Year 7 (?!!!) Intentions

I love my job. A good thing too, or I would not be doing it seven years and one pandemic later; it is not easy but the challenge of it is part of what makes it pleasurable. In the last six years I’ve learned so much about decolonization, conflict, and brain development; feeling my feelings, starting with joy but also including my fear, anger, disappointment, and grief; drawing, painting, carving, creating perspective; having this body, feeding and moving it; minecraft, math, and music; being in community; being in relationship; saying exactly the thing I mean as succinctly as possible; holding difficult things lightly; what a well-rounded D&D campaign feels like; what liberation could look like. I’ve learned that learning is pleasure-full, in practice.

This year, I intend…

…to homebrew a D&D campaign with minimum prep, and trust my players as collaborators.

…to play! For the joy of it!

…to say yes when young people ask me to try something with them.

…to resist the urge to speak over someone when they’re trying to explain what they notice or how they feel about something and I think I know the conclusion that they’re working towards and I’m feeling impatient with how long it takes them to say it.

…to push my fear-edge in rock climbing, outside and inside, and improve my stamina.

…to find new ways to support young people documenting their learning.

…to fundraise for our 10th year and for the next decade.

…to use the marketing skills I absolutely have to help facilitate our increased visibility and, with it, fundraising.

…to play capitalism with the creativity, flexibility, and vision that I bring to the other games I play.

…to play music on ukulele and keyboard.

…to play art with fiber, paint, charcoal, and pen.

…to try NatNoWriMo again!

There’s always more and never enough time — here’s to seven years of making magic!

But How Do They Learn Math?

This question “…but how do they learn math” has been haunting me for years
so I finally wrote an essay about it.

Read it at Tipping Points Magazine

Do You Need a Box Cutter?

It’s 9:56 when I decide I can no longer tolerate the mystery screaming from the other end of the hallway so I walk to the Red Room and pull open the door and note that the lights are out and the dim morning filtering through the window has left the room in shadow; there are four young people all bopping around the room in various states of delighted, shrieking excitement and Young Taurus on the couch - the center of gravity of this little spinning system - wrestling with a pair of pink scissors and a package I recognize as a duct-tape-wrapped present from Classic Aries.

Young Taurus is screaming get me a knife, woman at Artsy Pisces who is screaming back I brought you those scissors and these things that you didn’t even want don’t you love me in soap-opera tones as she brandishes what I recognize as 3 coping sawblades, loose in her hand and it is at this moment that the children register my presence and start talking at once; I get snatches of trying to open and impossible and mighty duck tape and why did you do this to me - all the delighted dramatic energy of people playing - and so I put on my best bemused-dad face and don’t ask them to stop screaming, just point out that they’re using sharp things in the dark and screaming loud enough that I can hear them from the other side of the school and I’m about to start a focused offering in the room next door and screaming spreads more aerosol covid droplets so instead of closing the door all the way, I suggest gently why don’t we turn on the air filter and the lights and maybe get Young Taurus a different tool? and before I’m done speaking Impulsive Pisces leaves the room and Young Taurus and Enby Virgo start experimenting with different pairs of scissors and I collect the sawblades from Artsy Pisces as Impulsive Pisces comes back with an exact-o blade that I also happen to know is not very sharp but I compliment the impulse because it was what I asked for and point out that if Young Taurus tries to carve open the package while sitting on the couch and their hand slips that they will cut themselves and Young Taurus says nothing in acknowledgement but moves from the couch to the table as I leave the room with the sawblades and go next door to the makerspace and swap them for the box cutter and come back to the Red Room crew, settled around the table now, with Young Taurus sawing carefully at her package and a friend watching on either side quietly, and two more at the computer, one putting music on the speakers and the other negotiating turning the volume down and a wild teenager has appeared, keeping an eye on Young Taurus, who accepts the box cutter when I offer it and shouts in delight - short and triumphant, a single exaltation before she turns back to the work of unwrapping, focused now, fully engaged in the fine motor skills I know she has been honing with painting and drawing and clay -- as her friends settle in around her, gathering projects or iPads or dancing out the door and so I leave them to it to go start my writing offering because it’s 10:01

and as I go I reflect that this is the first time I’ve ever subdued a roomful of screaming children with a box cutter but time is long - it may not be the last.

