Social-emotional learning during the COVID crisis: Lessons from Austin’s alternative schools

We have made the emotional health of our students the top priority in decision-making.

—Chris Ready, Assistant Head of School
Academy of Thought and Industry

Learning to manage emotions and maintain empathetic, healthy relationships in ordinary times is as important for young people as other kinds of learning—and it’s doubly important in times of stress and crisis. Education researchers call this aspect of education social-emotional learning, or SEL. It’s strongly tied to all kinds of supportive relationships schools build among students, educators, and parents. Most alternative schools make SEL a pivotal aspect of their curricula, offering programs like Austin Rising School’s “Kids of Kindness.” 

Social-emotional learning is the foundation all other learning rests upon for students experiencing tragedy or trauma. Even in families who are in the very best situation—without loss of life or income—most kids are currently experiencing some significant anxiety and disruption. In response, family members and educators are stepping up to act as role models for emotional support. As the National Association of School Psychologists suggests, “This is a tremendous opportunity for adults to model for children problem-solving, flexibility, and compassion.”

In an effort to help Austin families dealing with the sudden transition to distance learning and to highlight what our community of alternative schools is doing right now, Alt Ed Austin conducted a survey that returned detailed responses from 35 schools. In this second installment of our series looking at changes in education as a result of COVID-19, we’re doing a deep dive into the answers to our survey, with social-emotional learning as our first topic.

Lunchtime hangouts, like this one at Griffin School, bring everyone together in a relaxed way.

Faster transitions to distance learning ease anxiety

For some schools, moving out of a physical space and into distance learning has happened quickly. We discovered in our survey that because they are smaller and more nimble, most of the 35 schools have been able to adapt easily to the new circumstances. 

Parents and students at Austin’s Academy of Thought and Industry and 4Points Academy reportedly have been surprised and pleased at the ease of the transition. The speed of the transition in small alternative schools has been a big part of limiting anxiety for students—an anxiety kids in larger school systems are still dealing with, as the machinery of transitioning to online learning for thousands of students grinds slowly and fitfully forward.

Many of the schools in our survey had some component of online learning available before the pandemic arrived. As Amanda Garret of Fusion Academy notes, her school already offered virtual classes for students who had to travel or were sick. “Most teachers had already experienced teaching this way and also many students, so it was a super easy transition for us!” 

In our community younger students seem to have embraced technology just as readily as older kids. Certified reading specialist Alexandra Eliot, founder of Bridges Academy Austin, which will be opening in Austin in the fall, says elementary students often adapt well to the Zoom platform. “In fact, some students pay attention better to tutoring when it is done virtually. [To help them,] I can increase the font size in their reading and point with my mouse.” 

It’s important to note one key issue in terms of implementing distance learning: It’s clear from the evidence in the surveys that the relative lack of economic inequality among the students at Austin’s alternative schools has made a big difference. Most of the students already have the technology they need; they and their parents are able to use the technology; and in most cases, they have at least one parent working from home who is able to support their learning and emotional health. For kids of essential workers, those experiencing financial and food insecurity, or without the essential technology, this transition looks very different and is inherently more difficult emotionally and socially.

“We met in our gardens”

Finding time for nature and for quiet mindfulness are two aspects of emotional and social wellness that are often linked, and both came up in the survey. 

Integrating time outside in nature is something parents and kids can easily forget now that we spend so much time in front of our screens. In keeping with their core mission, Earth Native Wilderness School encourages all kids to get outside and do some exploration and play. “Our Wild Life Forest Preschool has been producing some really amazing content for kids to do at home,” says Earth Native’s executive director, Dave Scott. “Seeing how excited the kids are to get on with their teachers and tackle their at-home nature challenges has been very inspiring.”

Mary Belton of Bloom Preschool said that her students “have been excited to share their gardens, so we met in our gardens one day to share what we are all growing. We also had lots of fun painting rocks together!” And Woodland Schoolhouse’s Nicole Haladyna uses Facebook as a gathering point for sharing songs, stories, updates on class pets, and nature lessons based on the trails near the school—including identifying poison ivy!

Students from Earth Native Wilderness School put their own spin on sheltering in place.

In the pursuit of good mental and emotional health for everyone, Ascent: An Acton Academy offers yoga for parents and “morning mindfulness” calls to all the learners. At WonderWell, Ashley Reinhardt says that “each day includes a “social-emotional check-in and an experience to promote self-regulation, self-awareness, and empathy.” 

In a recent newsletter, Carolina Peredo of La Tribu explained her preschool’s longstanding approach for little ones: “Our Mindfulness Program has been evolving throughout the years and now includes mindfulness practices like “La Vela de la Paz” and Yoga classes. They are now available as recorded sessions led by our guides on our YouTube Channel.”

