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Conflicting needs of on camera / off camera

Have people name capacity in the chat

Change settings to just look at the speaker and hide self view

Quiet room option in breakout rooms

Padlet for group convos

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Are we ready for school abolition?

To tear down what doesn’t serve us and build what does.

Separate school & education

Control of bodies & time

White people as models / mentors and the historical context of that

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Political Education

All that awakens political consciousness: “the cultivation of the virtues, knowledge, and skills necessary for political participation.”

Abolitionist Journal + Abolitionist Journal Study Guide

NY Guide on incarcerated children in NY

The Peer defense project is building a freedom law school

Black Students Demanding Change

Framework:

Culture

Accountability

R -

Education

Support

We tried to build the community that we knew we needed it

Kids shouldn't have to ask for these things

Micere Keels definition on counter spaces

School sanctioned vs unsanctioned

A lot of things that we’re imagining aren’t unrealistic

“Since the things you’re fighting for are bound to affect other people, then those people should be involved in fighting too”

Take inspiration from others

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Law Resources

https://movementlawlab.org/

NLG for legal observer training https://www.nlg.org/

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Reflection + Discussion → define: borders & colonial education

Translation thoughts

Not everything will or can be translated

Can translate in writing or in spoken language (i.e. via chat, etc.)

https://www.guillermogomezpena.com/

Miro platform

Physical borders vs. mental and social borders

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Sylvia Rodriguez - “Decolonize Academics”

Most of us are trained in school to be searching for how we can pick each other apart

Instead what if knowledge is held collectively and we search for ways to build knowledge collectively

Reflections on what learning has been for you? What is it? How does it feel for you? What have you been told? How does that change if we think about our relationship to others in the space?

Agile Learning Centers - https://agilelearningcenters.org/

https://datschoolnola.org/education-model/

Restoration and Democratic process are important but adults are responsible for safety. We are the stewards & we are paid to be here.

abby@alcnyc.org

Dat School is an example in New Orleans
https://datschoolnola.org/education-model/

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3. Tools and Practices
Tools and practices are the leaves of the Agile Tree. As a group they help the tree nourish and feed itself; however, no individual leaf is essential to the health of the tree. Some may be useful on a daily basis. Others get pulled out only a couple times a year. And they change! Like leaves, tools and practices have seasons of relevance: they are used when they're useful, changed when what's needed of them changes, and set aside when they are no longer of service. We have a sizable inventory of tools and practices, and we're always adding to it.

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Dat School is a Part of the Agile Learning Center network Understanding the Components of Self-Directed Learning Agile Learning Centers is a rapidly expanding network of schools and communities leveraging agile tools to support self-directed learning. MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ALC Education Model: ...

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“Very few things need to be an app” → esp. When we consider potential surveillance harms & convoluted permissions

https://piedepagina.mx/the-ahuehuete-that-blossoms/

https://mayfirst.coop/en/

https://jitsi.org/

https://www.weriseproduction.com/

weriseproducers@gmail.com

Radio is accessible no matter if you have access to much electricity or wifi

Could we create a mutual aid radio?

https://lacoperacha.org.mx/

https://alternativas.comunitarias.org.mx/

Rise up → pad technology

https://pad.riseup.net/

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https://notmy.ai/news/oppressive-a-i-feminist-categories-to-understand-its-political-effects/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd

Let's make a collaborative story

The idea is to construct a short story of between 4 or 5 short paragraphs. The topic we suggest is technology and its biases. The idea is to portray a personal experience that is mixed with a substantiated source of information such as research. At the end of this guide you will find the study we suggest that you can use as a support.

Tips

1 We suggest reading the text selection (below the guide).

2 Exchange opinions about the reading

3 Share experiences related to technology biases.

5 Choose an experience to narrate.

(There are several themes you can take: surveillance, racism, artificial intelligence, patriarchy, extractivism, etc).

This is a guide to writing our story.

Title

(Try to make one, but don't worry if you don't have one, sometimes it helps to make one at the end. Write below)

First paragraph

(Introduces us to a particular experience in relation to technology, try to narrate it in third person, for example: Last year, when Aranza visited her favorite social network, she noticed that her timeline showed pictures that were mostly from ....)

