what sparked your interest in coops and starting protozoa?

I got this question recently and thought I'd answer it in a public forum.

TL;DR - I like working alongside smart caring people.

My history with #cooperative and community have been informed by a few groups over the years.

Unlimited Paenga Tawhiti

now Ao Tawhiti after the earthquakes

these are bunch of people I worked with. Yes that young lady has a machete

I enjoyed working as a tutor when I was at uni, so after some sloppy (failed) post-grad maths research on blood splatter analysis, I decided to try out teaching. The training was pretty meh, but I wandered into a skype call with this place called Unlimited (some polytechnic or something?), anyway young people telling us about producing albums, making videogames, managing their own time and talking like mature adults. Towards the end of the call it turned out we'd been talking to highscool students as young as 14. I asked for a placement there, and after doing practicum in the sort of place where people gave a fuck about other people and supported actual learning I refused to take a job anywhere else.

So I live in christchurch for 4 years and, and worked with some wonderful learning advisors and some amazing young people (e.g. @nick , @quested)

Here are a couple of stories about what it was like to give you an idea.

I'm a trainee teacher in a maths class, there's a student swinging on their chair and looking out the window. Here's the dialogue between the learning advisor (Duncan) and the student (Hamish)

D: Hey Hamish, looks like you're not getting much done

H: Nah, I've got this big event coming up this week which I'm thinking about (sport/ music? I can't remember)

D: Oh that's cool! What's that about?

... 5 minutes of genuine conversation about shit that matters in Hamish's life

D: Hey, so it sounds like you've got a bunch on. If you want to go have a nap or read a book under that tree, we can catch up on your maths later. Or if you'd like to give the maths a go, we've got another 15 minutes left of this class.

Things that stood out clear as day to me :

• no bullshit authoritarianism, i.e. I was expecting "DONT swing on your chair, GET BACK into focus!" (teacher training taught me that ~ 50% of the job with coercian / crowd control / acting)
• the 'student' was open and honest
• it was an even mature conversation
• the outcome was awesome, everyone won (was respected, and supporting the student's learning was 100% nailed)

Later, when I was an learning advisor (non-authoritative teacher/ mentor), I had a group of students who'd chosen to work with me (mostly nerds). On of them (Harley) was keen to go skiing.

H: hey John (my use name then), can we go skiing

J: Yes, I'm happy to take you skiing if you figure out all the logistics and safety and stuff.

H: ... ok, what do I need to do?

J: I don't know, but we could talk to Peter, he does mountaineering courses and knows how to do risk assessments or whatever

So we went skiing. Responsibility was shared, Harley and friends learnt how to budget, plan, and coordinate. We did similar things all the time, like making a ~VR headset with wii controllers, and building a RepRap (3d printer... this one got interupted by the quake).

Every wednesday afternoon the whole school would stop and do some sort of excercise. The most minimal one was Walking - we'd walk through the CBD and around the gardens of Hagley Park (christchurch has a huge central park). My first time out, I lost like 60% of the students, and was freaking out. When I got back, my supervising teacher said "oh yeah, they'll have just walked home, it's fine".

Later I ended up taking kids who wanted to go skateboarding to the skate park. I didn't know how to skate at the time, and one day one of them said "Hey John, you should learn how to drop in on the half-pipe".

Part of me was like NOPE but the other part of me was like "You gotta do this, it's really important you role model incompetance and perserverance in learning". So they taught me very kindly and patiently how to skate. After a month of this the students we'd built a bunch of trust and the boys were asking what other classes I took and genuinly sounded open to checking out stuff they wouldn't otherwise have been into.

The school had this mantra everyone is a teacher, everyone is a learner. This story kinda sums that up for me.

woah, talking about that place gets my kinda choked up. so much humanity.

The reason I tell a series of stories is to try and convey the spirit of the place. Anyone who visited came away saying this like "wow ... people are nice here" or "you can just trust them to plan their education? what if they do nothing?" or "how can you afford to have a half hour conversation with every person every week?"

Anyway, this awoke a thing in me which I am now fiercely committed to. I work in places where people speak like humans to each other, respect and care for each other and are generous. Anything else is a waste of life.

So awesome that your students taught you how to drop-in, such a critical life skill!

Basically, for those who don't know, you basically procede to fall flat on your face but then land on a moving skateboard instead. Simple.

Awesome!
As a kiwi living in UK it makes me kinda proud despite having nothing to do with it.

As someone who has taken a few different paths and self-learnt my way into careers I love the idea of a generation of young people starting this way; not having to wait till after they leave school to discover that they really can just try pretty much anything and the worst that normally happens is you fall on your face... and more often than not rather than fall on your face you miss the earth and fly. :-)

One of the reasons I like SSB and the co-ops having discovered them is this very Kiwi vibe. And by that I mean the kiwi-ness that resides in my memories and perhaps in many places is not accurate as time passes and NZ (or parts of it at least) becomes more like the rest of the world.

Thanks for the tales.

temple basin indeed @utunga3 ❀ / @utunga. Doesn't surprise me you know Matt Davis!

@andrestaltz here's me posting about the school I taught at. I think it's the sort of place you'd like me. It kinda broke me / radicalised me ITO education. I'm gonna be a terrible parent.
Also in that first photo I'm sporting a moustache next to the girl with machete, and Nick is two to the right.