Year Six Intentions and Early Reflections

It’s Friday afternoon, the end of the first full week of school, and I’m sitting at a table in the makerspace across from J., who is eleven and dissecting an owl pellet. 

Across the room, D. is reassembling a 6x6 Rubix cube. We’re all masked and the windows are open; it’s humid even with the whir of the fans. In other rooms, people are reading or watching videos and the door jingled as a crew just came back from the deli - N. just slid into the room, held up a Poptart like Simba from the Lion King (“AHHHHHHHHH” she sang, one lone member of a heavenly choir), and scrambled back out as I cracked up.

Last week’s feeling of deep contentedness hasn’t faded; if anything, our first full week has been even more affirming that this work is deeply important, deeply meaningful. What a gift it is to be witnessing the curiosity and joy of young people, affirming their choices and supporting their initiatives, being in intentional community together. 

This season, I’m trying to facilitate all-school meetings in a way that sets young people up to take over for me by winter break. I’m prepping a D&D campaign that sets up my players to do more fun and complex storytelling than ever before. I’m committed to finding time to write, and to support young people with whatever writing they want to do. I’m practicing moving my body - from exercise club to bouldering in Central Park to jumping into any impromptu dance party that comes my way. I’m reminding young people that when they say “we could do this,” it’s true and also, if they actually want it to get done, they need to practice the doing part. I’m scaffolding the practice of doing for humans who aren’t sure how to get started. I’m expanding my idea of what “documentation” looks like and helping young people identify modes of reflection and sharing that feel good for their present and future selves. I’m encouraging chase games and pillow fights while reminding everyone to ask for consent. I’m making art-making materials available to whoever needs them. I’m offering stretching and vocal warm-ups and crochet and music-reading lessons. I’m learning to weave from a teen’s teaching. I’m making myself less visible so that young people get in the habit of talking to each other before talking to me. I’m practicing reminding young people that the words they use matter, they shape your world, they change what is or is not possible for you.

D. just came over and excitedly high-fived me - he got the central part of the cube together, which is the trickiest part. Two days ago, he was saying “this is impossible” but I challenged him on that phrasing, and we talked about other ways to approach the puzzle instead of continuing to try the method that wasn’t working. With some tape and fresh eyes and a new days’ patience, he got it! 

I’m proud of the ways my facilitation practices have gotten me to this place of delightful zen chaos and curiosity. I’m grateful to be in this community, in this space, with these humans. We’re gonna get into that good trouble, together.

And Now for Something Changing and Familiar...

ALC-NYC is back in the space, together! Today is my 30th birthday! Much is happening!

After a year and a half of pandemic precautions limiting us to virtual or outside connection, the start of this school year feels especially tender. Last week, returning to the space, I was overwhelmed (we left saying ‘we’ll probably be back in two weeks or by spring break the latest’ and leaving everything accordingly strewn about mid-project, including the bread left stapled to the wall…) but after the trash was cleared and a new coat of paint slapped on the cubbies and doors, it looks much more inviting and lived-in. Now, with young people in it? We’re home.

Since I was last here, I’ve changed a lot. Some of those changes have been in response to the conditions of apocalypse; some are the flowers rooted in past choices. Most of all, I’m changing how I feel about change.

Over the summer, I drove across the flats and heights and smoke plumes of this continent with a beloved trans partner. We lived in a car, and I learned to appreciate running water and a clean vault toilet. I experienced middle America and learned that I do not, in fact, pass as a cis woman anymore. I climbed cliffs, mastered rope systems, and learned that “afraid” doesn’t equal “in danger.” I trusted my body to dive off of the high board and practice the front flip I loved to do as a child. I witnessed a desert where there was once ocean; touched rocks made from sand and magma and heat and pressure; noticed how wind and water and shifting plates make new landscapes. I trusted my partner with my big feelings. I learned (I am learning) new ways to love myself.

This morning, I listened to a podcast where the host, astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, was pointing out that your job for capitalism doesn’t necessarily line up with your “soul’s purpose,” but sometimes it does. In light of this summer’s journey, this pandemic uncovering, these last years of ALC-land, I think mine might.

