Friendship necklaces, each a wooden disc with a pressed flower, on colored cords
A handmade abacus with rows of colored beads for ones, tens, hundreds and thousands
A Seed of Life drawn in overlapping colored circles
A cast iron pan over the fire pit
A year at

ALC Mosaic

East Charlotte, North Carolina · August 2025 to July 2026
Not just another progressive school.in its own words

ALC Mosaic is a Self-Directed Education community anchored at its urban campus in East Charlotte. In its own words, an environment for liberation, where personal growth flourishes when directed by an individual's own interests and talents.

It runs a private school for ages 5 to 14, recognized by the state of North Carolina, a high school program for families with at least a year in the private school, and a co-working space for the parents and caregivers of children in the school. About eighty learners are on campus, and nobody is graded, ranked, or given a standardized test.

The whole school documents in Prism. Twenty-two staff wrote it down while it was happening, and twenty-nine family members documented alongside them from home: 4,168 entries between August and July. This is that year, a month at a time.

September
487 entries
Sliced okra frying in a skillet with dried tomatoes
Trays of sorted rocks, a small digital scale and a paper number line on a table, arms of the children at work
Chickens beside a climbing teepee of branches in their run, a learner seen from behind

The garden crew harvested okra and basil, made basil lemonade sweetened with honey, and cooked the okra, which none of them had tried before. In zoology they built the chickens a climbing teepee from branches and added plants they had checked were safe to eat.

Someone left two boxes of rocks and a small scale in the play yard. Almost everyone thought bigger rocks would be heavier, until they weighed some.

Also in September
  • At the autumn equinox tea party the whole school sat on blankets in small groups, and each group was asked to include people of all ages.
  • On Mondays the whole Canopy program, nearly forty kids and facilitators, began meeting as one circle to watch the week's News Team video.
  • Life Hacks learned square knots, slip knots and a trucker's knot, and worked out that a daisy chain is just slip knots in a row.
  • The escape room designers chose a theme that could include every player.
October
569 entries

The pulley at the treehouse

A pulley went up at the treehouse in the autumn. Within a week the children were sending whole cushions to the platform in the basket. The hard part was the top: getting a cushion out of the basket and through the slats of the fence usually took more than one person. Water bottles, sticks, leaves and chalk went up too. They are learning to call a warning before they send the basket back down.

Physics · Engineering · Collaborative Problem-Solving · Safety Awareness · Construction Play
A skillet of corn and potatoes on a grate over the fire in a stone fire ring
Small bridges of cotton swabs and craft sticks on a rug, hands at work on another

Campfire skills in specialty week: fire starters made from lint and wax paper, then vegetables cooked in the fire, and how close to the flames changed the cooking. In the play yard the challenge was a bridge of cotton swabs that could hold the most counting bears. Everyone struggled, so they agreed to hand out more materials, equal amounts first.

Enough people were off campus one October morning that the group ran an impromptu Set the Day, moved the offerings around so people could get to more than one, and worked out who would clean which rooms.

Collaborative Planning · Collective Responsibility · Scheduling & Time Management · Culinary Arts · Technology
Also in October
  • The pulley knotted up and came off its track. Three of them took the whole system up to the top of the treehouse, untangled it and got it running again.
  • The monarch chrysalis in the playroom hatched. A visitor tagged the butterfly's wing, and they set her free.
  • The garden crew cracked bur oak acorns open with rocks, kept the good ones and put them in cold water to draw out the tannins.
  • A stuffed toy was the subject of an impromptu custody trial, with lawyers for both sides, objections, a judge, expert witnesses and a jury.
  • The teens had the whole campus to themselves one Friday evening for Teen Takeover: night-time tag, big voices, and the place cleaned and reset before they left.
November
607 entries
The acorns, from October
Pancakes cooking on an electric griddle, a spatula and a bowl of batter

Over the break the acorns were soaked, then dried and ground into flour. The garden crew made pancakes with it and shared them with anyone who wanted to try.

In play yard math the kids ran pretend restaurants, with menus they had made, taking turns as servers and customers. On cold mornings play yard math moved to the fire pit, where the restaurants took real coins and anyone short of money could earn some by gathering sticks for the fire.

Also in November
  • By the end of the month the kids were running the restaurants themselves, and whoever had the least money in their wallet got to be a server first. Then they asked to make new menus with prices they chose.
  • The civics class decided to ask student finance to stock a food pantry anyone could eat from, on an honor system, with no judgment.
  • The garden crew harvested collards, which none of them had eaten before, and cooked them down with onion and garlic.
  • Trivia at morning circle, kids against facilitators. The facilitators were losing.
  • Someone piled leaves at the bottom of the slide, and for the rest of the afternoon they kept rebuilding the pile for each other.
December
489 entries

A huge treble clef staff went down on the ground at morning circle, and the children became the notes: Every Green Bus Drives Fast on the lines, FACE in the spaces.

