Help us fund our personal financial reboot so we can turn back to what we do best: empower twice exceptional kids, adolescents, and adults.
The parent who donated this $100 set aside $20 for each of 5 months.
Andreas and I want to send our gratitude to everyone who extended a helping hand to us in November when we reached out. Some of you who gave most generously were struggling financially when we were at The Lang School, so we’re doubly touched by your support. Thanks to you all, we still have a roof over our heads and food on the table, including a heartwarming Thanksgiving dinner with our own scholarship-supported Lang grads – Julien (a senior computer science major at NYU) and Pascal (a freshman computer science/math double major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute).
We planted seeds at Lang, and now we’re ready for larger scale and bigger stages.
Andreas and I are looking forward to 2024, energized by our work on new social entrepreneurial ventures. As you know, we partner in everything, so our projects share common goals and values. Broadly, we’re creating scalable digital and brick-and-mortar communities based on diversity & belonging, authentic engagement, research-based communication practices, and ongoing consent-driven commitment.
More specifically, I’m writing articles (a return to my career as a journalist) that will become chapters in a book about my experience of starting and running a nonprofit school despite being marginalized by the education world as an outsider. Ironically, I was the ultimate insider as someone who grew up 2e with a predilection for observing & remembering exactly how schools served and failed to serve my needs and those of my schoolmates from age three onward; as someone who married a peer with equally keen educational memories and his own unique learning needs as a multilingual gifted student with dyslexia & math fluency challenges; and as someone who inevitably gave birth to like-minded children whom I enrolled in many different types of schools that I carefully observed before starting a good-fit school from scratch.
Our very own Lang grads, so much like yours. They’ve arrived! We couldn’t be prouder parents.
I am also developing two high schools for grades 9 through 13+ in underserved communities – one in Brooklyn, one in upper Manhattan – with a systematic focus on:
- surfacing and developing talent as a stand-alone period daily;
- advocating for legal ways to allow students to opt out of NYS- required classes that are time wasters in relation to their personal learning journeys;
- helping students rise to their personal best in the basics of reading, writing, and math with 1:1 & small group work daily taught by trained, experienced specialists;
- baking in daily executive function and study/learning skills development under the supervision of trained, experienced specialists in those areas;
- holding each student’s school-based team accountable for assessing and meeting that student’s school-based needs; sharing documentation about how & when they’ve done so; and having at least quarterly conversations with students & parents about progress and next steps;
- holding students accountable for the responsibilities that accompany the flexibility, opportunities, and privileges that their learning community affords them;
- starting the day at 9 or 9:30 am (and ending later) for students who need this shift;
- offering a 13th year of high school as a structured gap year that focuses on talent development-based volunteering and/or internships and, equally critical, prepares students to navigate the totally new set of expectations, self-advocacy habits, lack of supervision, self-scheduling, interpersonal politics, and opportunities that college life brings;
- and reconceptualizing schools as learning communities for students just as they need to be reconceptualized for faculty, leaders, and boards (the last, of course, if the schools are nonprofits).
In addition to having written a novel (which I am editing) about an imaginary school on a shining hill in an imaginary land, Andreas has launched what will become our hub for all things education: https://meshlearning.works. MESH (Math, Engineering, Science, and the Humanities) will be in ongoing development as a structural, curricular, learning, and pedagogical framework. You can subscribe to the MESH learning community’s updates at the link above.
Andreas is also spearheading Tinstream, an online creative collective that aims to integrate varied ways of sharing cognition (i.e., art, engineering, etc.), social communication, and commercial transactions. Tinstream’s mission is to establish alternatives to current dominant platforms by providing radical transparency; granting users the degree of agency they request; facilitating mutually beneficial, “good fit” collaborations and transactions; requiring greater accountability of all participants; and calling for all parties to social and commercial transactions to offer standardized self-disclosure information.
Andreas and I are stronger and more resilient than ever after 18 months of self-examination, processing, and healing. We’ve acquired and are acquiring new skill sets. I am pursuing a master’s degree, my second, in industrial and organizational psychology in order to better understand what motivates people (e.g., students, faculty, the leadership team, the board, consultants). We are ready to redeploy our 15 years as pioneers in the education of highly promising young people who think, learn, do, and are “different.”
Manifesting fresh ideas for the new year. Did you know that 2e is a renewable energy source?
Covering our basic living expenses until our new projects begin to do so is the remaining challenge, as Lang didn’t provide us with severance, my back pay, or a plan to repay the substantial loan we extended to the school (i.e., what would now be our savings). Naively, it never occurred to us to have a Plan B if the board’s good will failed us. We’ve reluctantly retained an employment attorney to seek restitution.
We are fighters, survivors, thrivers. You already know that. We worked for the rights of all gifted children with learning challenges to have their educational and related social-emotional needs met in school during their K-12 years at a time when the NYC Department of Education insisted that twice-exceptional children didn’t exist and certainly had no unique educational rights or needs.
We hope you’ll give what you can to our Micaela & Andreas Reboot fundraiser today, this week, next week. We’ll continue to be here for you, your children, and who your children become. We’re so excited about what we’re going to accomplish that builds on our legacy so far.
Warmly, optimistically, and always learning,
Micaela & Andreas
Co-organizers2
Andreas Olsson
Organizer
Brooklyn, NY
Micaela Bracamonte
Co-organizer