Rochester Free School: Interviews

The Rochester Free School is an all-volunteer, DIY, educational organization. We believe education is a right rather than a privilege. Rochester Free School works to de-commodify and de-institutionalize education with free classes open to all. The Free School currently has classes running on Crochet, Web Design, Anarchism, Feminism, Writing, and more. Visit the website at for a full and up-to-date list of all our classes.

The free school operates in a horizontal manner and tries to break down the boundaries between "teacher" and "student." We decided to conduct our interview in a similar way. Three members of the Free School, Caitlin Holcombe, Ronni Kobrosly, and Ben Dean-Kawamura, took turns being interviewer and interviewee. Below, we talk about what attracted us to the Free School, what we see as its strengths and shortcomings, and where we would like the Free School to go in 2010.

Ben:

What got you interested in the Free School? What motivates you to work on building it up?

Roni:

I first heard about the Free School through Caitlin and KT, two folks there were already involved with the Flying Squirrel community space. The idea really excited me because the people involved with the project seemed to have lots of diverse skills I wanted to develop (art, community organizing). Also, as someone who has spent a chunk of their life in higher education, I really appreciate how radical the concept of a Free School is. It seems to me that nowadays "education" and "knowledge" have become commodified. The Free School is 100% grassroots, which is great! The people in this community have so many skills and so much knowledge, it's such a great idea to create a space where everyone can freely share this!

What keeps my motivated about this project is its potential. In other big US cities, like Seattle, free schools have become community institutions!

How about you Caitlin, what got you interested in the free school? What purposes do you think it could serve in the community?

Caitlin:

I've been interested in free schools for a long time. I first heard of their existence when I was in college in Toronto, but I didn't have the time to take their classes, on top of my college classes for credit. What really drew me to it, was the concept of self-directed learning and the community based model for it.

I learned more about free schools while attending the NASCO conference in Ann Arbor, MI in 2005. In a workshop, I heard about a free school in the Bay area called the Barrington Collective. Their class Radical Mental Health became so popular and influential that local mental health professionals were attending it and taking the free schoolers' perspectives into their professional practice. That was really inspiring to me, and I wanted to get something started at my housing co-op, but it seemed like an overwhelming undertaking.

It wasn't until Ben's workshop at the SDS DIY Fest in 2009 that I thought about free schools again. Knowing that other people were interested in a free school too, made me think that maybe we start one in Rochester. From the workshop, we got a clear idea about what knowledge we collectively had and what we were seeking. After that, I stayed involved getting some classes off the ground.

I think the Free School can lead to more collaboration, community building and collective skill sharing in Rochester. It provides an opportunity to cultivate one's knowledge and skills in an anti-oppressive environment. There are a lot of institutions and organizations in Rochester that have workshops and classes on a multitude of topics and skill areas, but most are costly and exclusive. We can decommodify education and make it more accessible in an alternative framework.

Ok, my question to Ben: What have been some of your experiences with Free Schools (past & present), would you share both some shortcomings and successes of free schools you've been involved with?

Ben:

I was one of the founders of "Brainshare" which was a group in Worcester, MA, that didn't use the word "freeschool", but pretty much was. It was a really fun experience, and a good example of something that was just waiting to be organized.

Brainshare stared when a few of us were talking around a kitchen table about how much knowledge we had in our circle of friends and how it would be great to start sharing that between ourselves. I forget the exact timeline here, but it may have been just after one of our friends presented a symposium on Dracula in his living room, followed by a screening of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

Once the idea was out there, it was clear that there was a lot of interest and it basically organized itself. We met at a coffee house one day, discussed which classes we'd like to teach and which classes we'd like to take, did some informal networking, and started up the classes. We talked a bit about structure at those early meetings, but basically the only rules were that you had to attend one of the general meetings to propose a class and you could only propose one class at a time. This was to avoid teachers over-committing themselves.

I lead a class on computer game making that was really fun, lead to some games that were actually enjoyable to play, and people walked out of it with solid understanding of the basics of computer programming. I also lead one on robot making that had issues because I was trying to teach the material at the same time as I figured it out myself. However, in a way that class was a real success, because a lot of the knowledge came from "students" of the class. Also, people seemed to enjoy themselves and learn things, even though only a few actual robots were built by the end.

The biggest success was how quickly it got going, how much participation there was from the very beginning, and how easy the whole thing was. There were philosophy classes, cooking classes, knitting circles, etc. etc. I think there were a dozen classes started in the first two months, and many of them were really excellent classes. It shows that if we organize things fun things and have them really take of quickly, without a lot of work.

The main shortcoming of that project was very clear: we didn't reach a broad section of the community. Most the participation was from people in our social network - college educated, middle to upper class, mostly white, except for some international students. If we could have achieved more of a broad base of students and teachers, then it would have stopped being just a fun side project for a bunch of DIY enthusiasts and started being something really revolutionary.