Human connections at the core of SEL

Ultimately, it’s through fostering human relationships every day that these schools support social-emotional learning. At the majority of schools surveyed, teachers are still able to connect with students one-on-one weekly, and sometimes daily. Students connect with each other in myriad ways, and educators are also connecting one-on-one with parents and offering them emotional and social support. 

At the Fusion Academy Homework Cafe, teachers are available to help kids both socially and emotionally in addition to helping with normal schoolwork. Fusion’s Amanda Garrett explains, “Teachers can do breakout rooms with one or two students if needed.” For kids at Growing Curiosity Community School, connection comes in the form of fun music and Spanish mornings.

A form of one-on-one “office hours” is common at many schools, including Lake Travis Stem Academy and Parkside Community School; at the Academy of Thought and Industry, each student has a guide who acts as a coach and checks in to see where they are emotionally.

Acton Academy hosts read-alouds and hangouts at lunchtime so kids can just meet up with friends casually. They do offline challenges, which they later share online. For example, says Laura Sandefer of Acton, “We had a virtual talent show that included voting for the best of three categories. . . . We had a day for the whole community to eat popcorn and enjoy the show.” At the Westlake Campus of Acton, students do virtual PE together and are encouraged to organize virtual play dates outside of school to stay in touch. Huntington-Surrey gathers kids for Friday Night Social Hours to play games and chat in addition to their check-ins during class.

At Clearview Sudbury School, they not only help kids connect with their regular school friends, but they also facilitate connections with other self-directed learners around the world in order to share learning experiences and make new friends.

Parents and kids learn together with Lake Travis STEM Academy.

Family Gatherings and “Heroic Parenting”

Both parents and students are able to meet with teachers one-on-one at International School of Texas and have access to a Licensed Clinical Social Worker once a week. ACE Academy has enlisted its full-time counselor and is regularly sharing resources for student and parent motivation via social media. 

In addition to meeting with learners in groups daily, and one-on-one each week, Abrome gathers families on Wednesdays to make it easier for them to find community. Abrome also created a mutual aid network for all its families. Griffin School calls its weekly family gatherings Town Halls.

The world of support for parents is as varied as for kids. At AHB Community School there is a big demand for adult interaction, so the school is adding coffees and social hours. Jeffrey Couvillon explains that Acton Academy Southwest Austin is focusing on parents in a new way: “We are going through a set of challenges with families called ‘Heroic Parenting,’ focused on closer family bonds and stronger family mission.”

In the end, whether it’s Griffin School’s Quarantine Quad, where each student leader checks in on three classmates, or Growing Curiosity Community School’s private Facebook group that lets families share ideas and time together,  the common denominator in social-emotional learning in this period of transition is the variety and depth of human connection.

Join us in the next installment of this series for more of our community’s creativity in the time of COVID.

Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Educating our kids and ourselves in times of emergency

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Learning is a social phenomenon, and human interaction is a catalyst. Especially in emergency situations, learning is a social and emotional experience, so human relationships have to be a priority.

—Nishi Andra, technology for education consultant,
ICARE co-founder, and currently working with UNICEF

It’s hard not to gasp when you read the stunning statistic that nine out of every ten children in the world who are normally enrolled in school are not in class at this moment because of the coronavirus pandemic. An event of this magnitude remains difficult for most Americans to comprehend, but there are precedents on a smaller scale that can help us understand COVID-19’s impact on education. Disasters—from hurricanes and fires to wars and terrorism—affect large numbers of students in specific locations every year. Think of Syrian refugees or the victims of ebola in Liberia or earthquakes in Puerto Rico and Haiti. 

Prompted by a recent talk with Nishi Andra, a friend and collaborator with Alt Ed Austin who is currently working on an education project for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, I decided to look into the topic of educating students in crisis situations more deeply. In this article, I’ll examine some of the big takeaways and how they might help inform educators, parents, and students in the United States today. In the next three posts on this blog, we’ll zoom in to look at exactly how Austin’s own community of alternative schools is adapting and helping kids learn and thrive, despite the challenges. 

In a story for NPR, education reporter Anya Kamenetz introduced me to a field of research that’s about 20 years old, called education in emergencies (EIE). According to EIE studies, the learning time kids lose during a semester of extreme disruption like we’re all experiencing now can take up to two years to make up. As many of us can see in Austin and across the country, the struggle is especially hard for lower income and more vulnerable kids. As demonstrated not only in international crisis zones, but also closer to home in places like post-Katrina New Orleans, education disruption can have lasting effects on kids’ mental health and educational achievements.

