Elkenmist Unschool
Fall Cohort
Elkenmist is looking for new folks to join us in Fall 2024 (mid-Sep through mid-Dec) for the second iteration of an experimental three-month co-learning program – focusing on ecology & sense of place, art & culture, and community & spirituality – grounded in communal values of wonder, play, and solidarity. See below for details!
Application link: https://forms.gle/pJDFqmufd25nUJWz6
When?
The next unschool cohort will take place over the course of 3 months this coming Fall, from mid-September through mid-December 2024.
Where?
Elkenmist is both a home and a community space nestled into a beautiful 125 acre property in Skamokawa, Washington. The land includes two valleys with a stream running through each, resident beavers, and plenty of lush forest to explore. Sheep, chickens, horses, a cat, and a couple dogs also make their home here.
Most participants in the unschool cohort will be staying in the main farmhouse, which has six suites, each with its own bathroom, as well as a spacious communal kitchen, dining room, and living room. There are a few other structures on the land where others dwell, as well as a communal sauna, outdoor kitchen (in addition to the main kitchen), spacious yurt, food gardens, greenhouse, and many tools. For more about Elkenmist and photos of the rooms, check out https://www.elkenmist.com
Who?
Participants of the cohort will join Elkenmist residents by living and unlearning with us, with the invitation to fully engage as a temporary member of our community. Elkenmist residents have diverse backgrounds and interests, with a collective skillset that spans community building, psychology, outdoor education, activism, art, group facilitation, permaculture, ecology, environmental humanities, and more. We are a friendly bunch who welcome visitors and newcomers, enjoy hanging out together but also value alone time, and share a commitment to learning (and un-learning) from the unfolding of seasons in this place we call home.
Why Unschool?
The Latin root of the word educate, “educare,” means “to lead out.” In our current reality, schools as institutions sometimes reinforce the powers that be and legitimize stale ways of thinking, rather than cultivating new configurations of knowledge and power that can lead us out of our shared predicaments. In using the term unschool, we’re nodding to the movement by that name, as well as related ideas of depth learning, unconferences, skillsharing, and mycelium-like decentralized organizing. Rigid ideologies often lead to outcomes that range from silly to harmfully destructive, so we want to keep a healthy skepticism around any particular framework, while harvesting pointers bountifully from the wide variety of countercultural and subversive experiments in communal learning. Unschool at its best emerges from each of our perspectives, skills, and personalities coming together like plants in a forest, widely different from each other yet symbiotic.
What will the Unschool involve?
The Fall cohort of the Elkenmist unschool will be a 3-month experiment in co-learning and co-living. The interests of the current Elkenmist residents encompass the intersections of ecology & sense of place, art & culture, and community & spirituality. We are looking for 2 to 3 new people to join for the second round of the unschool cohort, which will include 8 to 10 people total. Our daily living and learning find their grounding in the land here: the maples, alders, spruces, hemlocks, ferns, elk, ravens, beavers, mosses, lichens, and so many more that dwell in these forests and valleys. Through growing our own food in the large gardens and greenhouse, as well as foraging all kinds of wild-growing goodies from the forest and marsh, we aspire to more directly entangle our animal bodies with the nonhuman beings that sustain us. Reciprocity with the land means a commitment to learning about and caretaking the place we dwell within, which can be difficult and confusing at times. The core of what we are trying to do is about opening spaces for play, joy, and co-creation in community, which also includes making room for harder emotions such as grief and rage at injustices that threaten our common future.
We are looking for new people to join the cohort who share our values, have enthusiasm to share and an excitement about learning, and can both commit to communal living and devote a significant amount of their week toward unschool co-learning activities (see “Structure” section below for details). Some specific skills that current participants offer include: building, writing, painting, drawing, foraging, plant medicine making, sheep caretaking, fire-tending, woodwork, forest improv, facilitation, cooking, dreamwork, sculpture, mushroom growing, forest art, martial arts and dance, flow arts, and food preservation. We would like to deepen our experiences with these and related skills that new participants may be excited about. Check out the venn diagram graphic above for a more thorough presentation of potential unschool topics.
Since the unschool is non-hierarchical in structure, without official teachers or professors, we each have to step up to share our own unique gifts and appreciate what others are offering. The more each of us puts in, the more we’ll get out, and the richer the experience will be for everyone.
Structure
The design of the cohort is intended to provide enough supportive structure that we can develop skills in a collective learning container while also leaving space for spontaneous emergence. Principles from Open Space Technology and Microsolidarity have informed the design of the cohort, which prioritizes participant-led sessions and opportunities for both individual and collective sense making.
If the above paragraph flew over your head, don't worry, we also know normal words. In a given week we will have some degree of structured time, time left to let our whims guide us organically, and all participants are invited to pursue their interests individually or in a group context as they see fit.
We follow the lunar cycles for important gatherings, generally having celebrations and sharing completed projects during the full moon, while introspecting or starting new projects at the new moon. During this upcoming fall cohort we look forward to celebrating seasonally auspicious days such as the Autumn Equinox and Samhain. The fall cohort will encompass four full moons: the Harvest Moon in September, the Hunter’s Moon in October, the Beaver Moon in November, and the Cold Moon in December. This gives us time to undertake three main group projects around specific themes, such as harvesting, planting, or creating a bush camp. Fall-specific activities will include pressing apples for cider, mushroom foraging, planting trees, and livestaking willows.
Pricing info
The base cost for the 3-month experience, including rent for a spacious room in the farmhouse with a private bathroom, access to common areas, gardens, and over 100 acres of land, as well as basic groceries and meals cooked by community members, plus the entire unschool experience and all the learning involved in that, is $4,500 (this is $1200 rent + a $300 per month commons fee).
We would like to do our best to make this cohort more accessible. We will do our best to fundraise for solidarity scholarships to pay the difference between the base price and what folks can afford, though we cannot guarantee that full financial needs will be met (this will obviously depend on the specifics of how much is requested / offered).
Sample week:
Sunday - set up dyads (peer support pairs) for the week. Announce “plant (or animal) of the week”, to be a learning focus to explore via research, writing, or art throughout the week. Go on a tracking walk in the woods.
Monday - self-directed learning; participate in farm-projects such as animal chores or gardening.
Tuesday - morning movement session; have your weekly dyad check in; self-directed learning; group afternoon session related to monthly project topic. Cook dinner for the group.
Wednesday - self-directed learning; have a walk in the woods; participate in or host an Open Space session with other participants. Join a bookclub discussion after dinner.
Thursday - morning movement session; self-directed learning; group afternoon session related to monthly project topic. Lead a dinner clean up.
Friday - self-directed learning; participate in farm-projects such as animal chores or gardening; join an afternoon art/creative space.
Saturday - morning movement session; enjoy a sauna; or go for an off-property outing.
Application:
If you are interested, please fill out this form by August 1st. We will contact folks to do phone interviews and discuss further steps shortly after that. https://forms.gle/pJDFqmufd25nUJWz6