End of Year Student Reflections
June 27, 2015Our second year of school as ended, and our practices are getting more defined. At the end of last school year, I didn’t provide much by way of documentation for each student. I hadn’t yet had time and space to really think about what I’ve decided to call “responsible documentation.”… Read more
ALC Mosaic 2014-15 Report Card
June 24, 2015[Please note this is a report card from the Branches campus, not Roots!] Report Card….Whaaaa???? Some of the kids asked me in the spring for a report card. When you are running a school with no grades, where you are hoping to foster an environment where people are intrinsically motivated,… Read more
Schooling the World
June 16, 2015This film is incredible. I hope that there are parents and ALFs in our ALC Mosaic, Agile Learning Center, and Agile Learning Facilitators network that are willing to watch this film and share it if they so feel moved. Please click here to watch Schooling The World. Many people feel… Read more
Wedding Vow
May 21, 2015I had the pleasure of marrying @Tomis last Thursday, May 14th, 2015, on my 32nd birthday. I am so grateful to have gotten married at my place of work, with all of the people I see daily. I’m thankful that the kids at school, who have watched the love between Tomis and… Read more
The Tiny House Movement & Accountability
April 26, 2015On the Tiny House Movement Over the school year, I’ve become more and more fascinated by the Tiny House movement. I’ve watched the Tiny movie with the kids at school, as well as Tiny House Nation on Amazon Instant Video at home, and I follow the movement on social media… Read more
Our Magic Book Movie!
April 21, 2015Imaginon, one of our most frequented places to visit for its Children Theater Productions, also has a special place in their Teen Loft called Studio i. Apparently this is very underutilized which is a shame! I think more people just need to know that this place exists – and is… Read more
What Do You See Happening in Education in the next 10-15 Years?
April 16, 2015It is the last day to apply for our ALF Summer Program. In the last 24 hours we’ve had a lot of applications come in! It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. Reading each application brings so much energy to me. Our second summer program has attracted some incredible people who are all working… Read more
Facilitating vs. Policing
April 5, 2015I’m an Agile Learning Facilitator (ALF), at least that’s what I’m always striving to be. What does being an ALF mean? I am working on an entirely separate post about that, but what I’d like to share here is a beautiful excerpt I found on a blog from Lisa Nalbone… Read more
Trip to the Vet
March 31, 2015We are just returning from a trip to the Veterinarian and I’ve asked the students who came on the trip to blog their reflections right after while it’s still fresh on their minds. Since one thing we believe in is “medium is the message,” I’m also going to blog about… Read more
Inter-ALC Mixing & Why I Love It!
March 6, 2015We Are Not Alone! Inter-ALC mixing, it’s what keeps us a community. I remember my time teaching in a small private school before opening Mosaic. I was one of two full-time teachers and it got lonely. We had our ideas and would collaborate together, but I always wanted more people… Read more
What are you most excited to do today?
February 24, 2015We start our days at ALC Mosaic with what’s called a “Stand Up Meeting.” It’s one of our borrowed Agile Practices (you can read about more other tools & practices here): The daily stand-up meetings happen in the morning and are conducted, not surprisingly, while participants stand. Standing keeps the… Read more
Highlights, Upgrades & Intentions
February 21, 2015We were only open three days this week due to the icy weather! I thought we’d get away with no ice or snow this year, but it didn’t happen. In this blog post, I’m going to share Highlights From This Week, Upgrades I’m Working On, and some Personal Intentions. Highlights… Read more
This week in review
February 14, 2015I’m enjoying the efforts @Lacy and I have been making to collaborate more. (Lacy started this beautiful school with me and several other families throughout 2013, and now runs the ALC Mosaic early childhood program). She’s someone I admire a lot and miss seeing on a daily basis. One day… Read more
Mosaic Magic
February 9, 2015Sometimes when we describe ALC days to parents, we will share about our morning and afternoon meetings sandwiching the bulk of our day: 10-3pm a time that we call “THE MAGIC.” I haven’t been blogging lately, and this has been weighing on my mind! Now that I am spending most… Read more
Agile Programming for the School
January 11, 2015Bruce Feiler’s TED Talk “Agile Programming – For Your Family” gives suggestions, practical tips, and real life examples of how Agile tools and practices can help create a happy home life. Many of our ALFs are aware of this TED talk, and we use it to inspire how we can… Read more
FAQ Question 1: How Will My Child Learn To Read?
January 5, 2015In the upcoming weeks, I’ll be posting on this blog answers to frequently asked questions I receive from parents interested in having their child attend ALC Mosaic. I’m inviting feedback to help make the responses to these questions clear & concise, yet also thorough enough to feel adequately answered. If… Read more
What do Students Want From Educators?
