On December 15, 2018, I attended my first All Tapestry event with a solid orientation toward inquiry. Afterward, I recorded a voice memo about a relational dynamic I noticed. I have edited the recording above for length, some verbal ticks and false starts, and de-identification.
Annotated Transcript:
I noticed at the Christmas party today that what’s so beautiful about their model for getting the young people good mentoring on a week by week basis is that they have these teams of adults.
And what I noticed tonight was—today—was that at a group event that seems to be a little more complicated because the adult to young person ratio is really high. And I think there is sometimes some sort of ambiguity about who should be responding to people.
In particular I noticed that the adults got talking to each other and weren’t always paying the most attention to the young people. And they’re with these people every week, so obviously that’s a big difference compared to me just sort of swooping in for the day and seeing this.
But I guess I’m not incredibly surprised maybe that they’re moving away from the All [Tapestry] events. Kind of makes sense to me that … there’s something about that model that is challenging and … I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to think about that more.
Sound clip credit: “scissors” by lighteningjimmy88 via freesound.org (CC 0)
Image credit: “Cookie Decorating Party” by Hey Paul Studios via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). For illustration only—not a research artifact.