According to Lanyadoo, your “soul’s purpose” (which I continue to put in quotes because I’m skeptical of talk of souls even as I acknowledge that there is some part of me that’s not my brain and not my body but more than both - who is the watcher?) is to live in integrity with yourself and at harmony with your environment. Sometimes, that harmony can sound like discord, especially when we are coming up against aspects of our culture and environment that want to shrink us, or force us to conform. But living your purpose is playing your own song.

I’m really grateful, on this first Friday of the 2021-2022 school year, my sixth year at ALC-NYC, my 30th solar return, for the ways that this job supports me in living my soul’s purpose: as a curious human, an artist, a trans person, a kid collaborator and player of cosmic games. 

A group of us sat down, Wednesday, to talk about what kind of science offering we want to do this year and we went down the butterfly-effect rabbit hole, speculating that in a different universe there is a different you who chose a different breakfast this morning. It’s fun to think about how the tiny choices we make result in different strands of existence and much, much harder to think about the big choices, even as they are obvious.

Six years ago, I left my corporate job and took the leap to ALC-land. I didn’t know if it was the right choice, but I knew I couldn’t keep going as I had been. Now, every part of my life is different. Perhaps there is a Mel out in the multiverse who was too scared to make the jump - perhaps they still present as a blonde-haired woman, or play capitalism to win, or worry that catastrophe will happen if they step outside of a familiar cultural script. But in this strange, apocalyptic strand, where pandemic and fire and hurricane shape the world, I resist the false safety of those boxes I once shut myself into. I exist, wholly. Like the earth, I am changing.

So far this week, I worked with kids on a cyanotype mural and taught the basics of clapping out rhythms and beginning to crochet; I facilitated two all-school meetings; I practiced handstands and pull-ups and learned to ride a skateboard; I enthusiastically listened to young people tell me about their summer adventures, their thoughts on gender identity, the best way to solve a Rubix cube. More has happened than can be recorded, but I am writing this incomplete letter to you, my future self, whoever will read it, because all I can do is shout into the universe that THIS IS HAPPENING AND WE ARE ALIVE AND CHANGING AND LEARNING TOGETHER.

Shout back?

This [pandemic] year [in mostly zoom-land] I learned…

...space and time are actually just one field, which is absolutely bonkers.

...a lot from Hank Green, actually, not just on the silly clock app either. I learned about osteoblasts and natural killer cells and photoexcitation and cell structures and prey-predation cycles and convergent evolution as we watched the entirety of both Crash Course Biology and Ecology, starting in September and concluding earlier this spring.

...a lot from my fellow science-offering collaborators beyond Hank Green, about ecosystems and the creatures that live there - like the coral reefs where teeny tiny Harlequin Shrimp lives alongside the giant Crown of Thorns starfish that eat the coral, which are, in turn, eaten by those tiny shrimp…

...to crochet a granny square. Also, I learned I prefer crochet projects like granny squares, which resist becoming tedious by changing colors often, and building many mini-completion serotonin boosts into the process of generating that elusive “finished a whole crochet project” serotonin boost.

...the first seven Hanon piano exercises, as well as “Home Again” by Carole King and “Love Like You” from Steven Universe. I learned (again, always) that I love to play the piano. I learned to listen for chords and loosen up enough to fool around listening for one I want. I learned that my previous self was much more advanced than I gave them credit for at the time.

...Inktober is an essential, joyful practice for me as an artist, growing in my art-making skills and confidence.

...figure drawing is rad, even on zoom. Bodies do not go together the way you think they do.

...Leonardo da Vinci was alive when Machu Picchu was constructed. Art history has a heavy, racist, Western bias. Splashed ink landscapes speak to my soul. These incredible Ife heads exist. The people the Spanish called the Aztecs actually called themselves the Mexica and they had a graphical writing system which they used to compile incredible amount of astronomical/astrological/agricultural information via these images. 

...my knowledge of tarot and astrology is deep and readily at hand & I get a lot of pleasure talking about the how-tos of an everyday magic practice. 

….my body prefers daily tag games to sitting at a desk.

...my body is capable of great change.

...how to do a handstand.

…how to belay and rappel, how to sit with my fear and feel it, how to do a pullup, how to do 10 pullups, how to climb a 5.10, how to climb the tall wall, how to climb outside, and that I’m capable of so much more than my fear wants me to believe.

