During the first annual ALF Summer (2014), we began to map our accountabilities as ALFs.  The exercise was simple.  We answered these four questions:  What do you do?  What gives you juice (try using ctrl+f: “juice”)?  What do you want?  What action steps will you take to get what you want?

I’m going to post my answers below, along with updated answers, which I’ll post in italics.  I happen to know that @abbyo is also currently blogging about her ALF accountabilities.  We invite all ALFs to “join us” (ctrl+f: “join us”) and map their accountabilities too!

What I do:

• Facilitate the container/space for kids to dream, design, and do that which brings them joy and life
• Answer phone calls
• Speak to parents’ questions, fears, and anxieties about trusting their kids to be independent, self-directed learners
• Bring a passion to bringing the kids outdoors
• Able to play in the kids world
• Cross-pollinate practices to other schools
• First Edition ALF
• Declare failure and own my mistakes
• Shatter the need for pretentious adulthood / Keep it light.
• Administrate the ALC Minecraft Server (ctrl+F Agile Badger)

[Agile Badger community chest room^]

What gives me juice:

• Holding the space for kids to develop free of emotional armoring and destructive forces manifested through institutions like traditional schools
• Sharing my love of sports (especially baseball) with kids
• Analyzing music, films, and TV shows to make meaning of their content
• Reading books, underling/taking notes in the margins, and blogging them later

What I want

• Our own Minecraft server so everyone can build and play together (√)
• Offer more classes/activities to homeschoolers as a means of fundraising and outreach (√)
• A new space that can house ALC-NYC, ALC-Cottonwood, and a self-directed adult co-working space

Action I will take

• Get Geva to help build a physical server or Drew to support server space
• Contact Angie Pflanz about offerings to NYCHEA network
• Place my trust in Chris and the marketing and outreach group as they search for our new home; also, hold out hope that @tomis’s lead for finding a space on Governor’s Island works out.

How do you ALF?

p.s.- based on the newly nominated (and hopefully soon to be “practicing”) ALC membrane designations, I am a:

Holder (formerly Cake Holder), with the capacity to be a Multiple-Holder (formerly Muffin Tin)

Looking forward to being peer-reviewed confirmed as such.