First, let’s recognize just how unprecedented in scale our current situation is. Rebecca Winthrop, of the Center for Universal Education, says that in 2013, five million children were out of school as a result of the Ebola virus. In 2010, millions more in Pakistan saw their schools closed as a result of severe flooding. And in 1918, the global flu pandemic to which COVID-19 is often compared closed schools in 40 U.S. cities. Each of those crises affected only a small fraction of the 1.5 billion kids who are out of school in 180+ countries right now.

Still, EIE researchers believe we can use lessons from past emergency events to cope in the present. Here are the most pertinent lessons I think we can draw upon:

• Health Education: Parents and educators need to integrate education about the coronavirus and how to stay as safe and healthy as possible into daily learning time for kids from preschool on up to high school and college. Safety lessons about handwashing and social distancing and factual information about the science of virus spread can be turned into fun songs and games, but these messages are just as critical now (and for future waves of the virus) as are math and social studies.
  
  Health education is something that’s easy to forget with our own kids running around in home lockdown. We’re sealed up inside our homes or in our own backyards, so reminding kids to wash themselves or disinfect surfaces seems less urgent. Winthrop notes that many schools teaching remotely actually skip health information altogether in a rush to get other subjects in. But the fact that students are learning at home actually makes it more likely that health messages will turn into dinner-table conversation and stick with them for life—keeping them and the community healthier in the future.
  
  Austin early childhood educator Marie Catrett uses a cute story with a felt board and a comic from NPR to help kids understand the basics of the virus and how important good health practices, like handwashing, are. She shared her thoughts on communicating with kids about COVID-19 in a recent guest post on this blog. Some schools in the Austin area provide regular opportunities for students to ask questions. For example, the school nurse at the International School of Texas hosts “wellness chats” each Tuesday and Thursday.

• The Power of Routine and Ritual: Another lesson from research on education in emergencies is that routines—especially morning routines—matter. Jamie Weiss-Yagoda, of the International Rescue Committee, says that any routine educational activities parents put in place each day can “give young people a sense of stability amid rapid change.” A routine, no matter how simple, can counteract feelings of dislocation and chaos that children feel during an emergency disruption. Knowing what to expect each morning can soothe anxiety for kids—and parents, too!
  
  In some refugee camps in Greece, UNICEF is providing daily podcast lessons with students’ regular teachers, maintaining the social distancing requirements, but giving kids a sense of continuity and contact as well as a regular routine to look forward to.
  
  Early childhood educator Beth O’Brien suggests that especially for young children, short daily points of connection with teachers is important. That can come via email, texts, videos, picking up packets at drop-off points, or letters in the mail. “Our goal,” says O’Brien, “is not to replicate a typical school-day schedule or intended curriculum online or at home. The goal is to help students continue to feel connected (to the teacher, to each other, to the school), known, and nurtured even though a significant part of their routine has been disrupted.” AHB Community School in Austin reports that classes are still holding versions of “community circles” and sharing time through Google Hangouts. Both students and parents can attend teachers’ virtual office hours to get help or just a little companionship.
  
  In a recent report, educators Armand Doucet, Deborah Netolicky, Koen Timmers, and Francis Tuscano found that older kids may be experiencing a period of mourning because they’ve lost events and traditions they look forward to all year—a special field trip, prom, a science fair, and of course, graduation. In Austin, Griffin School will be holding graduation at the Blue Starlite Drive-In, allowing seniors to decorate their cars and drive by to receive diplomas—with the full ceremony playing over car speakers! That’s some serious innovative thinking.

• Social-Emotional Learning and the Healing Classroom: The International Rescue Committee emphasizes the importance of creating a “healing classroom” that provides for the social and emotional needs of kids in emergencies. In keeping with the approach of many alternative schools, our schools-at-home should be supportive, comfortable environments where kids feel safe enough to follow their natural inclination to learn. Often, that means de-emphasizing academic expectations and emphasizing anything that promotes mental and emotional health.
  
  As Doucet and his colleagues put it, school can be a place where kids “are empowered to lead their authentic lives.” Distance from friends and beloved teachers creates anxiety and stress that needs to be acknowledged. Like most of the schools we’ve heard from at Alt Ed Austin, Roving Learners is committed to providing an outlet for anxiety. They bring kids together in restorative circles twice a day and work one-on-one with students to relieve the stresses inherent in this new situation.
  
  We’ll talk more about Austin’s alternative school community and its approaches to social-emotional learning in the next article in this series.

