After the first ALF Summer, a group of us agreed to hold weekly facilitator calls to connect and support each other. As the earliest ALFs, it felt like we were constantly encountering situations that we needed to newly figure out how to navigate. On the one hand, we had years of experience of facilitators at …
LEGO Idea 2018: Day 2
So the second day started like this: I could have watched Arvind Gupta for hours. His presence was gift enough. But then he mentioned that his project is open-source so 100s of his and others’ designs are available for free on his website. When I got to http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/, I discovered he also has work on there …
LEGO Idea 2018: Day 1
A few months ago, I was invited to the LEGO Idea conference. At first, I wasn’t sure if my schedule and finances would work out in a way that would let me go, but…suddenly it was April and I was off to Denmark. #WorthIt Before I even got to the LEGO House for the conference, …
Educambiando Visit ’17
I was invited to the Agile Learning Facilitation training that Educambiando hosted in December of 2017 in Veracruz, Mexico. After months of tending my language-barrier worries with serious study sessions and my leaving-school-for-over-a-week worries by getting ahead on paperwork while my spawn practiced running things without me, I headed off on my first international trip …
Newsletters Sept-March
For the past few months, I’ve composed and sent out monthly newsletters to ALC Network members. Here are a few of them… 9.4.17 Hi everyone! Back in September of 2013, I could have updated the whole ALC Network by just walking into the back room of the East Harlem school and talking to the 4 men there. …
Questions on Repeat
One of the practices from my time in conventional classrooms that still serves me is that of listening for signs that I wasn’t clear enough in communicating. One such sign is when I’m getting the same questions repeatedly; sometimes it means our group isn’t practicing listening very well yet, but 98% of the time it …
ALF Resource: Intergenerational Trauma
After reflecting a bit on how I’ve been voraciously consuming nonfiction without pausing to share out my learning–waiting, I think, to see the whole tapestry it’ll become once I weave the pieces together–I’ve decided to push myself to share my draft-y notes. Here’s the first attempt: The other night, I got home and decided to …
Note on ALC Logos
With new variations on our logos coming out (and start-up groups showcasing their creativity all the time), I remembered this email exchange where @tomis explained a bit about what the deal is with our branding guidelines and @spence suggested he put something together to share on the topic. In case it takes Tomis a while …
ALF Page Jan. 2018 Update
How does someone even end up at alf.agilelearningcenters.org? I honestly am not quite sure. What I know is that the page used to essentially be a flyer for the ALF Summer super-programs in Charlotte, NC. As we started to see other ALCs hosting various retreats, trainings, and workshops starting in 2016, the page morphed into …
Network Membership Update
“What does it mean to be a member of the ALC Network?”* This question has been following me a lot for the past few years. In the past 13 months, I’ve given it a bunch of intentional thought–often aloud and in dialogue with others similarly exploring it–and I’ve reached enough clarity that I finally edited …