  • The garden crew dug up potatoes, called them gold, baked them, and carried a plate around for everyone to taste.
  • Big Topics ate cucumber, apple and pear with their noses held, to see whether they could still tell them apart. Almost everyone could.
  • Writing Lab finished its five-paragraph essays on birthday celebrations, a topic the group chose, and celebrated with a birthday party.
  • Character design drew people from reference upside down, so the brain would stop drawing what it thinks it knows.
  • Rock band chose its next song, and talked about how a band sometimes plays a song that is just OK to everyone, because it can't find one they all love.
January
337 entries
A child seen from behind, sitting before a wide projection screen at the science museum

The run of the museum

The science museum was nearly empty that day, so they had the run of it. They started at the water table in the younger playroom, then split into small groups to go at their own pace: the pulleys and funnels on the main floor, the rainforest, the fish and reptiles. There was a winter exhibit with a rink you skated on in your socks, and a flight exhibit where you flew the plane yourself.

Physics · Life Science · Earth Science · Self-Directed Exploration · Aviation
A Seed of Life drawn with a compass on paper, its circles shaded in colored pencil
On paper
Large overlapping chalk circles in pink, white and purple on the concrete driveway
On the driveway

Twenty feet across

Geometry Through Art and Design drew the Seed of Life with a compass on paper. Then the question was how big they could make it on the driveway. They settled on twenty feet across, went back inside to work out how long a compass would have to be to draw one circle, and built one out of cardboard. Outside again, they took turns holding down the needle and dragging the chalk around until the whole thing was done.

Mathematics · Geometry · Problem-Solving · Collaboration · Art and Design
The pantry, from November
  • In specialty week a few learners went grocery shopping for the new shared pantry, on a budget of fifty dollars a month: a list, a running total on a calculator, and labels read before anything went in the cart.
Also in January
  • The cooking group worked in pairs on three appetizers: breaded tofu, carrot fries and kale chips.
  • Debate club started with snow versus no snow, then argued whether a hot dog is a sandwich.
  • Clearing rotting logs from around the sandbox turned up grubs, which went to the chickens.
  • The theater group ran the whole of its shortened Peter Pan for the first time.
  • The News Team video was planned, filmed and edited by the learners, each reporting team cutting its own segment.
February
454 entries
A hand pouring peas into the pot of vegetables for the soup

Stone soup

They read a version of Stone Soup in the morning. Some chopped and added vegetables. Others wrote out the recipe, wrote reflections, or read a decodable version of the same story. At the end of the day someone brought in a second version, and the group read that one and compared the two while they ate the soup.

Language Arts · Science · Collaboration · Comparative Analysis · Cooking
A hand-made abacus, four rods of colored beads marked 1, 10, 100 and 1,000

Their own abacus

The first-block math group in the play yard made their own abacus that week and used it to build numbers into the thousands, then to add. Toward the end of the week the numbers came by ear: a number said out loud, written down, and a check for the zero that has to hold a place in one thousand and twelve.

Mathematics · Arithmetic · Problem-Solving · Fine Motor Skills · Hands-On Math
Seed pots and an egg carton of soil under a grow lamp
Freshly pulled carrots lying in leaves at the edge of a garden bed
A chalk drawing of a hospital with a cross on its roof, and a chalk road, on the driveway

Seeds went into pots under grow lamps indoors: tomatoes, jalapeños, chives, green onions, eggplant. The carrots were ready when the top measured about an inch across. And on a quiet day on campus one group drew a chalk city across the whole driveway, with hospitals, homes, tents, stores and roads.

Also in February
  • By now the kids were winning the morning trivia, and the score was kept in tally marks counted by fives.
  • At the aviation museum a group built flying devices for the launchers, and wired circuits to make a light shine brighter.
  • Murals started one large shared canvas indoors, with plans to take the painting out to the fences.
March
330 entries

Division started with a question from the students. What is ten divided by zero? Zero? Ten? Infinity? Impossible?

Mathematics · Problem-Solving · Critical Thinking
New strawberry plants in a bed mulched with straw

The garden crew planted strawberries in soil mixed with compost and composted bunny litter, then pinched off the flowers so the plants would put their energy into their roots.

Also in March
  • In the friendship puppet show one puppet kept telling another what to do. Without being asked, the audience offered it a better idea: ask instead of tell.
  • The friendship group tossed a ball of yarn across the circle, saying something kind about the catcher that had nothing to do with how they look. When the web tangled, they worked on the knots.
  • Fort history went from an 1895 military fort to medieval castles, then outside to knock down each other's castles made of cups.
  • The pizza fraction game had slices from a half down to a twelfth. Whoever builds the most whole pizzas wins.
  • A stage fight choreographer gave each pair of pirates and lost kids its own fight sequence for Peter Pan.
April
571 entries

Putting out the placemats for snack became such a popular job that there was pushing. The group proposed five fixes, tried a line, agreed it didn't work, and settled on taking turns around the circle.

