Anywhere Without Books
One of the young people in the group frequently has a go-to every time we are sitting down to plan our day together: “Anywhere without books.” This is a response to the fact that we as a group keep ending up at libraries, bookstores, or other places filled with books, and this particular young person …
A Free School, Unschoolers, and a Flying Squad Walk into a Park…
…surely this is the beginning of a good joke?
The Climate: Is It an Emergency for Youth?
Today we went to Fridays For Future (FFF) at City Hall, a youth-based, peaceful organization striking for the climate emergency.
The Volacity of a Skate Park
“Do you want to learn how to use one of those BMX bikes?” A facilitator asks a young person, as she watches with curiosity. ”No, but I want to learn to skateboard.” She answers as she runs up and down the halfpipes. There are so many things to learn about in the world. Each individual …
October 15th
My apologies for my brevity on this update; I am writing this a week and a half late, as I have fallen behind on posting. From what I remember, on this day, we simply went to Prospect Park, played Friday the 13th, and then we went to the village and built more on our houses. …
Pout Pout
Sometimes I have internal conflict over my desires and needs and those of the young people I spend my time with. I so desperately want the young people I work with to rise up and overthrow… everything. And most of the time… they do not. And the fact that I do not insist or do …
Codenames
We were joined by someone new today, who wasn’t quite sure what we were about, what to expect, or what he wanted to do for the day, but he said he was up for anything. The group listened intently to him, open to anything he wanted to do, not too worried about their own agenda …
A Place of Our Own
Today we spent most of the day working on our houses in Prospect Park. It’s fascinating to me how simple the group’s needs and desires are– they simply want a place of their own to care for and develop and dream of– and yet how difficult it is to find that space. At one point, …
The World is Drowning!
The morning started out being quite difficult. We couldn’t agree on what to do today. Ultimately, we all agreed that someone needed to make an executive decision for what to do each week. And so, we came up with a plan to keep voting on ideas of what we could do, but we would rotate …
Zip Ties, Family Ties
On Friday, I talked about needing to find the rhythm backbone of our community before we’re able to run wild. In contrast, this Tuesday Flying Squad group has predominantly survived a year together as community. We survived being outdoors in the New York City winter (which, despite what Simon and Garfunkel proclaim, are bleeding me), …