Write the following =>

Second paragraph

(You can address the study, e.g.: According to the study Artificial Intelligence published in 2021, AI should be understood as a development from the dominant social practices of engineers and computer scientists...)

Continue writing =>

Third paragraph

(Here we can better relate the story to the study, problematize and reflect, for example: ...realized that this situation was not unique to this social network, because as the study points out, companies not only mediate but end up endorsing the commodification of women's identity).

The wording continues=>

Fourth paragraph

(There are no rules for this, although a good ending should close the particular story, at the same time it should encourage us to remain interested in the issues).

End the writing =>

Fifth paragraph?

(Feel free to add or make your story more complete, don't limit yourself. The important thing is to unleash creativity, reflection and collaboration.)

================================= Suggested Reading ===================================

Oppressive A.I.: Feminist Categories to Understand its Political Effects

According to the “Algorithmic Accountability Policy Toolkit”, released by AINOW, A.I. should be understood as a development from the dominant social practices of the engineers and computer scientists who design the systems, the industrial infrastructure, and the companies that run these systems. Therefore, “a more complete definition of A.I. includes technical approaches, social practices, and industrial power.” (AINOW, 2018).

A.I. in the public sector

Despite all these questions, many States around the world are increasingly using algorithmic decision-making tools to determine the distribution of goods and services, including education, public health services, policing, and housing, among others. Beyond principles, more empirically, particularly within the US, where some of these projects have been developed further than pilot phases, confronted with the evidence on bias and harm caused by automated decisions, Artificial Intelligence programs have faced criticism on several fronts. But more recently, governments in Latin America are also following the hype to deploy A.I. systems in public services, sometimes with the support of US companies that are using the region as a laboratory of ideas which, perhaps fearing criticism in their home countries, are not even tested in the US first.

A. Surveillance of the poor: turning poverty and vulnerability into machine-readable data

The former United Nations Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, has criticized the phenomenon in which “systems of social protection and assistance are increasingly driven by digital data and technologies that are used to automate, predict, identify, surveil, detect, target and punish.”

B. Embedded racism

For the UN Special Rapporteur, E. Tandayi (2020), emerging digital technologies should also be understood as capable of creating and maintaining racial and ethnic exclusion in systemic or structural terms.

Ruha Benjamin (2019)  discusses how the use of new technologies reflects and reproduces the existing racial injustices in US society, even though they are promoted and perceived as more objective or progressive than the discriminatory systems of an earlier era.

From technology development itself, in her research, Noble (2018) demonstrates how commercial search engines such as Google not only mediate but are mediated by a series of commercial imperatives that, in turn, are supported by both economic and information policies that end up endorsing the commodification of women’s identities.

C. Patriarchal by Design: sexism, compulsory heteronormativity, and gender binarism

Many AI systems work by sorting people into a binary view of gender, as well as by reinforcing outdated stereotypes of gender and sexual orientation. A recent study co-authored by DeepMind senior staff scientist Shakir Mohamed exposes how the discussion about algorithmic fairness has omitted sexual orientation and gender identity, with concrete impacts on “censorship, language, online safety, health, and employment” leading to discrimination and exclusion of LGBT+ people.

D. Colonial extractivism of data bodies and territories

Authors like Couldry and Mejias (2018) y Shoshana Zuboff (2019) review this current state of capitalism where the production and extraction of personal data naturalize the colonial appropriation of life in general. To achieve this, a series of ideological processes operate where, on the one hand, personal data is treated as raw material, naturally disposable for the expropriation of capital and, on the other, where corporations are considered the only ones capable of processing and, therefore, appropriate the data.

Full study in: https://notmy.ai/news/oppressive-a-i-feminist-categories-to-understand-its-political-effects/

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XSCqor9IhpVn94RjDEA4caQA53ADegmgsaW8BJ11aUY/edit?usp=sharing

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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3m: explore padlet

5m:

- Each person share one phrase or idea from this Padlet that is making you think.

- As a group, create one question in response to this Padlet. Write it down.