• Instead of “Getting Back to Normal,” Getting Better: Educators and policymakers across the world are viewing the current moment as an opportunity to make schools better when kids return and to be better prepared for the next crisis. Some of the ways folks are rethinking the future of education to serve all students’ needs include things that we can work on right now with our kids at home:

• Finding better avenues for peer-to-peer connections for both kids and educators. Most students today are experts at staying in contact via social media of all kinds, but transitioning the tools they use regularly for fun into tools that can deepen and enhance learning is a challenge for educators. One piece of advice from education expert Erika E. Smith that applies to both educators and parents is to allow students to build connections on their own. They may want to use online forums or just exchange contact information without involving adults, and that will often allow for more comfortable sharing of ideas and information. Educators and parents have the same need to share ideas and help each other. Nishi Andra shared a touching story with me about teachers in other countries creating video lessons in the Rohingya language to help and support teachers in refugee camps. 

• Bending and breaking old rules that clearly don’t work or don’t serve kids’ needs. Some schools are saying it’s okay for academic lessons and specific content expectations to lapse right now and planning to develop summer school courses for catching up later. Many states, including Texas, are canceling standardized tests, and colleges are waiving admissions requirements for SAT and ACT scores—and using the moment to reconsider whether they will be needed in the future.

• Building stronger, deeper relationships between families and schools. In a national survey last year, only half of parents reported communicating with their child’s teacher outside of formal parent-teacher conferences and less than 75 percent were helping kids with homework. Those statistics may change as a result of the changes happening in almost every family right now.

• Making sure that free, high-quality technology and Internet connectivity is available to everyone, or if that’s not possible, investing in alternatives. Technology is a pivotal aspect of almost every discussion of the learning that’s taking place at home right now. At the same time, we know that many students don’t have access to the hardware they need or reliable Internet connections. Providing those essentials is a challenge for public policy in the coming years. At the moment, though, a lot of communities are finding that some older, tried-and-true technologies, including public radio and TV, can bring content to almost every student. 

In an op-ed about the impact of the Korean conflict of the 1950s on education in South Korea, Woody Paik emphasized crises as opportunities for growth and improvement, and schools as tools for recovery. The world can become a classroom and a laboratory for kids, parents, schools, and communities to experiment and explore new paths for learning. In the next three articles in this series, we’ll see how more than 30 of Austin’s alternative schools are doing just that.

To Learn More:

Armand Doucet, et al., “Thinking About Pedagogy in an Unfolding Pandemic,” March 19, 2020

Anya Kamenetz, “What Do Students Need to Recover When School Closes for Months?" NPR Morning Edition, April 1, 2020 

Woody Paik, “What the U.S. Can Learn About Education during Crisis from South Korea’s Wartime Example,” Hechinger Report, April 9, 2020

Reishan Richards and Stephen J. Valentine, “How to Keep School Rhythm and Routines for Young Children at Home,” EdSurge, March 17, 2020

Valerie Strauss, “If Online Learning Isn’t Working for Your Kids, Try Public Television,” Washington Post, April 14, 2020

Jamie Weiss-Yagoda, “Education Tips for Parents During the Coronavirus Crisis,” RESCUE April 3, 2020

Rebecca Winthrop, “COVID-19 and School Closures: What can countries learn from past emergencies?” Brookings Institution, March 31, 2020

Rebecca Winthrop, “COVID-19 is a Health Crisis. So Why is Health Education Missing from Schoolwork?” EdSurge April 3, 2020

Websites:

PBS Learning Resources

Learning Keeps Going 

Videos:

“How Learning Changes When School Happens at Home and Online,” PBS News Hour, March 31, 2020.

“‘You’re Not Alone’: How Teenagers Are Dealing with Social Distancing,” PBS News Hour, April 15, 2020.

“Teaching Special Education Online During COVID-19,” eLuma Online Therapy, March 19, 2020.

“Sesame and the IRC join forces to help Syrian refugee children,” CBS 60 Minutes, November 17, 2019.

by Shelley Sperry | Sperry Editorial

Talking with children about the coronavirus

Marie Catrett is a longtime early childhood teacher who has been contributing her shining light and insights to the Alt Ed Austin blog since 2012. She uses daily documentation to record children’s learning, support children’s interests, teach with intention, connect families to the journey, and share her work with other folks who might be interested in a playful, creative, and expressive early childhood experience. You can find more of Marie’s writings on her own blog, Guidance for Grownups.


This class has a tradition of beginning with a time for the children to share joys and concerns. They call this their “roses and thorns.” Children share about being very proud about tying their own shoes for the first time, excitement for an upcoming Frozen 2 birthday party, the sad news of a neighbor’s dog who died. After the children’s shares I say I have a thorn to say about because I am thinking about the coronavirus.

