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Agile Learning Facilitator Summer Intensive (Event)

Agile Learning Centers

Why?

In a world where all information is at your fingertips we understand that success relies not on your ability to memorize or regurgitate facts, but rather to filter, organize, and creatively apply this information. An Agile Learning Center prepares young people to navigate the world by cultivating the skills of entrepreneurialism, digital literacy, resourcefulness, efficient collaboration and self-directed initiative.

What?

Agile Learning Centers are a network of self-directed learning communities creating and curating an open-sourced educational model. We borrow, invent, and evolve leading-edge tools and practices for creating healthy cultures, and share resources within our network to support its continued development.

The structure of an Agile Learning Center is designed to nourish a productive, vibrant, and healthy culture – allowing participants to engage authentically in a learning process that cultivates confidence, dynamic skill sets, mental agility, self-awareness, and group skills.

Agile Learning Centers do not have a traditional curriculum, as in a set of subjects or classes one must take. Instead, we recognize that all social environments have a hidden curriculum which are the real lessons taught by the way social interactions are structured. So we have been conscious to craft the lessons of our environment. These are the lessons we've built into our “curriculum:”

  • Identifying your own needs and priorities,
  • Creating projects which accomplish those priorities,
  • Organizing your time and activities around those projects,
  • Focus and follow through on those projects toward a creative end,
  • Sharing your creative output (in a digital portfolio),
  • Reflecting on personal progress and impediments (in a personal blog),
  • Co-creating a collaborative, supportive social environment,
  • Responsibility for your action and inaction
  • and Digital literacy




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Agile Learning Facilitator (ALF) Intensive

Why?

We believe that when it comes to teaching and learning, the medium is the message. In order to teach honesty, respect, authenticity, initiative, self-direction, follow-through, purpose, and shareable value, you must embody these traits.

We are expanding our network of learning communities and facilitators. To support this development we are providing an opportunity for educators, entrepreneurs, and other passionate people to engage a culture creation process together — to learn about the the tools and practices we use, and invent new ones to produce the desired results.

What?

 

The ALF Intensive program will be held in Charlotte, NC for three weeks beginning on Monday, July 7th.

Week 1 (Agile Intensive):

Participants gain a deeper understanding of the “why” and “how” of the ALC project, and dive right into core concepts that create coherence for this work. Together, we will create and embody the cultural values and social DNA of an Agile Learning Center. Each participant will be fully responsible for showing up, being present, adding value, and co-creating together.

 

Week 2 (Hands-on Engagement):

After spending a week culture hacking together, we will begin working with students in the context of an Agile Learning summer camp, hosted by our ALC here in Charlotte — The Mosaic School (TMS). ALFs will facilitate the camp and gain direct experience with the ALC model.

Week 3 (Reflection and Refinement):

The third week of our intensive offers new ALFs the opportunity to pull back and reflect on their experience. The TMS summer camp will continue running with our experienced ALFs, while new participants will get to flex their culture-hacking muscles by evolving or inventing tools to shift results within the camp. We will wrap up with a process for acknowledging each other’s value and identifying next steps in each participant's personal evolution.

Who?

The Agile Learning Facilitators Intensive is for adults who would like to gain the tools and experience base needed to:

  • Upgrade your organization with Agile Learning Center principles
  • Work as a facilitator in an Agile Learning community
  • Begin the process of starting a new Agile Learning Center




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When?

July 7-25, 2014

Details:

This camp is open to adults ages 18 to infinity.

The cost is $375 for a three week program, food is provided. If you are traveling from outside of Charlotte, we can arrange for a family to host your stay in the city.

Click here to register

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Exit Stage Left: National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools (NCACS)

ncacs
 
Editor's Note from Jerry Mintz: As you can see in the article below, the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools has just announced its closing. I was involved with the NCACS for many years.

 

In some ways this stems from the meeting a few of us had with Jonathan Kozol in a church basement in Boston around 1974. We talked about creating a national organization of alternatives. The NCACS was created a few years later but the original organizers then dropped it a few years after that. Pat Montgomery of Clonlara then resurrected it.
 
I learned a lot from the NCACS after getting involved again in the 1980's and this helped in the creation of AERO, which in some ways continues its work.
 
Exit Stage Left by Pat Montgomery 
 
Thirty six years ago the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools opened its doors as a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization. Its members are people who founded and/or staffed alternative schools and programs or home schools. They were then, and still are, dedicated to the precepts of the NCACS by-laws: 
  • empowering youngsters and adults to actively and collectively direct their own lives;
  • placing the control of education in the hands of the learners-students, parents, teachers; and
  • developing tools and skills to work for social justice.
These commitments marked the NCACS at the outset as one-of-a-kind. Over the years, more and more individuals and groups embraced the same beliefs to the point where, today, more people the world over practice and promote empowerment, self-directed learning, and social justice. The networking skills of Jerry Mintz, for example, have spread the word throughout the world. People in every clime who work for social justice and empowerment have coalesced. The forum of IDEC allows like-minded people to meet in person, to visit schools and programs in various parts of the globe, and to share. The work started by NCACS continues and reverberates through these and other similar efforts.

One of the treasures of the NCACS was its annual conference – from 1978 through 2009. In these assemblies, students of all ages, staff members from schools and programs, and parents presented workshops, seminars, and dramatic presentations, living and playing together for a week or so. All participated. The only restrictions to attending were in the regulation passed by those assembled at the Arizona gathering in 1983: no banned substances, no alcohol, and no objects which could be construed as weapons were permitted at any conference site, throughout the duration of the event. Youngsters from all over the U.S., from Canada, Japan, Columbia and from several other countries, were able to form friendships and stay in touch during the year. Talented youngsters – like Isaac, Takatomo, Angela, Eric, Webb and Josh and Kim (to cite but a few) – grabbed the banner of active participation in one's own learning processes and ran with it.

On April 1, 2014, the National Coalition quietly closed its doors with a tip of the hat to all of the AEROs and IDECs and IDEAs and others that carry on. Long may its principles prevail! 

Pat Montgomery
April 2, 2014  

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Brooklyn Free School on This American Life

Brooklyn Free School (www.brooklynfreeschool.org) was featured in Act Three which starts at the 38 minute, 53 second mark of the MP3 here. Let us know what you think!

ACT THREE. MINOR AUTHORITIES.
Jyllian Gunther visits The Brooklyn Free School, where there are no courses, no tests and no homework, and where the kids decide everything about how the school is run, including discipline. Jyllian is a filmmaker, working on a documentary called Growing Small. (16 minutes)
Song: “If the Kids are United (They’ll Never Be Divided)”, Sham-69

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.7 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with more than a half million people downloading each week. From 2006-2008, we produced a television version of This American Life on the Showtime network, which won three Emmys and is now re-airing on Current TV. We’re also the co-producers, with NPR News, of the economics podcast and blog Planet Money. And a half dozen stories from the radio show are being developed into films.

The radio show and TV show follow the same format. There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There’s lots more to the show, but it’s sort of hard to describe. Probably the best way to understand the show is to start at our favorites page, though we do have longer guides to our radio show and our TV show. If you want to dive into the hundreds of episodes we’ve done over the years, there’s an archive of all our old radio shows and listings for all our TV episodes, too.

For more information: http://www.thisamericanlife.org