- Seek to answer your question until time is up

Improv: 30 sec move continuously, 30 sec write continuously, 30 sec draw continuously

Embodiment - Body Mapping: create a mental map of all of the sensations in your body

Where is their tightness, pressure, tingle, scratchiness, bubbling, spaciousness, temperature, stiff, loose, achey, absence of feeling

DO NOT ASSIGN A STORY, just sensation

Don’t forget to breathe

Form - attending to the how, form = content, how we do everything is as important as WHAT we’re doing

Describe literally what happened in this session

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Moment work - Techtonic Theatre Company

https://www.akpress.org/liberated-to-the-bone.html

https://www.shannonstott.com/

https://arawanahayashi.com/spt.html

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https://mayfirst.coop/en/

https://pad.riseup.net/

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About May First

May First Movement Technology is a non-profit membership organization that engages in building movements by advancing the strategic use and collective control of technology for local struggles, global transformation, and emancipation without borders.

We are a democratically-run, not-for-profit cooperative of movement organizations and activists in the United States and Mexico. We've been around since 2005 and our 850 members (mostly organizations and mainly in the U.S. and Mexico) host over 10,000 email address and over 2,000 web sites on our collectively owned and secured hardware that run exclusively on encrypted disks.

Our members run our organization via a race and gender diverse elected body of movement activists, organizers and technologists

Besides hosting that data, our organization participates in networks, coalitions and campaigns organizing around many technology-related issues and has distinguished itself in confronting many legal threats and standing up to subpoenas.

That's what we are. Here's what we're not: we are not a company or a service provider or a collective or a small non-profit. All those things are fine and many of those types of organizations do outstanding work. We just do something else.
Who is on your board? What do you do?
We believe that movements for fundamental change must prioritize the use, protection and democratization of technology. We want our movements' leadership to think about those goals and develop a unified plan to make them happen. That's the basis of our work and it makes May First one of the most active and prominent technology organizations in the Left of this country.

We are a leading organization of the Media Justice Network; a founder and leader of the Radical Connections Network; a long-time member of the Association for Progressive Communications; a member of several new economy coalitions and networks and we have been involved in many coalitions and networks set up to deal with specific issues and struggles. We participate in many conferences and major convergences in the course of the year in the U.S., in Mexico and internationally. Our representatives will participate in over 20 such events during any year.

Our unique and unprecedented Technology and Revolution series has brought together over 1500 movement leaders and activists in the U.S. and Mexico in 24 convergences since 2017 to think and talk about the intersection of technology and revolution and to forge a program of work we can do around technology.

That commitment to movement work is also seen in our commitment to the protection of our data. Our members are frequently hit with demands for data from governments, take-down notices from corporations or Denial of Service attacks from political enemies. We resist them all. We have successfully resisted denial of service attacks on members working on reproductive justice, Palestinian rights, and the Black Lives Matter movement. We refused to give the FBI details when it demanded payment information that would have identified the members of an Independent Media Center site in Greece. We have consistently refused to take down satire websites by members such as the Yes Men, which corporations consider trademark violations.

But those are only the most dramatic instances because, day to day, we fiercely protect data through encryption, back-up and monitoring. Our members' data is our movements' tool and our movements are our priority.

All of this - our movement work and our data protection - has a purpose: to help our movements build a new relationship with technology. We want our movement to think about technology, develop a program to protect and expand it and actually work on that program. We want to be a platform for that kind of collaboration: the democratic control and expansion of technology as a tool for human survival and the struggle to make that happen. We want to build that and we want to model it.
How much does it cost?
Members pay their dues and a yearly service fee. For an individual, dues are $25 a year; $50 for an organization. If the member wants full service (websites, email, etc.) they pay another $75 for individuals and $150 for organizations.

That's it. You can have as many websites, email accounts and other resource usages you need. No extra charge.

Members who want a dedicated server usually pay an extra fee of $50 to $300 a month. The member decides what the fee is and lets us know.

The reason for this policy is simple: your increased use of the organization's resources usually means you're doing more work and your increased work benefits all our members as movement activists and human beings. So, as a political organization, we encourage that rather than charge extra for it.
How does democracy work?
Our members make our key decisions through meetings.