I give a long pause. Everyone is listening now. Really listening, the kind of listening you do when someone names out loud a heavy thing that you too are carrying. We don’t have to hold hard things all alone.

It is early days here in our community. As I write this, we have no confirmed cases yet, but it is everywhere in the news. Kids hear things. They read our worried faces. In my years of talking with children about hard topics they  always know when something is up. Just talking about getting the regular kind of sick is important because young children need to see that they get better!

My strategy here is to let all the children speak first, and then I take my turn.

Marie: I wanted to make a time for us today to talk about the coronavirus and anybody who wants to share about it, we’d love to hear your words. I have some thoughts to share with you, too.

—-I actually have way more happy things.

Marie: Well, we can definitely make time to hear more about happy things too. I know it can be hard to talk about big things sometimes.

—And I’m getting strong!

Marie: I’m so glad. And I think it can be so good to have time to talk about worries. Did anybody want to say about coronavirus?

—I know that it is going around the world.

Marie: Mmm, anybody else hear about that?

—The coronavirus is at the front of my school. At the doors. And at the front. And on the handles. Maybe you have to go to a new school on a bus.

Marie: You’re saying you are worried about your school.

—Yeah.

—The coronavirus is bad for you.

Marie: Has anybody else heard about that?

—It’s kind of killing people a little bit.

Marie: Yeah, hearing that sounds pretty scary.

—Yeah!

—I heard that on cruise ships that more than one person had the coronavirus. And some people were starting to die and there was like an old man and an old woman and they didn’t have it but the doctors on the cruise ship were trying to keep them as healthy as possible. So they wouldn’t get it.

Marie: Mmhmm, that is so important, and this has been in the news, hasn’t it? A lot of talking about it.

—Yeah, and you have to wash your hands. For at least twenty seconds!

Marie: Yeah. So, some of this is a lot like the flu. Do you know about the flu?

Kids: Yes!

Marie: Have you ever gotten sick with something like the flu? Your tummy doesn’t feel good, you have a fever, maybe you throw up.

—My brother had the flu.

—I got the flu one day and then I throwed up in my bed!

Marie: Oh, yes, and I remember you talked about that before. And how are you feeling now? Do you have the flu now? Do you feel sick now or are you feeling better?

—I’m kind of feeling sick now because my sister put a toy car in my mouth!

Marie: Ah, that happened, and you didn’t like it. You didn’t feel good about it.

—I throw up in my mouth. Sometimes.

Marie: We all get sick sometimes, don’t we?

—But I never got the flu!

—Well my brother did throw up one time. My brother threw up all over the car!
Marie: Oh yes, well that can happen. You sure notice when somebody is sick don’t you? Well, is your brother sick today or is he feeling better?

—He’s not even sick.

Marie: Okay good, he’s feeling better. Yes, so, our bodies are so good at getting better. Most almost all the time when you get sick you get better.

—Except when you get the coronavirus.

—Sometimes it gets better?

—Maybe just for a few days you’ll be sick with it and then it’ll be gone.

Marie: You know some important things about this virus. Okay, here are some things I want to say about it. The coronavirus is a kind of being sick. It’s like, have you ever had a bad cold where you sneeze a lot and you might have a fever?

—Once I had a little cold!

—I had a cold one time. Every time my eyes get itchy! And my nose!
Marie: So, having a cold sometimes, getting sick sometimes, that is so normal. That happens to all of us. You get sick, you rest, your grownups take care of you. And maybe you need some medicine from a doctor to help your body get better.

—I had some medicine and it was bubble gum flavor.

—I have cherry medicine. It smells like my grandma.

—And medicine for allergies. Allergy medicine to help my eyes stop itching.

Marie: Yeah, we have so many ways to help people get better. What I wanted to say—what I want everybody to hear—with the coronavirus, people are getting sick from it. Almost all of those people are getting better and it is like having a bad cold. For some people—for people that are very old and very sick—they might have a harder time getting better from it and they might need to get more help from a doctor and going to the hospital. And some of those very very sick people, they could die from it. But for kids, and people that are healthy, which is most all of us, most of the time, for those people that get the coronavirus, it is like having a bad cold. And mostly you get better. But it’s not very fun to be sick. Right?

—No.

Marie: You rest a lot.

—But you also don’t get to go to school!

Marie: Yes, if you get sick you should stay home and not go to school.

—And you have to not be sick for one whole day before you go back to school.

—I have a doctor at my school, but all of the teachers and students call it going to the nurse.