The other shortcoming was that people got really excited about classes, but didn't pace themselves well. We would all try to attend 5 classes a week, teach 3 at a time, or similar ridiculousness. That led to a ton of energy in the start, then a lot of unevenness. I believe at the end, many of the people involved in the project moved out of town and it died down, but I could be wrong. I hope it's still going strong.

I've also been fortunate enough to see the Albany Free School, the Worcester Free School, and Balance Rock, which are all Free Schools in a very different sense. They all are have "school-age" children enrolled full-time, or at least for full days and run on the philosophy that children can motivate themselves to learn without being told what to do. They are are great and I wish I had the time and knowledge to really talk about them, but I don't.

Caitlin: Where do you think the free school needs to go from here? What are the major things you'd like to see happen in 2010 for the Rochester Free School?

Caitlin:

We definitely need to expand our community reach. Right now, there is a core group of people who meet roughly once a month to work on the school (approving classes, updating promotional brochures and checking in with facilitators). I would love to see more people at those monthly meetings, more people proposing class topics, and more students in each class.

I think we need to get the word out about the School, maybe have fliers for individual classes and put those up and around the city to bring in folks. For example, there hopefully will be a drag personae workshop in the spring and we can promote that class by doing outreach to folks affiliated with the GAGV, Equal Grounds and Civil Rights Front.

Also, I hope that the free school, as it expands, does not loose sight of our principles of unity. If we can keep those in mind, I think that the School will be going in a good direction.

I'd like for the classes that are currently running to keep going strong—to maintain our enthusiasm and participation by staying relevant.

I'd also like to see the school expand, more classes, facilitators and students.

Have a special summer session when people have more time and maybe do some more intensive classes in two-month sessions.

Maybe have an open house, and display completed projects/presentations from different classes.

After meeting some folks from the Ithaca Free School and a Free School Network, I'd also love to have a conference for free schools in upstate to converge and share our triumphs and problems. Dirk from Ithaca was really interested in our principles of unity, how we wrote them and agreed on them. And I'm curious to know how they've supported such a large list of offered classes. As well as, different ways of documenting classes. Ithaca Free School has some of their classes filmed and viewable online, so you can watch a vegan cooking show and learn how to make a new dessert. How cool is that? We could totally do that too!

alright! questions for Roni: What are some ways we can bring in new members, both as facilitators and students? How do we avoid exclusivity, homogeneity?

A member of the Ithaca Free School told me that some people (outside the Free School community) were put off by the classes being free, and had suggested that they charge $5/class, that the strategy would actually increase their attendence. How can we tackle the stereotype that anything "free" isn't worth taking?

And feel free to say anything about your hopes for Free School 2010!

Roni:

I feel like that with the new flyers we can really start spreading the word person to person. We'll definitely be able to get more interested folks through personal contact than through flyers at cafes and stores. We also need to get into alternative media like Rochester IndyMedia and the 'City' Newspaper.

Avoiding exclusivity, homogeneity is a tough one. This is something I've been a little worried about. No doubt, we would all like the Free School to have students and facilitators from all ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, etc. I think a good first step is to engage as wide an audience as possible in our promotional efforts. We could start with things as obvious as advertising in alternative print media, websites, meeting with local organizations, to the less obvious like advertising at city neighborhood meetings.

I think the best way we can deal with that stereotype that anything free isn't valuable is through how we promote ourselves. By that I mean we need to put lots of effort into promotional of the school. We need to develop a clean effective website and flyers that show we are heavily-invested in the project.

My biggest hope for 2010 is that we can get more enthusiastic people in on the planning process!

Ben: What are some other classes that you would like to the free school to eventually offer? Do you think the free school could expand into offering tutoring for community kids?

Ben:

Well, personally, I'd love to repeat my computer game design class. I had a blast doing it the first time, and I think fits the Free School model well because it's a fun way for people to learn computer programming. Another class I'm interested in organizing is "Anarchism 101". We currently have the Anarchist Reading Group class, which is great, but I would be interested in also having one that started at a more basic level. A class geared for people have heard the term, but don't really understand what it means or why people would use call themselves anarchists. If anyone is interested in either of these classes, contact me and let's get them started!

Classes that taught basic skills like literacy, math, critical thinking, etc. would be a really amazing addition to the free school. I definitely like the idea of making more classes aimed at children in school.

Really, there are way more classes that I'd like to see / take / participate in then I will ever have time to be a part of. That's one of the most fun and frustrating parts of the free school, there's always going to be more possibilities than actual classes.

I'll close this by putting the question to the reader: What classes would you like to see? What knowledge to you have to share? What are you doing next Saturday? Free school classes are easy to start. Why not try it out?