The yearly Members Meeting usually takes place in the Fall and takes at least three actions:

develops and then ranks the priorities which describes the general thrust of our work for the coming year

the approval of the organization's yearly financial report

the election of members to our 21 - 25 person Board of Directors

The Board meets quarterly. The Board leads May First based on the priorities document and budget by approving work plans, appointing work groups and hiring staff. Those work groups and staff carry on the day to day work plan implementation.

By the way, any May First member can attend a Board meeting or a meeting of any of its work groups. You can't vote at the Board meeting unless you're a Board member but you can participate.
How do I get involved?
Those social diseases have long plagued technology work and are particularly prevalent in the culture of movement technology. For our entire existence, we have worked to combat both racism and sexism through conscious recruitment, representation, and a member approved statement.

Most Board members are people of color and half are women. All major representation of May First Movement Technology to the U.S. and world movements must include at least one person of color and one woman. Exceptions to this rule should be approved by the appropriate Board working group. The coordinators of each workgroup and standing committee of the Board should include at least one person of color or woman.

We concentrate our outreach and recruitment efforts on organizations of the Global Majority and conduct meetings using popular education methods as a foundation to reflect the diversity of our members. All meetings and public events are conducted in English and Spanish with qualified, professional interpretation.

We recommend using:

mumble for audio-only conferences of up to hundreds of participants with tools to support human-assisted simultaneous interpretation.

Jitsi Meet for video-based meetings of 20 or fewer participants

Discourse for an email and web based text discussions

For a full explanation of our politics and the options for online meetings, please see our full article on online meetings.
How do I join?

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About May First May First Movement Technology is a non-profit membership organization that engages in building movements by advancing the strategic use and collective control of technology for local struggles, global transformation, and emancipation without borders. We are a democratically-run, not-for-profit cooperative of movement organizations and activists in the United States and Mexico.

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General Thoughts and Notes
- This workshop used guided meditation to "time travel" to your reflect on your past and future selves and, more specifically, focused on how to use this as a liberatory practice to build "radical hope and collective dreaming".

-Practice is rooted in the belief that all organizing is science fiction.

- Radically reimagining the world we want to live in = world building

- focus on non-linear timelines

- Could be a really useful practice to use with students as a way to incorporate both grounding and radical imagination as part of a unit on speculative fiction.

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-letter writing as pleasure and play
- letter writing as a way to fall more in love with the world around you through the eyes of your friends

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What words do you think of when you think of a letter? What does the letter writing genre mean to you? 

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What words do you think of when you think of a letter? What does the letter writing genre mean to you? 

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-Commitment   -Ideas   -exchange  -communication  - connection  - space for vulnerability  -sacred process
-ritual -SLOWNESS(communication) -discovery - archive

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2003 - ongoing

In 2003 a holiday project at the University of Brighton titled 'Location Vocation Vacation' called for mail art. One post card per week was to be sent as a document of experiences to Margaret Huber , the then second year Illustration tutor.

Over two hundred A6 sized 'cards' have since been sent (and received) from all over the world. Hair, fish, a sachet of white powder, a piece of broken record, mossy bark... Only some twelve cards have never reached their destination. Margaret still receives mail at irregular intervals.

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2003 - ongoing In 2003 a holiday project at the University of Brighton titled 'Location Vocation Vacation' called for mail art. One post card per week was to be sent as a document of experiences to Margaret Huber , the then second year Illustration tutor.

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Two poets forge a bond amid the shifting landscape of contemporary America.

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by Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil

SUMMER
IN THE LATE JULY swelter and dragonfly buzz of summer, poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay began a correspondence of poems - sent the old-fashioned way, through the mail. Aimee wrote from her flower garden in Fredonia, New York, Ross from his fruit and vegetable garden in Bloomington, Indiana. Here, then, is how they made sense and record of a full year in their respective gardens. "It is our hope that some of the pleasure and anxiety of tending these gardens - which is to say, tending to ourselves, our relationships, our earth - comes through in these poems," says Ross. "There's bounty, yes. But there's loss and sorrow too: like a garden, like a life."

