways! For younger students, this happens organically from the day-to-day or even moment-to-moment choices that they make about how to spend their day — who to play with, where to explore, what to play or create.

As young people’s abilities to plan and think ahead develop, they prioritize activities that move them towards their goals, like most of us do when we want something. With community support, they reflect often on how they are choosing to spend their time. ALCs meet them with various tools, practices, and patterns to support their intentional pursuit of their learning goals. Some ALCs use kanban boards to track student projects or goals. Some organize offerings in multi-week sprints, to scaffold skill-building. Often, facilitators will support students in making their own schedules that reflect their interests and personal projects.

By engaging with it…consistently. ALC students recognize that the whole world is their classroom. They grocery shop for cooking project ingredients, spend time in local parks, call museums to ask about hours and shops to ask about inventory; they organize field trips around their interests, attend conferences and meet-ups, create entrepreneurial opportunities, and participate in community activities. All of these activities and more can be part of the educative experience in an ALC. One of the main goals and primary benefits of the ALC model (and self-directed education) is the removal of artificial barriers between schooling and “the real world.”

Yes and no. Our communities have very clear expectations and boundaries that the children agree to in order to participate at an ALC. These include productively engaging with the group process, respecting the space, and respecting each other. Pursuits must be safe and legal. We clean the messes we make and follow a simple conflict resolution process when those messes are relational. We collaborate to build positive cultural norms rather than lists of rules.

A maxim we reference when creating new structures is “maximum support with minimum interference.” Our students have a lot of freedom as they get clear about what they truly want to create for and of themselves. With clear boundaries and agreements, they also have the support they need to feel safe using that freedom to question, experiment, explore, and grow.

What if? They might improve their reading and spelling skills, practice problem solving, or exercise their creativity. They might learn to collaborate with others, develop the ability to track multiple moving objects more accurately, or practice reading maps. Maybe they’ll be inspired to study programming so they can design their own games. Or become interested in a period of history or social justice issue that is explored through a game.

Generally, as part of the educational philosophy that grounds the ALC model, we believe in giving children access to the tools of our culture. Undeniably this means digital media, video games, and more broadly — the internet. As with any other tools, we attend to our modeling and accompany kids in learning to work with the functions, agendas, biases, and limitations of a thing’s design.

From a parenting and facilitation perspective, we believe in building relationships with children that are based around partnership and consent, and believe this is best approach to navigating a healthy relationship with technology. Often our adult triggers around these issues can be a mirror into concerns we have for ourselves.

Some ALCs may choose to provide boundaries around which online or digital activities take place in which spaces and at what times, in order to support an environment that allows for everyone to thrive. In general, we are always looking to empower kids to use these tools for their stated interests and goals.

Facilitators witness.

Facilitators model.

Facilitators reflect.

Facilitators organize.

Facilitators hold the space.

Facilitators support students in clarifying their intentions, getting connected to the resources they need, reflecting on their decisions, engaging with the community, and sharing their learning. They work to keep the space safe, legal, and respectful. They collaborate with students to develop a powerfully positive culture. Facilitators model clear communication, collaboration, and authenticity.

Each ALC may have a variety of staffing needs and more specified roles that go beyond this description to meet the unique needs of that ALC’s space and students. Even so, adults who provide leadership in the ALC should be adept at these capacities.

Every kid is different, right? :)

It’s true, and that means the transition from traditional schooling to an ALC or from an ALC to traditional schooling is not a universal experience. That said, there are some patterns we’ve observed that are somewhat common.

Kids, especially older ones, coming from traditional schooling usually have a “detox” period where they may feel a bit disoriented from not being told what they have to do all day.

Learning is always occurring. As a result, students coming from traditional schooling arrive having learned communication styles, value judgements, and assumptions about power dynamics (and their own capacities) that they then begin to un-learn at the ALC.

Our students who choose to return to traditional schooling do so bringing their experience communicating clearly, managing their time, and finding information/resources they need to achieve goals. They take these skills with them–along with the knowledge that there are more ways to value their growth than through assigned grades. A key factor in the transition is whether they are the ones choosing to return, for a specific reason, and thus self-motivated to adjust to the demands of the new environment. In general but particularly when the choice is theirs, they usually transition smoothly.

Our assessment is that each student is a capable and powerful human with value to add to the world.

How do we track student growth and progress? By developing authentic relationships in which we support their self-reflection and bear witness to their journeys. Where the generation of reflective artifacts supports students’ self-reflection or access to other spaces and resources, ALCs use various methods to support the documentation of students’ activities, projects, and experiences.

If that’s the direction a student chooses, yes. Colleges have been accepting students from homeschooling families and non-traditional schools for as long as colleges have existed.

When a self-directed learner decides they want to go to college, they know why they want to go. Many students unquestioningly spend thousands of dollars and several years of their lives going through college because that’s what they think they’re “supposed” to do. Intentionally entering a learning environment to accomplish a specific purpose is more likely to bring about positive outcomes.