Marie: Doctors and nurses know so much about helping people feel better. They are experts at helping us.

—If you didn’t have doctors and nurses you could die! Because you are very very sick.

Marie: We are so lucky, if someone we know gets very sick, we have doctors and nurses that can help. They have many good tools to help people get better. And if you are feeling worried about getting sick, or someone you know getting sick, because really nobody likes to be sick—

—Except when you get to stay home from school.

Marie (laughing) You don’t like to get sick, but you do like to get to stay home from school, are those your thoughts about it?

—Yeah.

—I stay home from school alllllll the time and then I play My Little Pony.

Marie: In my house we call that getting to have a hooky day. Sometimes even when you aren’t sick but you just feel like you need to have a day where you don’t have to do all the things you have to do and you just wanna play a video game and My Little Pony and wear pajamas all day and take a nap . . .

—I once did that!

—And my mom says get dressed, and I wouldn’t!

Marie: Oh, my goodness. Well, what I want to say is that if you are feeling worried about the coronavirus, please tell a grownup that you are feeling worried. So you can talk about it. So they can listen to you and think about it with you and listen to your questions. Because our job as your grownups is to think about how to help keep people safe and healthy, and so many grownups—especially doctors and scientists—are working really hard to figure out how to help people all over the whole world. Which is really good news. That is so many people coming together to make this better. Hooray for science!

—My mom is trying to be a nurse or a doctor.

Marie: Oh, that is really wonderful and exciting. We need grownups that care about helping people get better, like doctors and nurses, and like your mom.


Note: In reviewing our conversation I see that we did not address the xenophobia and racism that is accompanying people’s responses to this virus. Those are important topics to hit on in follow-up conversations for the group. 

Additional resources:

After our group conversation, I told a handwashing story using a felt board I put together, inspired by the Two Little Hands Felt Story, followed by actual handwashing by all the children. So many birthday parties at the sink today!

Each child took home the printable book NPR has put together: Exploring the New Coronavirus: A Comic Just for Kids.

Marie Catrett

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

Guest contributor Laurie Filipelli is on a mission to help writers of all ages transform their experiences into meaningful poems and personal narratives—and mightily crafted college application essays. She holds an M.F.A in Poetry and an M.A. in English and has taught high school, college, and pedagogical courses. Laurie is the author of two books of poems—Girl Paper Stone (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and Elseplace (Brooklyn Arts Press, 2013)—as well as the Mighty Writing College Application Essay Guide, in collaboration with Irena Smith, Ph.D. Her weeklong Kids with Pens poetry summer camp will take place July 20–24 and is now open for registration.

It’s happened to most of us at one time or another: you return to a cherished place after an absence—maybe a weekend, maybe years—and you find something irrevocably changed. The place no longer feels like the place you knew; a line is drawn between before and after.

After winter break, my daughter and I went back to her school and found a new chain-link fence. Given the age in which we live, this is not a surprise. People want to feel safer, and this feeling, some psychologists (and fence makers) tell us, is achieved with a strong perimeter. If we know our boundaries, we can flourish. 

As a poet, it is hard to believe this is true. Our writing may benefit from the limits of form, but it is the breaking of barriers that gives words life. We use repetition so we can augment variation. We limit our imagistic palette so that the brightest colors shine through. The impositions of an artist are self-imposed, not stifling. The most meaningful work requires not safety, but risk.

My daughter and her friend walked along the fence, gathering old balls, lots of sticks, and a busted pick-up/drop-off sign. Near the soccer goal, they erected a shrine, topping it off with a placard of painted wood on which they wrote a dedication to a time “before the fence.”

Weeks later on the playground, I couldn’t help but quote Robert Frost’s ‘Mending Wall” to a friend, not the oft misused part about good fences and good neighbors, but the part that sums up the steady work of nature in the face of artificial boundaries. Something there is that doesn't love a wall. The shrine by now had long been disassembled (the placard, serendipitously, found a home on a loving parent’s Twitter feed), but the fence itself was adorned with muddied sweatshirts. I watched with pleasure as a kid who’d mastered the art of tree climbing attempted to hurl himself over.

In our fenced-in world, it takes effort to make mischief, and imagination to move beyond our fears and longings for the past. We can’t remove most fences, but we can ask ourselves, as Frost asks in his poem, what “we’re walling in and walling out.” We can chip away at boundaries in our own minds, and, with some effort, even learn to climb.


Laurie Filipelli

Austin's Abrome joins Flying Squads as a collaborator

We are pleased to republish this thought-provoking piece by Antonio Buehler, which originally appeared on the Flying Squads blog. Antonio is, among other things, a co-founder, adult learner, and facilitator at Abrome.