I still marvel at all the people who first mapped the summer sky -
the pretty patterns from chalk and string they pulled
across the fresh-swept floor. Every monster wishes their teeth
gleamed louder than Vega, summer's brightest star. Every night
has its own delights: waxwing, paper moth, firefly larvae.
I would drink the red and blue stars if I thought my thin throat
could handle it. Even at the darkest hour, my garden throws
furtive dots of pale light to guide my steps: the bubble of fresh
egg-froth on a frog's back, the secret bloom of moonflowers
when the children have been tucked into their tiny beds.

O teasel bur and grasshopper-how you catch in the hem of my skirt
like a summer cough. It's exhausting, this desire. But I would never
trade it for any shiny marble. Would you? I love the silence
of sweat in these slow days of summer. All the mysterious sounds
in the trees - like a sack of watches - while I tend to tomato plants
who have only thought to give four fruits this entire month.

- AN
AUTUMN

It's true. No golden marble or treasure chest or even
tongue mapping me ankle to the cove behind my ear
quells that guttural tug by which I unwind bindweed
from each thorny raspberry cane, or clip the fish pepper
from its scaffolding, or swing my ax if need be.
With which I hack back the jackass branch
or beg the rampant sunchokes this way, or that.
Or dream beneath the currant's
myriad golden mouths.

Some days I catch glimpse of the hurdy-gurdy path I make
through this garden: ooh! the gooseberries aglow,
ooh! the lemon balm tufting up, ooh! wasps swilling the golden florets
of bolted kale, and Good Lord the strawberry flowers
are the pursed lips of ghosts
I want to know. Yes, today I am on my belly
for that scant perfume, this invisible parade
of dying and bloom.

- RG

At the onset of fall, there are days full of the need
to exhale without sound around the crispy aquilegia
stalks. One last plume of astilbe is the only shot of pink left,
and even now drifts of unraked leaves threaten to choke
it out. I wouldn't wish this sickness on anyone.

The only sound I remember from that week
with you at summer's end was the terrible toss
of bullfrogs flinging themselves into the pond
when we approached. Wait. The only sound
I remember is actually a color, muddy river water

that hides an ancient fish. I never sat up nights
with sick horses and I wonder if that's
the difference: their coughs will never haunt me.
They say frogs are vanishing all over the Midwest,
but I can still hear them.

- AN
WINTER

And yet, and yet, when the cold
makes brittle what remains - the spent okra
stalk, the few pepper plants that hung on
through the first two frosts, those little gold
tomatoes - when it withers even the rogue
amaranth, its tousled
mane bent and defeated,
when the silver maple out front has ceased whispering,
and when the bullfrogs nestle into their muddy lairs,
and the peepers go where they go,
and the crows circle,
just down the street, its leaves
too mostly blown off, spindly
and creaking in the wind,
while the whole world shimmers with death,
hauling all its sugar into perfect globes
the size of a child's handful,
giddy, it seems,
at the sound of ants
slurping beneath, at me
joining them, brushing away wood chip and beetle
before burying my tongue
in the burst pulp
dropped on the earth below,
the persimmon
gives its modest fruit
for yet a while.

- RG

This time I left. I could not swallow

these dark weeks of the new year
even though this is supposed to be
my season - the constellation of a goat
draped over us now is supposed
to comfort and stay the coils around
my heart. I thought I would regret I didn't plant
a line of skunk cabbage - so warm their flowers
can thaw fly wing and even melt snow -
but it turns out I never needed them.
When I returned from Florida:

no snow to inch over the barely used woodpile,

no snow to reveal the mysterious visitors arriving at night,

no snow like pale kites cut and lost in a terrible wind,

no snow starfishing from the sky and onto a bleak beach,

no snow collected on the weak scatter of straw in the old berry patch

and the ground softens under my boot because
too many grosbeaks herald the sunrise and where
are these newly designed nests they've never had to build
like this: a lighter, brightly lit story of architecture and twig?

