Unschooling Facilitator

The Dandelion Project is looking for creative, energetic people, who are passionate about building authentic community with unschooling youths and their families. We are looking for folks to facilitate with young people (ages 5-12) at Wild Seeds Agile Learning Community for the 2023-24 academic year and at our entirely outdoors Summer Camp for two weeks in July 2023. Summer Camp could be an excellent way for us to begin working together with youth. It'd be ideal if candidates are interested in both Summer Camp and Wild Seeds Facilitator positions, but this is not required.

Wild Seeds Agile Learning Community is located in South Philly, near the Italian Market. Summer Camp will be hosted at FDR Park in South Philly.

Applicants should be excited about actively creating a non-traditional kind of learning space that centers self-directed learning practices embedded within a supportive and nourishing community. Facilitator applicants should also be committed to collaboratively working through the challenges and responsive shifts that come with walking the path while we are creating it.

Committed to fostering a racially equitable and inclusive unschool community, we encourage Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color to apply.

Working with us will fill you up if:

• You are a passionate, curious, and joyful person with a variety of interests and abilities that you would enjoy sharing with young people.
• You have experience cultivating authentic, respectful, and partnership-based relationships with people of all ages.
• You are ready to dive in to help create, reinforce, and grow with an intentional unschool community around transformation, liberation, racial equity and inclusion, and environmental stewardship.
• You are actively UNlearning (deschooling) what most of us are taught about how and where learning happens, what learning is valuable, how learning is evaluated, and how to support young people in group settings. You are eager to partner with others in rejecting narrow, authoritarian views of how adults facilitate learning.
• You are invested in and experienced with collaboration, believe you have much to share and learn from other facilitators, and are willing to sacrifice personal power and control to include more perspectives. You see sharing and receiving feedback from other facilitators as an opportunity for personal growth.

We are looking for people with experience in:

• Working with youths in schools or alternative settings
• Community Organizing
• Unschooling
• Social Media/Marketing
• Project Management
• Community Healing
• Grant writing/fundraising

Hours and Compensation:

Summer Camp is two full-time (M-F) weeks in July. Wild Seeds Agile Learning Community will operate three full-time days a week (Sept-June), and we have options to grow additional programs to help folks reach a full time schedule. We also have (paid) administrative tasks, trainings/professional development, and collaborative meetings related to the job.

We value the people who are joining us in this work, and aim to pay all employees a salary that reflects that. As a new program, we can commit to paying $22/hour. Compensation will be reviewed regularly and will grow alongside our unschool. As we continue growing our programming into a truly viable alternative to traditional schooling, passionate and committed employees have the opportunity to shape the programming offered and the number of hours they work each week.

​Hiring Process:

​Prior to applying, please check out our vibe and vision by reading:

• Who We Are: https://www.thedandelionproject.us/who-we-are
• Core Values: https://www.thedandelionproject.us/core-values
• Wild Seeds Overview: https://www.thedandelionproject.us/wildseeds

Complete the application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeFnvz7ujO0USAWj7BuWh64sjQDd0MkGXj-UM02yeU12WYHIA/viewform

Along with a copy of your resume, please email us (wild@thedandelionproject.us) a description of a sample offering you might facilitate for young people or adults in our community. This could be as simple as a paragraph and will help us get an idea of your facilitation style and interests.

We encourage you to read through the Agile Learning Centers website and the Alliance for Self-Directed Educationto gain more insights into the kind of facilitation we are seeking

Wait for a response from our facilitator team about next steps. We plan to begin our hiring process in early May 2023.

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time, Contract

Pay: $22.00 per hour

Benefits:

• Employee discount
• Paid time off
• Parental leave

Schedule:

• 4 hour shift
• 8 hour shift
• After school
• Day shift
• Monday to Friday

Ability to commute/relocate:

• Philadelphia, PA 19147: Reliably commute or planning to relocate before starting work (Required)

Work Location: One location

Salary : $22