A Farewell 🍃
Hello Everyone,
This is a message direct from Bria, your ASDE volunteer, community manager, organizer, facilitator, director for the last 10 years. I’ve held many roles and rode many waves throughout my time here, and I have built so many relationships, connections, and bonds with many of you. I could not be more grateful for my experience and the people that show up for this movement every single day. It has been an incredible 10 years, watching how this movement has shifted and changed, grown and adapted, and how it has been so inspiring and such a connecting force for so many people.
With that said, it is time for me to move on from my role here at ASDE. I will be remaining on the team as a board member, but will no longer be in my role as a key staff member. I am founding a Self-Directed Education school/community with a colleague and friend Brooklyn Wetzel who I was lucky enough to meet through my work with Flying Squads. Our dream is to build an in-person community space that is youth-run and where young people are free to be, engage, grow, manage conflict, all the things that we are all working on and living every day. Check out Meraki School of Democracy if you wish to follow our project. I know this kind of platitude is thrown out a lot, but I actually could not be prepared to start something in this way without the support of this movement and all of my people throughout the years.
I am a very nostalgic person, but I will spare you most of that. I will say this: the people I’ve met through ASDE have challenged me, have helped me grow, have shown me new ways to think and to dream. Many have become great friends, many have become collaborators, many have inspired me for years and years.
Thank you all. For everything. For the force you are and for the drive that unites us to bring liberation from adult coercion and hierarchy to all children. It’s a thread through all these connections, and I feel it from all of you. I thought about doing a video here, my preferred medium, but I’m not entirely sure I could get through it.
The ASDE Board and team is super excited to share that Annie Friday will be stepping up as the interim director. Annie has worked and volunteered with ASDE for the last two years — as the Tipping Points Magazine Editor-in-Chief, general volunteer, member of the organizing team, and more recently, as a facilitator for the ASDE Compendium cohorts. Annie has stepped in and stepped up, and has a lot of experience with the inner and outer workings of the organization, as well as in SDE and unschooling as a whole. She will be a wonderful leader during this time. Please join us in warmly welcoming her.
As we embrace this transition and consider what is next for ASDE, we are having conversations as a team and in our community events to learn about what ASDE means to people, and determine how we can best serve the community as an organization. The best way to keep up with any future events or calls for feedback or input is to follow this newsletter, so you’re in the right place.
We are also looking generally for volunteers who have time and energy to commit to supporting the organization and Self-Directed Education movement through working with ASDE. If you have time, passion, and energy to commit, please reach out to Annie at Annie@self-directed.org. We can’t wait to collaborate with more people and hear your ideas and what you have to bring!
Lastly, the ASDE Organizing Team invites you all to join us for a final event with Bria and Annie, to celebrate Bria’s time here and connect. Join us on Thursday, August 20th, from 7-8pm Eastern Time, for a fun and casual Q&A with Bria, where you can ask her anything you want, share your gratitudes for her commitment over the years, or just show up and chat!
Okay, that’s it. That’s all I have for now. Come hang out with us at the August event and, as always, share any thoughts or questions you have here.
In True Solidarity,
Bria