- AN
SPRING

And maybe there's some other story:
the finger's plow furrowing a scar
for seeds through the loam,
and the way the flesh's million filaments
fleck like mica the soil
till it glows - no, no.
The earth is heating up, I mean to say.
Nothing like peach blossoms in February to tell you
something's off - when these
shivered and shimmied in the wind,
it was a full month early.
Do you know what I'm asking?
The garden these days leans in as if to say,
"You're fucked, friend."
It says so with equanimity, all its leaves
quaking through the bright light
like applause for the dead.
If the garden had shoulders, I think,
it'd shrug them. Berries today,
the blue jay divebombing the cat today,
the silver maple loosing its twirling battalions today,
desert tomorrow.
What am I trying to say?
The tiny prints of your kids' feet in the garden
filling with shadow?

- RG

No shadows here, only mud.
Praise the caked-up trowel, hand rake,
and grass scissor. I want to kiss each crumble
of sunbaked earth as my sons welcome iris
and drunk ants whirl-rush over each juicy peony bud.
After warm rains come the spring peepers shivering
out of the mud and sitting half in, half out of a puddle.
You must know the bees have come early
this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams,
bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough
to not have crisped with the last late frost. Whatever light
bees give off after the last snow, I hold up to you now.

I cannot explain the click-step of beetles.
You are on your own for that. I grew up with patience
for soil and stars. Lace and pyrite. I believe
in an underworld littered with gems.
In another life, I have to. Sometimes I lose track
of all the bees and their singing.

You thought I said stinging.

- AN

Maybe you're right: let us stop explaining.
I know those ants too - soon
they'll slurp caves into the handful of apples
that come on the pipsqueak tree out back,
or scurry dizzy on the sugar
glazing the sweetest bean I've ever tasted,
the beans themselves tonguing
through the spent cherry bush.
Terrified as I am - and I am -
the bumblebees furrow the pursed
and purple lips of false indigo
for the dusty blush
and I want to go make a hallelujah
of my own simple body. Not to mention
the cup plants just coming up out back
can hold mouthfuls of wet
despite the months-long drought.
All is never lost.
Some of what remains
of my father swims amidst the breathing
roots of the plum tree. You could almost
see him look out from the leaves' stomata
in spring, or his fingerprints pressed into
the delicate whorls of the young bark.
And when the tree makes its first
fruit next year, or the next,
it won't only be in dreams
he's back. I think I too will be
so lucky some day. Some day,
I think, so too will you be.

- RG

Ross Gay is the author of the poetry collections Against Which and Bringing the Shovel Down; his poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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Orion Magazine | Letters from Two Gardens

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by Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil SUMMER IN THE LATE JULY swelter and dragonfly buzz of summer, poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay began a correspondence of poems - sent the old-fashioned way, through the mail. Aimee wrote from her flower garden in Fredonia, New York, Ross from his fruit and vegetable garden in Bloomington, Indiana.

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-Got some resources and pieces to use to teach letter writing as a genre

- They modeled a fantastic scavenger hunt type of activity as a writing prompt, that I think would be a particularly engaging way to get students writing

- Loved the incorporation of using non-written art to communicate as well

-will very likely use this an introduction activity at the beginning of the year

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An abundance of resources

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Ancestors in Training Syllabus

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This workshop was a collaborative, hands on session that addressed the question "What if we created from a place of belonging?".

Particularly as impacted folks who frequently create from a place of reaction or from a place of feeling displaced.

Workshop mostly consisted of the five hosts showing their own processes and examples. Unfortunately we did not do much engagement or creation as originally intended.

I did find the artwork they presented very inspiring( especially as an adopted and fostered person).

I also did feel very inspired by the possibility of implementing zine making with students, particularly to have them create memoir style writings from a place of belonging.

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ALT: images of wooden letter blocks scattered around the frame. in the center, the words story telling with a lit lightbulb.