...the name of many, many more genres of electronic music than I previously knew existed.

...D&D has a LOT of rules.

….a balanced D&D game is about equally divided between combat and pure roleplaying.

...it’s okay to cater to your D&D session to your most invested player, even if they do turn evil, (maybe by accident or maybe on purpose - they appear to be relishing in their villany), and it’ll probably take the party longer to catch on to what you think is an extremely obvious transformation than you have allotted for it. It’s okay to get sidetracked - sometimes the most fun thing from the session is not the big reveal you’ve been planning but rather the fact that one of the druids summoned 8 creatures into this cavern and now there are EIGHT VERY UPSET ELK underground in this smoky forge…

...listening to D&D podcasts will make you a better DM. Listening to your players will make you a great DM.

...tinies hour at the park is from 10 to noon. People watching remains good all day.

...voice acting is a fun, delightful, silly, joyful activity to do deliberately. Also, turns out I do a lot of manipulation of my voice on a regular basis, and that my high school voice and theater training are uncommon and super useful. I am learning the low, soft edges of my new voice.

...testosterone really does make your body different.

...most people don’t talk about bodies in the (admittedly sometimes gross) extremely frank terms that I like to. As I return to the world, I am also learning that this makes a lot of grownups quite uncomfy. I’m also learning that I don’t care so much about making them feel comfy as I once did...

...tiny zines are among my favorite art-making mediums - that while I could never imagine limiting myself, if I had to choose just one they would certainly be in the running.

...I love to make art so many ways - with watercolors and oil pastels and ink and paper and collage materials and pressed flowers and acrylic paint and cameras and digital pixels and words and piano keys and my own voice and by making my body dance. I love to make art, with my self and with others. 

...making art in a zoom room with friends and no agenda is a low-stakes, meaningful way to connect.

...there are so many things I miss - including sharing art supplies - but I’ve learned that it doesn’t help my brain to list them all. I’m learning to have boundaries with my own thoughts, too.

...practicing non-hierarchical relationship goes beyond my work at ALC and stretches into all parts of my life. I’ve learned I get great pleasure in practicing polyamory, and that the communication and emotional regulation skills I’ve developed in the last five years of deschooling are both flexible and so, so helpful in that sphere of my life. I’m learning new communication and emotional regulation skills in poly-land that are helpful in ALC-land.

….practicing compassionate boundaries is hard and ongoing. 

...practicing compassionate boundaries is freeing and present.

...I have the patience to wait, when that’s what necessary, and the facilitator skill to know when.

...the wheel of feelings is an extremely useful tool for me.

...while zoom/screens/digital communications are not the same as being in person, the internet is still a place where our resilient and interdependent communities are able to play with each other across spacetimes of crisis.

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An Hour and A Quarter in the Traffic Circle: On Doing Nothing in SDE

The first full week of pandemic unschool is on the books in Brooklyn. Currently, ALC-NYC is at level one of our Covid-19 plan, which includes both zoom-based offerings and pods - groups of up to 7 kids and 1 facilitator - which meet outside, up to two days a week, for no-contact, socially-distant activities. A lot of folks ask me what pods are like and all I can say is that Prospect Pod, so far, is 3 teens and me, meeting up, deciding what we’d like to do today, and wrestling with the familiar question: is it okay to do nothing? Everything feels so different, yet some self-directed struggles never go away.

We didn’t start out with nothing, of course. On Tuesday, when we set the intention to walk around and get familiar with the park, pod looked like walking almost five miles through Prospect Park, finding two waterfalls, naming trees and getting lost, swapping showtunes and best practices for pink hair dye. We are mostly new to each other, and we had a good introductory day; we agreed to repeat it on Wednesday.

The next morning, we all arrived footsore and a little sleepy. I proposed we start by going over pod plans and intention-setting practices; the teens agreed, so we found a spot near the Long Meadow and chatted about consent, looked at the details of ALC-NYC’s plan on our phones, and discussed what our family pods look like: what risks we’re able to take on, and what precautions we’re practicing. It was a short and productive talk, and soon we moved on to intention setting. 

Intention setting is a cornerstone of our praxis at ALC-NYC; its importance articulated in the agile root “learning happens in cycles of intention, action, reflection and sharing.” 