Community · Problem-Solving · Critical Thinking · Community Responsibility
A hand steadying a red and white cup with a blue plastic egg inside
A homemade instrument, a long tube wrapped in tape, hanging over a patio chair
A plate of garden lettuce with sliced egg and onion

Intro to Music made instruments from plastic eggs, cups, paper clips, rice, sand, rocks and a lot of tape: shakers, maracas, drums, a one-string guitar. Three weeks later they invented a game, beatball, bouncing balls off drums and tambourines. The garden's lettuce became a salad with egg, onion and garlic, and the cooks rated it seven or eight out of ten.

Also in April
  • Ghost in the graveyard had trampled the garden, so the players moved the game indoors.
  • The fort history group designed their own forts on the computer, and showed each other how when someone got stuck.
  • Two of them found that dividing by a number between zero and one gives a bigger answer, then argued over which number matters most, zero or one.
  • The cubes came back to the play yard. Older kids relearned their steps; the youngest just played with them, which is the first step.
May
264 entries

Several weeks of a story, then the props

A large group in the play yard had been building a storyline for several weeks. It went as far as woodworking, where they made the props the story needed. One afternoon in May the schedule left them several blocks in a row, and the whole thing ran end to end. The facilitator who wrote it up said she still did not know the full plot.

Language Arts · Project Planning · Collaboration · Dramatic Play · Woodworking
Two climbers high on a climbing wall, seen from below

The climbing wall

A field trip to a climbing gym. Bouldering first, with no rope, then walls at different levels, roped in. They went further up than they expected to, and the group on the mats below cheered every climber on.

Physical Education · Perseverance · Problem-Solving · Rock Climbing
A bunch of freshly pulled carrots and a garlic stalk on the path
Cheesy garlic bread with herbs on a wooden board

The garlic came up with the last of the carrots. The garlic went into cheesy garlic bread, and the carrots were roasted in hot honey and maple syrup.

Also in May
  • After beatball came beat bowling, with a ball, a tire or a bike. The hardest beats came from the plastic bowling ball, the most inventive from the tire.
  • The rabbit got a care schedule. Each learner picked a job, herbs, or pellets, hay and water, and signs off when it is done.
  • Wrestling on the big mat outside, after the agreements that let everyone feel safe.
  • For a lot of them it was their first time playing badminton and volleyball, and they stuck with it through the frustration.
June and July
45 entries
A red temple gate and pagoda above the trees in Japan

A year of Japanese, then Japan

A group studied Japanese all year. In June they went to Japan. Osaka, Kyoto, Takayama, Kanazawa, Tokyo. A market, a castle, shrines and a temple, a garden. They sat a Zen meditation, learned to work gold leaf and made their own chopsticks with it, and took the bullet train between cities.

World Languages · Social Studies · Visual Arts · Cross-Cultural Communication · Japanese Culture
  • A chess tournament with another ALC: everyone played several games first, then tournament play in the second hour.
  • A group backpacked about four and a half miles to a campsite in the mountains, past wild ponies, and filtered stream water to drink and cook with.
  • At a summer camp a small group read Kafka's The Metamorphosis closely, and wrote from the mother's point of view.
In the 2025-26 year
4,168

entries, written by the people who were in the room.

22

staff wrote them. Twenty-nine family members documented alongside, from home.

37%

of the entries carry two or more subject areas in their Learning Signals.

182

is the median number of entries a learner has for the year. Sixty-nine of eighty-eight have more than a hundred.

What the record shows

Reading and writing are the most documented part of the year, and mathematics is close behind: at a school with no set curriculum, the two subjects people worry about most are the two that come up most. Visual arts is next. Underneath the subjects, the same few capacities recur all year: solving problems, working with other people, directing one's own learning. The interests at the top of the record are reading, storytelling and games. Half of the entries are about one child and a quarter are about five or more, which is roughly the shape of a day here: a lot of individual work, and a lot done together.

About this page

Twenty-two staff, one year, a few sentences at a time.

Every moment here comes from ALC Mosaic's own record: the entries its facilitators wrote in Prism over the year, a photo and a few sentences at a time, with families adding their own from home. The small capitals under each story are the Learning Signals Prism found in those entries.

“This has been completely like revolutionary to me.”

Nancy Parker, ALC Mosaic, on the Learning Stories the record generates
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ALC Mosaic

A Self-Directed Education community in East Charlotte: a private school for ages 5 to 14, a high school program, and a co-working space for the families.

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A year at ALC Mosaic is one of a series of pages Prism makes with the programs that use it, from the record they keep over the year.

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