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Daily 186: Talk About Tuesday - Last School Meeting

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Summary

Rainy cool day. JC and school meeting under tent - students show up without complaints. JC run by students impressively - peers make it equitable, fall back on rules. School meeting: budget for end of year, ice cream truck Friday 1pm, August 24th meeting scheduled (roll back COVID rules). New rule: Parker is principal emeritus. Program computed actual podcast time: 20 hrs 15 min 15 sec. Podcast = example of adults doing stuff students support but don't need.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to ANI In the Air, Under the Tent, and Around Baltimore, our daily podcast briefing
0:06 of all the goings ons, ins, and arounds of our 10 ideas survey school.
0:09 So today was a rainy day, a little cool, I have a nice little pitter patter on top of
0:16 the tent, so that was, that's kind of fun.
0:22 We had JC and school meeting all outside here under the tent, people came out, our students
0:29 are, it's really just nice, they just, you know it's an obligation and they just do it,
0:35 they show up, they do it, no complaints, boom, done, warms my heart, which I need to do because
0:43 it's a little cold out here and I'm in a short sleeve shirt, at least I've got boots and
0:48 pants on so that's something.
0:52 So I did want to say that the JC today, it really struck me how wonderful it is to have
0:59 students running it and doing it.
1:02 You know I was scribing, taking the findings, but otherwise I was, and I was telling people
1:08 about rules that they would ask about, but otherwise, you know, like it was all on them,
1:13 and there was a couple cases that, you know, I think adults would have had a real hard
1:20 time doing it in a way that respected everyone involved and came out with a good outcome.
1:29 You know, I think it was just one of those situations where having a group of peers really
1:37 made it seem much more equitable and sensible and, you know, I really, you know, what I
1:48 saw them doing was falling back on the actual rules and, you know, whether they thought
1:55 the incident was a problem or not, you know, they looked to the rules, like was the rule
2:01 actually broken and, you know, to me that's kind of the most important part of JC and
2:07 then, you know, the actions like if it's something quite questionable of, you know, like is it
2:13 really a problem even, you know, they just fall back on a warning and I think warnings
2:18 are fine, it's good.
2:20 I hope to do some reading this summer about, well, some things that people did research
2:27 in with the criminal justice system about reducing punishment but increasing sort of
2:32 the ideas of increasing like the likelihood of it actually having been a problem.
2:38 So instead of occasionally a big whack, you have like a little bunch of little whacks
2:43 and so everyone kind of knows what the actual rules are and what they can and can't get
2:47 away with and it's not really about punishment and I think that's great and I'd like to kind
2:52 of get that kind of, you know, read about sort of more details about that.
2:58 But so, you know, I think, you know, in JC like just saying, yeah, that was a rule and
3:06 like not making a big deal but just getting clarity on what are the rules, what are the
3:12 lines, right, very important, and then, you know, also when there's a case that doesn't
3:20 seem like any rules were broken even though somebody, you know, like it's just like, yeah,
3:26 you just drop it, right, and, you know, you discuss it and, you know, you say why and
3:31 hopefully people who bring such a case that gets dropped understand why that wasn't a
3:37 problem and, you know, ideally, hard to know whether that really worked out or not but
3:42 that's the hope.
3:44 School meeting today.
3:46 We proved some budgetary issues for the end of year, the shade structure thing and, yeah,
3:57 we're going to get an ice cream truck coming on Friday so that's exciting, at least one
4:02 per school meeting member and then we'll probably have some leftover so, yeah, so we'll see
4:11 how that all goes.
4:13 That'll be around 1 p.m., roundabout, and let's see what else.
4:21 We also scheduled for August 24th our school meeting before school starts.
4:31 We're anticipating assembly rolling back some of the COVID stuff and then whether it's the
4:39 assembly stuff or just things school meeting had done, previous years we're, you know,
4:44 going to look at it and say, okay, what in our rule book can be rolled back after that?
4:50 So August 24th was kind of chosen so that we'd still have some time to work, you know,
4:55 have another meeting or whatever, disagreements, et cetera before we actually start a new school
5:02 year.