Abrome is a Self-Directed Education (SDE) community in Austin, Texas, that is now in its fourth year. As Facilitators (adult staff members), we regularly critique our approach to interacting with Learners and building community, as well as how the culture of Abrome is evolving. It was through this process, for example, that we recognized the benefits of working more closely with Agile Learning Centers. Attending their trainings and bringing some of their tools and practices into our community helped us improve our skills as Facilitators and enabled us to better cultivate and protect an inclusive, non-oppressive culture that was building within our growing community. 

However, we still face a variety of challenges that many other Self-Directed Education communities struggle with. For example, accessibility will always be a challenge due to an absence of public funding. We also have limited diversity (e.g., race, nationality, religion) in a society that insists that only those with privilege can risk opting out of oppressive systems. And of course, our so-called radical belief that young people should be treated as people and not coerced for their own good is just a bridge too far for most families. Another challenge that we had not previously considered was that Abrome Learners were not in the world in the ways that free people should be able to be in the world. 

What we saw as freedom to do whatever the Learners wanted to do at Abrome, we eventually realized was freedom that was severely restricted by time and place. Abrome is not in the urban center of Austin, and public transportation does not extend to our neighborhood (intentionally so, unfortunately, thanks to lawmakers). Our Learners cannot easily walk to a library, museums, or busy intersections where people from all segments of society come into contact with one another. And even though we frequently organized outings to go to the library, visit museums, or go into the city for any other reason, we were doing so with a destination and goal in mind that resulted in time-restricted outings—we did not allocate time for exploration, evolving interests, or emergent possibilities. So while they are free at Abrome in ways that schooled children are not, Abrome Learners were still missing out on leveraging that freedom in ways that would allow them to better develop their understanding of themselves as members of a broader society and as individuals who could influence that society. 

We decided that we would experiment with an unstructured day in the city that would give them the opportunity to assert their right to exist as full people in a city that does not fully honor young people, and allow their day to unfold in ways that were not limited by the Facilitators’ feelings of needing to transport the Learners back to our physical home base. 

I wrote the following letter to parents October 6, 2019:

While we love our planned outings we recognize that they have been limiting to the Learners because we typically have a goal to go somewhere and do something specific and time bounded, and then when it is over we come back to Abrome. We are concerned that the Learners are not being given the opportunity to simply exist in the city where they can allow their plans to evolve emergently based on the combined interests of the group. Further, we want to continually push back against the notion that learning is confined to any given space, that learning objectives must be clearly defined, or that children and adolescents should not exist in public spaces during the day. We brought this up as an awareness at Friday’s Check-in and Change-up and we decided that we would experiment with an unstructured full-day outing in Austin on Thursday. The idea is that we go into or meet at a location in Austin, and then check in with the Learners and Facilitators to see how they want to collectively spend their time that day. . . . If this practice goes well we anticipate doing this once per week.

Jennifer was the Facilitator who joined four adolescent Learners on that first “Get Lost Day,” and it went fabulously well. We decided as a community that we would continue with our Get Lost Days, which have been a wonderful change of pace for older and younger Learners. These days have stretched us in terms of finding consensus and building community outside of our physical space and away from the tools that we regularly use at our physical home base. 

Soon after starting our Get Lost Days, we learned about Flying Squads. Similar to our experience finding Agile Learning Centers, we found that our beliefs and intentions lined up very well with what Flying Squads was doing. I was particularly moved by this statement on their homepage:

Even in the most caring of school and homeschooling coop spaces, a definitive line is drawn on where children learn and what space and materials are and are not for them. By intentionally not using a learning space or having predetermined tools and materials, Flying Squad participants learn the important value of abolishing these distinctions as the young people involved interact with the world outside on a regular basis, carving out a space for themselves in their city. And as they do so, they learn perhaps one of life’s most important lessons: how to find self-identity while caring for and developing a community with others.

An added bonus was that I already knew Alex (Brooklyn) and Bria (Portland) from their work advocating for children and Self-Directed Education, and I respected them greatly. After jumping on a call with them and discussing it with the other Abrome Facilitators, we decided that we would use Abrome as a vehicle for growing Flying Squads as the next step to extending greater freedom to participating young people, and in turn, helping to move society so that it begins to tolerate (and eventually embrace) free young people as full members of that society. Like the other projects, Austin Flying Squads will be operating two days per week, with one day more focused on learning through play, and the other day more focused on social justice and youth rights. We are excited to collaborate with the other Flying Squads, and we will be sharing some of our experiences and observations on the Flying Squads blog.