We don’t yet have longitudinal data on ALCs, but we do have it on self-directed education. Most of the kids who want to get into college do. Having alternative forms of record keeping and evaluation has not been an impediment for kids who want to go to college. In fact, there’s a proven advantage for people whose college applications can’t be tidily ranked by GPA and academic track: a human has to actually look at their portfolio. ALC students document their learning on sharable platforms, such as blogs and kanbans. As a result, they typically find it easy to construct a rich portfolio, and some already have created portfolios for their personal websites.

On the one hand, due to the amount of self-possession ALC students are expected to demonstrate and limits on our resources (as most ALCs are not state-funded schools), we don’t currently meet the needs of all types of kids. On the other hand, many learning and self-expression differences that are challenging in conventional environments don’t show up as problematic in our schools.

A student who needs constant supervision or individual attention is probably not a good fit for an ALC. Staff are always open to collaborating with parents and caregivers, learning new tools, or communicating with children’s therapists, in the interest of supporting a student.

We also know that adults with ADHD, for example, usually learn to choose jobs that are active, changing, and stimulating rather than jobs that require sitting and writing for hours on end. They learn their strengths and challenges and then pick corresponding kinds of environments…and thrive. Kids in school aren’t typically given the chance to make such choices; no matter their energy and attention levels, they are expected to all do the same thing–sit, listen, and write–all day.

At ALCs, students are encouraged to pay attention to their patterns and work styles, and they’re supported in making choices accordingly. As a result, they learn to adapt, to maximize chances to play up their strengths while arranging the supports and systems they need, rather than mostly being shamed for and fixating on their limitations. The result is that they keep their confidence and grow their capacities, often even undoing disempowering self-concepts and antagonism of writing/math/speaking that they built up in other settings.

Montessori: Montessori schools and ALCs both practice age-mixing and supporting students in self-directing their learning. Montessori age-mixing involves grouping students who would typically be in three different “grades” into a cohort; ALC age-mixing is much broader, usually separating only very young students, sometimes only for meetings. Montessori students self-direct through a prescribed menu of subjects and concepts that changes based on the age range of the students; ALC students self-direct based on their interests, passions, and the opportunities they see in the world around them.

Reggio: The basic assumptions informing Reggio education are highly complementary to those informing ALC education. Reggio was created based on the belief that humans are born with many forms of expression–languages–available to them. Most forms of schooling only develop literacy in three of these languages: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Reggio seeks to provide acknowledgement of and opportunities to develop as many of these languages as possible through themed “explorations,” The Reggio model recognizes the environment as a powerful teacher; thus, Reggio schools are carefully designed with goals of sparking inspiration, encouraging curiosity, and facilitating interpersonal activities. ALC philosophy shares a view of the child as powerful, competent, and full of potential. We also share the recognition of the environment as a teacher and the emphasis on the importance of social relationships. We’re different in our emphasis on intentional culture creation, our documentation practices, and our structures for supporting student self-direction.

Steiner/Waldorf: One similarity between ALCs and Steiner/Waldorf schools is that both approach education holistically. Though in many ways Steiner/Waldorf schools advocate a single developmental trajectory for all children, it is also true that Steiner/Waldorf schools and families honor children’s individual timetables for learning. Particularly with literacy, you will find stories of Waldorf students who learn to read in the traditional sense at a wide variety of ages from 5 to 12 years old. ALCs see “development” as even more complex and expect students to have different learning journeys, and our staff aspire to support students in creating their own adventures.

Democratic Free School: ALCs are similar to Democratic Free Schools in that our students contribute to decision making at the school, direct their own learning, and participate in meetings. Many of the differences between ALC and Free Schools developed in response to challenges Free Schools commonly face. For example, in some Free Schools decision making is consensus-based and adults strive to influence students’ learning journeys as minimally as possible. ALC decision-making more closely resembles the Quaker “sense of the meeting” than consensus, and our staff comfortably make suggestions the way they would to friends they were trying to support. The former change leads to faster, more action-focused meetings; the latter gives students opportunities to practice the valuable life skill of navigating attempts to influence them. The main differences between ALCs and Free schools are that our students focus on their self-directed learning and creating culture rather than running the school, use structures to support intention-setting and reflection on their learning journeys, and explicitly aim to keep 90%+ of each day meeting free so students can focus on their learning.

Unschool: Unschooling always looks different, so it’s difficult to compare a “typical” unschooling experience to an ALC experience. Both Unschooling and Agile Learning relationships with learning come from trusting that the individual—adult or child—knows best how to design their education and should be supported in doing so. The difference is that unschoolers focus on their individual paths, while ALC students engage in active culture creation. The social and community component is foundational to Agile Learning: students learn from, inspire, negotiate, and collaborate with each other on a daily basis, enriching each other’s learning and challenging each other to constantly improve their social skills.

Homeschool: Homeschooling looks different from case to case, but it typically involves traditional subject areas and limited opportunities for social interaction. Students can set the pace of their studies, but their topics are still usually informed by state or parental standards. ALCs see students as self-directed learners in a world where all learning is interdisciplinary. Our students decide the pace and the content of their days. They also learn from, inspire, negotiate, and collaborate with each other on a daily basis, enriching each other’s learning and challenging each other to constantly improve their social skills. Since so much learning happens in interactions with others, the emphasis on creating opportunities for high quality interactions at ALCs is one of the main factors differentiating us from many homeschooling environments.