Week 16 2024-2025 in Review
A through thread from our week together was the notion of closeness - both literal and metaphorical. One young person, noting the frigid temps outside, remarked, "These are not our normal conditions." Indeed - they are not! This week felt out-of-sorts for many reasons: the pop-up power outage Monday morning that resulted in a late start, more indoor time and physical proximity than we're used to due to the hazardous cold, daily horrors in the news related to this new regime and murmurs of "Did you hear…" among the children.
Despite all that felt "off," we very much had - and have -
each other.
We made the best of our indoor hours. Young people initiated a multitude of opportunities that brought them into flow and kept them connected - drawing monsters and listening to jazz; exploring new textures of slime; considering additions to our "Dreaming Big" document; perusing our new website and suggesting edits; building and automating robots; continuing 1:1s with facilitators; and honing in on an abundance of offerings for this cycle and mapping them on the board. As soon as the temps allowed, we raced back outside to connect with our favorite sledding hills and the frozen pond.
Every day a large group of young people began with an invented game they call, "Weird Add-on." This involves negotiating shared creativity by way of drawing figures and "adding on" incrementally weird and weirder features (too many teeth and maybe not even in a mouth, strangely placed hair or noses, other fantastical features…you get the idea). They relish in taking turns generating the next add-on instruction for the group. They're drawn to assembling in a group and figuring out how to do a thing together, how to be with one another through a shared practice. At one point they created so many wild illustrations they decided to replace the hanging art in our bathroom with these new pieces, and collaborated on taking old art down and displaying the new.
As the game continued each day, it amorphized along the way as the young people changed its shape to respond to group feelings and needs and creativity. What are they learning during all this time spent "just drawing"? We could guess: a wide repertoire of social skills, including communication, active listening, and conflict resolution. Fine motor and sensory experience. Artistic lessons in perspective, shading, and realism. We could keep going. But we won't - because we know that these are only guesses. As the young people drove this game forward, changing it through a series of sessions over days, they shaped it in response to their own needs, that only exist within them, and that are different among them. Conventional systems posit that we can know, we should know, we are able to evaluate and assess and compare what's being learned. The frameworks in which we operate at TCC suggest that we actually can't really know. We accept and trust, instead, that young people innately know what they need, and that they will create that for themselves when they're in a supportive and dynamic environment, one step at a time - each step forward revealing the next, even revealing the path itself. They have the autonomy to make choices for themselves, and are supported in settling into their own agency so that they can act on those choices. More on autonomy and agency next week.
As we connected and reflected this week on what's working and what isn't, we've shifted a few things around in our weekly rhythm. As a "try it," we'll be holding Set the Week on Thursday to map out the next week ahead - this will allow us to hit the ground running on the following Monday. We'll keep meeting up for culture check-ins and co-creation on Mondays, and will add experiences and offerings to Mondays that feel slower and restful - ongoing 1:1s and small-group check-ins with facilitators, video offerings, mascot-related planning…
We're excited for the many rich offerings on the official schedule for this cycle (see this week's photo album for a peek at the board!), and just as excited about everything that happens in the shadow schedule and the closeness it brings.
With gratitude and care,
Emily, Sarah, and Zoey