January 4, 2015Lisa Nielson, the blogger behind The Innovative Educator, recently published her blog’s top posts of all time (well since Google Analytics, came around in 2010). I had to check the list out, and found this gem from 2011. The post covers a student panel hosted by Ann Curry and Education… Read more
Gratitude in Drawings
December 20, 2014Something I have shifted to realizing now in my 30’s is that expressing gratitude regularly can have a profound effect on your life. What I am finding is that when I take the time to be grateful for all that I have in life, I stop playing the “I’ll be… Read more
What I’ve Discovered This Week
December 14, 2014Well, I’ve been really enjoying school lately. With the working groups and @Tomis keeping their eyes on admin tasks, I’ve been purely focusing on connection with the kids. It’s been amazing. Here’s what I’ve discovered about our community this week: 1) Kids take charge! Our school is becoming less… Read more
“Help! My Child is Obsessed With ___________”
December 14, 2014On Thursday evening I found myself sitting across my dining room table watching a friend of mine crying over how I’ve vanished from the life of her family. Now, to rewind, she reached out to me the weekend before asking if we could connect and catch up. Looking through our… Read more
Uncovering Origins to Inform Our Decisions
December 7, 2014On Thursday, Alona came to our small group room with a book from our library called The Book of Origins. She was feeling like having a lazy start to her day since she hurt her Achilles tendon at dance practice the day before. I leaned over to check out the… Read more
Re-visiting My Roots
November 30, 2014I remember thinking that there would be no book that would affect me like A.S. Neill‘s Summerhill when I read it. I read Summerhill during the AERO school starter course led by Jerry Mintz four months before I opened The Mosaic School, LLC in January of 2013. After reading Neill’s book I felt… Read more
Werewolves & How We Learn
November 23, 2014Werewolves. It’s totally trending in ALC’s. When the students came to visit from ALC Cloudhouse, they taught our kids this fantasy role-playing game that has recently made a huge surge in play. What is Werewolves? Do you remember the game Mafia? It’s pretty much like that except we aren’t pretending… Read more
In-ergize Charlotte
November 16, 2014Today I had the opportunity to attend a local event, In-ergize Charlotte, with Kristen and Gaby (two parents of children at ALC Mosaic). The theme of this event was to “Be Awake, Be Authentic, Be Audacious.” As we were driving to the event, we were of course talking about school!… Read more
The Opportunity in Conflict
November 9, 2014When I taught conflict resolution to kids in the past, I always started with the question, “What is Conflict?” to create a dynamic list of all the ways conflict shows up in our lives. Conflict happens. The point that I always stress to students is that how we respond to conflict… Read more
Highlights from the week – October 27-31
October 31, 2014This week was full of ease and flow. I feel like we are harvesting right now the fruits of having a group of kids that has been working on how to be in community with one another for over a year now. Some quick highlights from the week: I visited… Read more
Visiting Endor Initiative: Self-Directed Learning for Teens & Budding ALC!
October 29, 2014After a whirlwind weekend making it to two weddings in Virginia and Maryland, I arrived back to my home in Charlotte 9pm Sunday night to meet @Alonalearning. She was spending the night because we were waking up at 6:45am to head to Endor Initiative with @Gabe. Liam Nilson is running this… Read more
Intentions & last week’s failure…
October 28, 2014Intentions for the week: Create a mail chimp fundraiser for the school Prep some ideas I’d like to share about school structures at our community meeting Create a clear admissions process with the admissions working group Support Isabella with Fall Festival planning Work with students on designing the perfect school… Read more
Movie Day Reflection
October 23, 2014Movie Day happened today! One of our students, Nate, added planning a movie day to our “Seeds to Bloom” board (You can read more about what that is in our Tools & Practices forum) a few weeks ago. Today our Movie Day was in full bloom! At the end… Read more
Week 1 after ALF Weekend…the journey continues
October 19, 2014It seemed like @Charlotte, @dinospumoni, and @dthomasson and I were fueled by fire after leaving Chatham last week. The magic of the Quaker Intentional Village Community and being with other ALFers is something that stays with me…and I can see it staying with Charlotte, Dean and Dan too. What have we… Read more
ALF Weekend #1 @ Cloudhouse in Chatham, NY
October 13, 2014Well, ALF summer has come and gone and we’ve all gotten started with our various schools/homeschool groups. We’ve spent a few weeks open and operational, and converged the past weekend at our ALC Cloudhouse location in Chatham, NY for our first ALF Weekend! We gathered for the following purposes: Facilitators to… Read more
What if…? Vegas, Baby!
October 4, 2014I just signed up to attend The What if…? Conference again – this time in Vegas, baby! Last March I attended The What if…? Conference in Columbia, MO as a presenter on the topic, “What if More People Were Happy?” (As a side note, I wasn’t crazy about this title, feeling… Read more
BIF10 Highlights and A Random Act of Collision
September 28, 2014I heard about the Business Innovation Factory (BIF) last year while attending the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) in Boulder, Colorado. A friend I met there, Matt Murrie, had attended BIF for a couple years and raved about this event where “innovation junkies” come together to share ideas and create… Read more
Musings From Week 4 of School
September 14, 2014I can’t believe we just finished our 4th full week of school! It’s incredible how much things have shifted for us in just a month. We had a just a short summer break – 2 weeks long, with 2 weeks of summer camp for most of our kids thrown in… Read more
Sept 3, 2014 – Math Club
September 9, 2014Yesterday I proposed a “Math Club” at ALC Mosaic. Last year, we had a bunch of kids working on Algebra with me and I thought there would be interest. …but only Charlotte came! So what did we do? We decided to hold coherence for math at ALC Mosaic anyway. And… Read more
August 28, 2014 – “Alone, Together”
September 9, 2014This week I had one kiddo in my small group announce that he wanted to be a leader. When our small group discussed what that meant to him, at first the idea was to tell people when to do things. For example, when to eat lunch, when to read books,… Read more