In practice, the contents of our daily intentions are less important than the practice of setting them and reflecting on them. Intention setting (like all of education) is about anchoring your self in time - what does your present self want your future self to have experienced or accomplished?

So on Wednesday morning we went around and started our intentions for the day: have a consent and covid check-in and share a guidebook (me) and return to the waterfall, listen to music in a meadow, eat breakfast (teens). Then we did all those things! (Minus the meadow - we listened to music near the dog beach instead.) We ate breakfast in a stand of nine elms - some of the last survivors of a terrible invasive fungus, according to the book. We learned the names of some of the places we had been the day before - the Nethermead Arches and Lullwater and the Binnen Bridge. We retraced our steps to Ambergill Falls in the Ravine. We found a relatively clean public bathroom. We walked less than the day before.

By 12:45 we found ourselves sitting in the traffic circle, intentions complete, lunch finished, and totally out of momentum. And then, we did nothing. Or at least, something that looked like nothing.

You might have a strong reaction to this. I did, and it’s my job. In these moments, I worry I’m not doing enough, as a facilitator. As I watched all three teens, each masked, sitting on their own bench, scrolling their phones or rooting through their bags or just looking around, I was worried they were bored, or that we were wasting time. My impulse was to swoop in, offer activities, start a brainstorm, move us along. But I ignored my worries, resisted that impulse. 

Instead, I asked if they wanted to do something else, or if they were feeling content here. Their replies were lukewarm and indifferent - not enough information to move us. So I decided I was going to be okay with us doing nothing until the end of the day. I told them to let me know if they changed their minds and want to do something else. Then I pulled out a pen and sketchbook, and began to try and draw pigeons.

Forty five minutes into it one of the teens asked, “Are we going back to the park?”

“Do you want to?” I replied, peering at her. “We can.”

“Oh, no, I didn’t-- I was just asking-- it’s fine--” she responded, shrinking back into herself. 

“Okay,” I said, light and cheerful. “We can keep sitting here if you want, this is also good.” I paused for a moment, to see if she would say anything else. She didn’t; I went back to my drawing. 

We spent a total of an hour and a quarter in the traffic circle doing nothing and it was the best possible thing we could have done. If you’re still having a strong negative reaction to that, let me remind you of a few things.

First of all: it’s okay to do nothing. People do not have to be doing something in every moment to have value. Children are people.

Second, it’s okay not to know what you want to do at every moment! This practice - making an intention to do something and then doing it - sounds dangerously easy, which is part of what makes it so hard. 

Think of yourself, on the first day of your vacation. You can do anything. How does the sheer volume of choice feel? Overwhelming? Probably. Well it is for kids, too. When we are offered the opportunity to self-direct our own choices after a long time of having our actions dictated to us, we are bound to feel a little overwhelmed by the options.

This is where I can step in to help, as a facilitator, by limiting options to a menu of choices that I can see. But there’s a danger to that, especially in relationship with new kids. The danger is that the choices available to me in my adult perspective will limit (or preclude entirely!) an enticing possibility that needs some time to fully form in this young person’s mind, or might take some time to muster the courage to speak into existence. 

The timidity with which that teen shrunk herself is characteristic of a pattern I’ve noticed in lots of young people, six months into this pandemic. After spending so much time in tiny New York City apartments with well-meaning adults who have been asking them to keep quiet, I am not surprised to see it. It makes sense to me that after all that experience, they would feel a little wary about taking up too much space, even as I encourage them to do just that.

After all, they don’t know me! I’m just a pink haired stranger who claims to be there to “support them in whatever they want to do.” A lot of adults say that when they don’t mean it. I would be suspicious of me, in their place. I recognize that trust is earned, and I’m happy to earn it by sitting here, patient, with them. I trust their yes - they really are content, sitting in this traffic circle right now - and their no - if they don’t want to do this anymore, they will tell me and I will move accordingly. 

Because most importantly: we are out here sitting quietly in this traffic circle because there is still a global pandemic unfolding around us, in an increasingly hostile and unstable political era, and we are doing what we can. We are out here sitting quietly in this traffic circle because our community has decided that it is not safe to be in the space we usually occupy, sharing each other’s germs, and that mutual care, consent, and communication are all things we value; we are practicing learning and speaking our own needs. We are out here sitting quietly in this traffic circle because it is a beautiful September day and we are alive, learning to be people who move through uncertain futures in ways that get our needs met, and the needs of others in our communities.