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Storytelling as Self-Liberation (General Summary and Notes)

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Storytelling as Self-Liberation (General Summary and Notes)

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This was my first and most favorite session of the entire conference (and the competition is deep, y'all!). We were prompted at the beginning to tell a story of a moment in our lives in education when we had a realization or felt liberated or radicalized. We then went into partners and told our stories to one another, then we created logins on anchor.fm, a free site for posting and hosting podcasts, and recorded our stories. We were able to do some basic editing (add music, cut parts out, etc.) as the site is very intuitive and user-friendly, and the co-facilitators were very helpful to each individual participant.

It was incredibly moving on so many levels;  recalling a powerful moment in life, sharing your personal story with someone previously unknown to you personally, and then preserving that story in a more polished way are just some of the ways in which I felt truly transformed.

I've listed ideas below this for how this can be used at Living School; as well as a link to the podcast I recorded within that 90 minute session.

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The page you were looking for was not found.

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ALT: a closeup of a recording microphone with a pop filter in the foreground. 

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I have several ideas for how this session can be a powerful offering for LSNO:
- PW running an afterschool podcasting club
- using Anchor.fm for student projects within classes
- combining forces with the music production class or other electives to produce a podcast with student-created music
- media for the LSNO community, especially for advertising upcoming events, etc.

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...Opening Spotify...

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Listen to the learning curve on Spotify.

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ALT: Several people are seen behind a metal barrier, seemingly at a protest. A blue banner is draped over the barrier & says "Reparations NOW #cutthecheck"

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This was also a top session! During this time, two co-facilitators explained how they came to work around reparations at their full time jobs, and then how one of them co-founded a consultancy based on ensuring that organizations and companies offer values-aligned compensation and salary rather than action/task/productivity aligned, as the latter can be very white supremacist, subjective, and/or unfairly disadvantage those who have disabilities or neurodiversities that prevent them from being as archetypically "productive" as others.

This session is the one that most transformed my thinking in such a short time, and is something that built a huge fire in me to share with the most other people.

One of the co-directors developed a whole new framework (I have screenshots and a recording of the session that I can include & share) for considering how people get paid equitably at a business in a way that doesn't penalize them in traditional and common ways (e.g. for being disabled, having other health conditions, being neurodivergent, etc.). Given that I've *only* worked at places that have either a severe or mostly white-supremacist leaning framework for compensation, including LSNO, I feel like this is the session that challenged me most to think about what's possible and how to be an equitable place for people, whomever they are.

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- discussing a framework for compensation that accounts for each roles' emotional labor
- understanding how the majority of all compensation/salary frameworks are situated on a foundation of white supremacist principles
- with a committee, identifying the core values of Living School and working through a sample exercise of what a salary chart could look like with justice as a central tenet

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ALT: a curved bookshelf that covers most of the image space. The foreground, on the left, has three bookshelves in view with multiple books on each shelf.

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This was the session most aligned with its summary. The summary was "Learning, like art-making, is natural, and happening all the time – but conventional school claims otherwise, designed to uphold the hierarchy that put it place. It's not by accident they taught you that you're not an artist. In this session all participants, regardless of artistic experience, will make marks, tell stories, and generate original zines as jumping-in places to play with questions of learning vs schooling, creativity, futurity, and education."

The session was led by an individual  with long time history in both education and the arts, both overlapping and separately. Our facilitator began with a story of self (what inspires and fuels them, as well as what led them to the work they're currently doing) and then used said story as a conversation starter. We split into smaller groups to discuss our own stories of self (in an abbreviated version) with others, then identifying moments in our own educational experiences where we EITHER felt othered OR as most aligned with how we thought/learned/best processed information. We used those experience examples to discuss what traditional education currently tends to expect of us (us = students, parents/families, educators) versus what experiences pulled out the best in us.

We compared and contrasted those experiences and then made commitments on how wanted to provide those opportunities for our current communities.

I felt very aligned to this session because the vast majority of the faciltator's examples as well as the life experience of other participants were similar to what I experienced in my K-8 grade years in a Montessori environment. So much of the way in which Montessori programs are set up helped me, especially with my neurodiversities, to understand how to engage as a lifelong learner, to ask questions and seek answers, to experiment, to craft, to show and prove my work, and I was left with a lot of reflections on how I want to coach others (esp. my teachers) to get to this level of granular understanding with everything they ask students to do.