Taking up space is a political act

Navigating the city

Younger Learners searching nooks and crannies at a local bookstore

Antonio Buehler

Happy Birthday, Clearview!

Guest contributor Bruce Smith is a staff member at Austin’s Clearview Sudbury School. A former high school teacher with degrees in English, history, and education, Bruce co-founded the first Sudbury school in Illinois. He also staffed at Alpine Valley School in Colorado for fifteen years and is the founder and president of Friends of Sudbury Schooling. On the blog today he celebrates an important milestone in Clearview history.

Around here, people’s birthdays are kind of a big deal — especially when someone turns 10 (“Double digits!”). Well, when the school you brought into the world hits the same mark, that feels like a really big deal, too.

On November 9, 2009, Clearview Sudbury School opened with four students in two rooms rented from Genesis Presbyterian Church. Now, ten years later, 35 students enjoy nine rooms at the same location. That in itself speaks volumes for what we’ve learned about nurturing relationships and staying true to the Sudbury model of self-directed, democratic schooling. Thanks to our families and staff, as well as our friends at the church, we’re not only surviving but thriving.

Here are a few tidbits of what ten years have brought us:

• We’re the oldest existing/longest running Sudbury school in Texas.

• A total of 114 students have enrolled at Clearview, and we’ve employed ten staff members.

• One of our first-year students is still here, and nine current students have been enrolled at least six years.

• Tuition has gone up only $2,000 since 2009 (with minimum annual tuition now at $1,600), underscoring our commitment to making a Sudbury education as affordable as possible.

• We’ve brought internationally famous writer, researcher, and self-directed education advocate Peter Gray to Austin three times. (Good links to Peter’s work include his Psychology Today blog and his book Free to Learn.)

• Students and staff from more than half a dozen other Sudbury schools have visited Clearview.

• Clearview staff have attended Sudbury conferences in Massachusetts, Maryland, and New York.

• We’ve had five graduates in the past ten years.

To celebrate our big birthday this past November, we hosted an event with Jim Rietmulder, co-founder and staff since 1984 at The Circle School in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on November 15th. Please check out the YouTube videos of Jim’s talk, and consider buying a copy of his great new book, When Kids Rule the School.

Whether it’s our regular potlucks, our annual family camping trip, or just the spontaneous fun, intense interactions and deep play of daily school life, there’s always lots going on at Clearview. But don’t just take our word for it — below you’ll find the perspective of a long-time teacher and administrator who visited us last Spring.

Happy 10th Birthday, Clearview Sudbury School!

Thank you for your invitation to visit Clearview. When we spoke about the Sudbury model several weeks ago, you really piqued my interest. From the vantage point of an educator/administrator in public education for nearly 25 years, I dove into the history and researched many stories, explanations, and testimonials on this educational framework. I must admit, I found it delightful to read about how children were free to learn at their own pace and investigate based on their own interests. However, I couldn’t wait to see it in action because I truly couldn’t imagine what children would do, if left on their own, to manage their time and learning experiences.

As I visited your campus, I saw exactly what I expected to see. Some children playing video games, some climbing trees, some reading, some doing art and writing, some visiting, some on computers, and some eating. I visited with one of the children who explained to me how she felt confident about knowing how to make good choices and how to respect others. I spoke with an adult on campus who attended a Sudbury school in California. Her story intrigued me as I listened to how she was able to navigate college and make solid decisions about her future.

Perhaps the most impressive part of my visit was listening in on the Judicial Committee. This was the moment I said, “I’m impressed!” There’s a huge push in public education to bring children to a place of higher-order thinking. Many programs and methods are used. Teachers are trained in techniques and design to promote deep thinking in their classrooms. What I saw in the Judicial Committee demonstrated so much more than a scripted or contrived lesson. Children were settling their personal disputes with authentic, natural consequences with little assistance from the adults on campus. The adults that were interjecting modeled perfectly how to carefully choose words for the written record and listened respectfully to children as they decided how best to maintain order in their school. The conversations were rich, vocabulary was robust, and social skills laced with respect and reasoning skills were at an all-time high.

The result of what children are experiencing at Clearview Sudbury School tells me what I wondered as I did my homework prior to my visit. While it may seem unconventional to some, it seems so natural to the children on campus. No one is testing to see if everyone is on track. Everyone feels supported. Best of all, these children have not been robbed of their curiosity by years of sitting in rows completing worksheets. I loved it!

I was pleasantly surprised to see what I saw at Clearview Sudbury School. Thank you for broadening my horizons!! Can’t wait to see what the future holds for your students and Clearview Sudbury School. Keep up the great work!!

Bruce Smith