Today, we’ve completed all of our intentions, already; we are choosing to spend this extra time resting our bodies and practicing trust-building outside, where we can interact with each other safely and admire a flock of pigeons and other New Yorkers in their fall finery. I feel clear that I have acted with integrity as a facilitator. Next time, I think, maybe I’ll prep some trust-building games we can play if this happens again. Our time is coming to a close. We circle up and reflect on what we did today - to list our completed intentions.

“Hey,” says one of them, as we conclude. “Next week can we have a check-in before pod days, so we can decide what to do and we don’t just wind up sitting for a long time? This was fine - I just want to do something else next time.”

“Yes,” I say. “We can do that if you want.” 

From the Other Side of an Apocalypse

A world ended since the last time I updated this blog.

After recovering from the flu, I spent February reflecting in a different medium: tiny zines. Then, suddenly, in March, everything about life that was familiar suddenly shattered. 

On Wednesday, I was at the nearly-empty Met Museum with Art History; on Thursday, as both the Met and ALC-NYC decided we would close our spaces temporarily, I made my first Covid-19 zine; on Friday the 13th of March I began zoom school while sheltering in place in my home in Brooklyn.

We never went back. The end of the year came and went - we found new ways to celebrate, virtually, when we could not gather to say our goodbyes. It’s August now, and the virus is still raging across the US, though surges of new cases have slowed in New York. Across the country, there is a terrible debate about sending children and teachers back to school - how many lives are worth losing to return to a sense of normalcy? Some, seems to be the answer. Whatever the economy requires. It fills me with rage.

In these times, I’m more grateful to be an ALC facilitator than ever; even in March, with little planning and even less practice, we jumped into online community and thrived at the center of a global pandemic. Art History, instead of wandering the halls of the Met like we’d planned, got really into shared-screen doodles and invented a game called Guess! That! Deity! The D&D crew grew online, completed their mission, saved the multiverse. Anatomy and Physiology watched all 44 Crash Course videos about the human body. I continued making tiny zines at a Friday afternoon offering that proved wildly popular. I figured out how to teach crochet virtually and also started an offering called Art Jam - an hour-and-a-half block on zoom to make art and talk about whatever was on our minds - where I painted a self-portrait, complete with face mask, while talking to whichever kids showed up about art-making, yes, but also pandemic, the movement for Black Lives, transphobic authors and queer Harry Potter fanficton, pros and cons of conventional high schooling, feelings about family structures, anime recommendations, science fiction. I spent hours just talking to kids online, listening to them talk, witnessing their worlds, trying to find places to play together, to make meaning, to practice community. 

Since the school year ended in June, I have been resting and grieving and reading and writing and protesting and quarantining and educating myself and making art, preparing myself for the year ahead. In that time Abby has worked tirelessly to keep up with shifting science, unreliable sources, and risk profiles and come up with a plan for next year that prioritizes the health and safety of the whole community. 

My mother is a conventional school teacher of almost 30 years, who needs to teach one more year before she can retire; her school district (in a mostly white, wealthy suburb of NYC) plans to send everyone - teachers and children - back to school on the first day. We were talking about the magical thinking that underlies that plan when she said to me you have the best job in education right now and I realized she’s right.

I feel deeply proud of the ways we at ALC-NYC continue to rise to the challenge of this time. I’m proud of how we show up in our commitment to keeping kids and families safe, to helping them navigate this traumatic moment while still prioritizing joy and curiosity and play. Play matters, here at the end of a familiar world, because it indicates that a child feels safe enough to engage their creative thinking, to practice imagination. When I read the news, I still feel afraid about our future, but when I play with children I have hope. We can imagine a different world, if we practice imagination together.

Back @ it again!

It’s been TOO LONG - not just since I updated the blog, but since I’ve been in ALC-land. The end of December was a rush of field trips (4 in the last 2 weeks!) and finishing projects and nesting in the dark time, then it was break, and eclipse season, and the new year. We returned on the 6th of January and I was here for a single day before getting absolutely flattened by the flu - when it was all said and done I’d spent 13 days in my house, surrendering to being sick and then recovering. Which means that this week is my first week back, and I’m so grateful to be here. Here’s a tiny zine I made when I was sick and struggling.

