Agenda:
Recap
Roles and Structure
Course Approval
Core Team Roles
Summer Plans
Next Day of Classes
Intros: In attendance....Laura, Roxy, Alex, Ian, Darcy, Christopher, Dix, Alice
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Recap:
- Seeing as this was our first student union, we went over a brief re-cap of the Free Skule's progress so far.
- Free skule started having meeting in the early winter, in and amidst another project which never came to be
- we discussed what education meant to all of us, and how we envision future classrooms. This lead us to create our living document, which was later published in the form of our first zine, which you can check out on this site for more details.
- within the group, there was a lack of accountability, and commitment...which meant we weren't moving forward. No project can be successful without people to hold it up.
- This lead us to create our wonderful organizational structure, which you can also find in the 1st volume zine.
- We had our first day of classes on May 3rd at the re-occupation, which was very sucessful. Some classes had low attendance, but that is to be expected as most people present did not sleep the night before, and the camp itself was in low attendance. The smallest class had 4 students, the largest 8.
- At the re-occupation we had our first skule-wide discussion (to happen once a month), which was attended by about 15 people, and went very well.
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Roles and Structure:
- we once again went over the structure for the free skule organization:
here it is again:
The Core
Team: administrative / co-coordinating roles, including, but not
limited to: student co-coordinator, space finder, course-coordinator, zine
editor, web administrator, and supply director. In short, the core group keeps
the wheels spinning, and co-ordinates volunteers. Each member of the core group
is responsible to mentor a, of team of, successor(s) within a 6 month period.
An individual must be a part of the student union to become a member of the
core team. In this way, we stay fluid and collective.
Student
Union: anyone can become a member. All they have to do is attend
two meetings, and put in 4 hours of volunteer work - this has been dropped for the first month. We have meetings once a week. Safe space guidelines apply; must agree to overall principles of
free skule. There will also be a volunteer orientation meeting every week, or
on a needs basis.
Proposals: Anyone can make a new proposal, member or visitor.
Major decisions must be proposed at least 1 week in advance. Other proposals can
be made on the fly. Proposals that cannot easily be amended go to an ad hoc
committee or the authoring group to be re-worked and represented at the next
meeting
Decision-Making: We start with full consensus. If, after much discussion, there
are over 50% stand-asides or 10% blocks, we move to 90%. For major decisions,
everyone must be present; quorum fluctuates with importance of decision.
Different types of decisions have different decision-making processes. Changes
to core documents require full participation and a super majority, while
regular decisions require quorum and a simple majority; and decisions that are
made and executed by a working group only need to be communicated to the larger
whole
Courses: anyone can
teach. Each course becomes an affinity group - responsible for its own development; it must be approved
by the student union with regular updates at least once a month.
Skule-wide discussion: On the 2nd of every month. The whole community comes together to
discuss the free skule structure, what’s working, what’s missing, how we can
better ourselves, etc. No decisions are made.
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Course Approval: As a group, we needed to decide what it means for the student union to approve a course, and what requirements we place on a course. After about an hour discussion, here's what we came up with (
100% consensus was reached on each point):
Approval does not mean whether the course is approved or not, but rather, how we can make it work.
Course Guidelines:
- Courses may be taught by 1 teacher-learner, co- or rotating teacher-learners, etc. It is ideal that courses be taught by co-teacher-learners, but not required
- There is no content-restriction - the students will self-govern the courses by either showing up to learn, or not
- We ask for action based courses: this means, that we are asking learner-teachers, and teacher-learners to take the knowledge they learn together, and bring it into real world settings. This might mean the human rights class sending in documents to the UN, the philosophy class hosting a speakers corner on the street, the gardening class guerilla gardening, etc.
- In this, we ask that courses contain
minimal lecturing - what minimal means is left up to the teacher-learner to decide. For a history class, it may be necessary to have an hour lecture followed by an hour discussion, but for a writing class, there may be no lecturing necessary at all.
- We also ask that teacher-learners take 5-15 minutes at the beginning and end of their classes to discuss how everyone in the class is doing. This check-in is a free skule ideal, to be implemented at the teacher-learner/learner-teachers' convenience/desire
What the student union needs from our teacher-learners before a course can begin:
- A Short Description
- Time-requirements (is it 2 or 3 hours, 1 or 8 weeks)
- If you require a student minimum or maximum
- Resource and space requirements
- A loose, basic lesson plan for Day 1.
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Core Team: again, those occupying core team positions are not those who are responsible to do all the work, but rather are responsible to make sure all the grunt work gets done. They are also the ones who have more time to commit.
* note: we are looking to change our names to much more fun, and outside the box titles....ideas?
Core team positions we already have filled.....
Course Co-ordinator: this role includes - finding and contacting teacher-learners, making sure they submit a proposal to the student union, creating a schedule, and support for teacher-learners - particularly those who are not familiar/comfortable with popular education models, the course-co-ordinator is there to help develop curriculum, find activities, etc.
- Roxy has taken up this role
Outreach Co-ordinator: this role includes: building allies, and contacting other groups also working on education; logos, flyers, newsletter, and zine.
- Laura outreaches for free skule
Web Administrator: develop and update the website; keep up administration of contact lists
- Darcy administers our web
Space Co-ordinator: finding space "in case of rain", choosing parks/locations, searching for fall space.
- Christopher will find us space!......and make/maintain a twitter account
Rotating Vacation: to prevent activist burnout, we find it important to keep our core team on rotating vacations...everyone needs to relax
- Alice will relax for all of us for 2 weeks.
Core team positions still needed to be filled (THAT MEANS YOU!)
Student Co-ordinator: get us students!!!!! Advertise! Send out emails! Be a listening ear to current students! Works with outreach and course co-ordinator to make free skule far reaching, and far out!
Supply Acquirer: We need supplies - paper, pens, hero tents, arts and crafts supplies, etc. Scrounge, get union funding, university funding, state funding. Whatever your means, we need you!
- Alex is going to ask his union for some supply $$$$ - go Alex, go!
Librarian: we didn't talk about this one at the meeting, but it dawned on me that it would be very nice to have someone dedicated to the library. This includes acquiring new books, finding space for the books, taking care of the mobile library, dealing with loans, etc.
- Roxy and Laura currently do this work
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Summer Plans:
We Will Be Learning and Teaching Every Sunday and Tuesday.
Tuesday: 3-5pm - courses
5-7pm - student union meeting ****student union meetings have been changed to this time
7-9pm - courses
Sunday: 12-1pm - meet up, talk, coffee and snacks, half hour optional yoga and meditation
1-3pm - courses
3-5pm - courses
5-7pm - courses
7-8pm - informal skule talk: how did the day go, what can we do better, what did you learn?
Additional notes:
Every day needs some sort of food and drink
We need a new name for the skule - keep it in mind, we'll have a submission time for everyone to give suggestions
The library will join every day of class
Next Day of Classes:
SUNDAY MAY 20th @ St. James Park 12-8pm! List of Courses to be displayed soon!
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Volunteering needed before the 20th:
Advertising - mic checks, word of mouth, flyers
Library - cataloguing, decorating the mobile library
Courses - need descriptions from teachers
Students -we need students on the day
Food/Drink - anyone?
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NEXT MEETING: TUESDAY MAY 15TH - LOCATION TBA....MOST LIKELY TRINITY CHURCH
LOTS TO TALK ABOUT, HOPE TO SEE YOU OUT!
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Minutes written up by: Roxy
For members who were present, please comment if i missed anything, or mis-interpreted anything