5:03 We like everything kind of in place.
5:07 So yeah, stay tuned for that.
5:10 And then in open agenda we passed a new rule called principal emeritus and the rule is
5:20 very simple.
5:21 It says Parker is principal emeritus.
5:23 So it's essentially kind of like the rule Ariel is queen of the Sudbury underworld.
5:32 Kind of a non-normative rule but one that's enjoyable.
5:40 So that was kind of fun.
5:44 And so concluded the officially scheduled business of the school meeting for this school
5:51 year where you can still call special ones if stuff comes up.
5:54 There was one year where we called a special school meeting in the afternoon of the last
6:05 day because someone pleaded not guilty and at that time that meant automatically going
6:12 to school meeting.
6:15 Now it would, you know, they could still appeal their action but we'd actually go through
6:21 the rest of the motions and, you know, unless somebody wanted something serious done probably
6:28 it would just, you know, not head that way.
6:32 But we did it.
6:33 People showed up and it got handled.
6:36 That's again, you know, our students, they take their obligations seriously even on the
6:41 last day.
6:42 So yeah, that's that.
6:49 So yeah, oh, and you know I've been mentioning how there haven't been a lot of people out
6:56 on these nice days and certainly there's no one outside right now playing around.
7:01 Earlier there were some people out in the rain playing.
7:04 That was cool but there was actually a time when I think we had about 20 people under
7:08 the tent.
7:09 It was between JC and school meeting and it was just a really happening kind of place.
7:15 So that was kind of cool to witness and see and yeah, it's been a reasonably quiet day
7:24 but a pleasant day.
7:27 Let's see, I wanted to add one little fact.
7:33 Yesterday for Millions Monday I talked about how many hours I've done for this podcast.
7:39 So I wrote a program to compute it, posted it on Discord but it came out with 20 hours,
7:48 15 minutes, and 15 seconds as of yesterday's.
7:53 I've just essentially recorded another 16 minutes so there you go but yeah.
8:01 So very likely I'll hit 21, I'll be right around 21 hours by the end of the week which
8:07 is I think more or less what I had guesstimated.
8:12 I also had guesstimated some more time involving like listening to them and posting them and
8:18 thinking about them and whatever and so that's not something a computer program can go figure
8:24 out.
8:25 But the actual podcast hours could because I have the website version of this has number
8:34 of minutes and seconds for each of them in a nice easy to digest format.
8:40 So I took full advantage of that and wrote a program in about five minutes that did that.
8:48 Essentially reading the file, matching the pattern, adding them all up and calling it
8:53 a day.
8:54 All right, I did talk about Tuesday kind of on the meta question of how does this podcast
9:03 fit in with Sudbury stuff and so forth.
9:09 Like how did it come about and all that good stuff.
9:13 So I don't know if there's anything insightful in there but I felt like that was a good way
9:19 of ending the talk about Tuesday was to talk about the podcast and yeah.
9:30 I don't know if I actually how much I went into this but I did have a thought that you
9:36 know it's another example of adults doing stuff that sounds great on paper and you know
9:44 students being like kind of supportive on the sidelines and not doing too much with
9:50 it.
9:51 Which I think is pretty much par for the course in Sudbury schools and it's good to do that
9:55 every now and then just to remind ourselves that without the power of you know force basically
10:07 students are just going to do what they're going to do and they don't really need us
10:10 to be doing stuff like this.
10:13 But I felt good about doing it all and they were certainly happy to let me do my thing.
10:21 So I appreciate all their support and goodwill and I also appreciate anybody actually listening
10:29 to this podcast.
10:32 I guess you know if you haven't already let me know that you listen to it do let me know
10:37 because I'd actually be kind of curious if anyone else listens to it other than the ones
10:41 that I know of.
10:43 So but anyway the podcast will be ending in three more days and it will be gone forever.
10:50 So check out the talk about Tuesday.
10:55 Tomorrow will be wondrous Wednesday on the I don't know something wondrous about the
11:00 podcast.
11:01 I'll have to think that up.
11:04 And that's all I've got for now so I will see you when I see you.