View this post on Instagram

I made a art thing yesterday when I was really sad then today I found it and it made me feel a little better so now I’m sharing it with you. 20 minute zine inspired by @amo_ampho and @agilelearningcenternyc #zine #dyi

A post shared by Mel Compo (@the_melicorn) on Jan 13, 2020 at 5:52pm PST

Monday we were open for MLK day and only 6 kids came. I had caffeine for the first time in two weeks and got so jittery I went up and joined Acro to blow off steam. It’s nice to be reminded that my body is strong and capable; that healing is possible and that patience is part of moving through a cycle. The last month has been tough - the flu, yes, and also tricky family holiday time and practicing boundaries with folks that I love and seasonal depression and sitting with the voice in my head that’s not very nice to me - and I’m grateful to be through it and feeling in my power again. I’m grateful for the practice of the last three years ALFing and all the times that I’ve trusted someone with the weight of my body and been held, or been entrusted and done the holding.

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💞 @themusebrooklyn 💞

A post shared by Agile Learning Center NYC (@agilelearningcenternyc) on Jan 20, 2020 at 9:13am PST

More gems from this week: Return to D&D and challenging myself to create conflict that doesn’t begin with combat, playing Codename, naming songs for Abby and Luca’s band Two Scary Scorpios, dance-greeting Savannah this morning because she was sick after I was sick and we were so happy to see each other for the first time in three weeks, “Iphy/Sterl/Olive/Timo running down the hall and jumping over the threshold and cracking up”, making silly slow-mo and time lapse and boomerang videos with Sebastian at the park, ICE SKATING with Jiji and Olive and Xander and Erez and the feeling like I’m flying when I get up to speed, witnessing the rise of the D&D battle as a standalone game, the sudden uptick in popularity of Mel Mode in Shark Tag, making more Borax crystals in science time, many many politics chats with Even over the impeachment he’s been screening all week, moving books around the Library so that new ones can be discovered, Hugo’s marker-and-pipe-cleaner pig creature, Arthur visiting and offering nail polish jam, and James busting into the Makerspace during cleanup to show me this video which made me laugh so hard, I wasn’t ready.

Hugo’s pal Pig

It’s the Aquarius new moon today and I’m feeling very light and loose and optimistic - not at all like I’ve been. Here’s to new beginnings all the time and the nonsense that is time itself. To quote Iphy from this morning, “your brain is three and a half pounds of tapioca and I’m not responsible for the mistakes it makes!”

Park! Park! Park!

At the word the pack of them come spilling out into the lobby, abandoning tablets and drawings and games and deli bags, barking like seals park park park, making a familiar game of it, yelping pork pork pork, laughing, piping the call of small ritual. They get ready: the chaotic one flutters about untangling coat and backpack and headphones from their fathomless cubby, and the artist dashes about urgently looking for her phone, frantically shuffling through backpack pockets and then rushing off, and a young Taurus puts on her shoes s l o w l y, and, overcome with excitement, the littlest one jumps around in the midst of the fray in no coat and no shoes, and three teens, coats and shoes thrown on, play a waiting game where they attempt to boop each other on the head, bumping heedlessly into everyone else, and another one comes down the hall and looks at everyone and then looks at me, bundled in hat and scarf and coat and park sneakers and asks are you going to the park and I say yes and he says I’m coming too, wait for me and I say hurry and then one of the boopers asks who are we waiting for and I say the littelest one and the latecomer and the Taurus are all still getting ready and the boopers remember they’re independent travelers and declare they are going to go ahead and I say you’re independent travelers, go for it knowing full well they’re going to and make a bunch of noise in the stairwell and wait for us at the bottom of the stairs and finally the Taurus has her shoes on and the littlest one, in both coat and shoes, is fully out the door now, holding it open, hovering on the landing, and I say okay we’re actually going now and the latecomer straggles over pulling on his coat and the artist emerges from the bathroom and the fluttering chaotic one brandishes their phone at me and asks if I know this song as I pass the threshold with them, into the stairwell and down through the winding passage and out into the snow.