When he decided to share the workload of his college record label with friends, Brian Van Slyke couldn’t quite pin down the particulars of what a cooperative business is.
Today, however, he’s part of a worker-owned cooperative that he founded which, in part, helps other cooperatives and organizations thrive through the use of social justice-based education tools, programs, games and workshops.
The Toolbox for Educational and Social Action, which started in 2010 as Van Slyke’s senior thesis project at Hampshire College, has become a national organization that helps other cooperatives and organizations create social change — from immigration to anti-war to educational curriculum for universities. TESA’s client base stretches from New York to California.
In essence, Van Slyke says, TESA is where cooperative education meets the cooperative economy, and it’s all about making the world a better place to live by empowering people to have a role about the big things in their life, such as their workplaces and homes.
That is, in part, what a cooperative aims to do: unite people with a common interest to control an entity, such as a business, democratically.
If you’re going to change the world, a Power Point presentation just isn’t going to cut it.
“When we’re trying to build a more just global world, we can’t use old forms of education that rely on unjust principals,” said Van Slyke, 28.
Take for instance, the curriculum developed by TESA for the Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation.
NMIC was having trouble engaging residents in a workshop designed to help educate them as they turned their formerly privately-owned apartment building into a housing cooperative, a form of ownership in which tenants collectively own the building in which they live.
Some residents spoke only Spanish, others only English and writing and reading proficiency was all over the map. Plus, many were busy and had trouble finding the time to dedicate to boring sessions that consisted of little more than someone presenting materials.
The problem, Van Slyke said, was the residents weren’t being asked for their perspectives and they didn’t feel they had a part in the process of forming the co-op.
“We worked on totally revamping (the workshop program) from the ground up,” he said. “Keeping most content, but structuring it in such a way that the residents were discussing it.”
When talking about hiring a building manager for example, a facilitator might outline the legal requirements and then turn it over to residents to hear their input. And they’d work on conflict resolution through role-playing to give the residents practice on how they might resolve disputes as co-op board members and residents.
The 10-month workshop program is wrapping up soon, and Van Slyke said the results have been great. Retention skyrocketed compared to the old workshop.
TESA also produces board game, Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, which requires players to rely on teamwork to start a cooperative. In the end everyone wins — or loses.
Van Slyke’s first involvement in cooperatives was a DIY record label he founded in high school. Finding the workload of college coupled with running a music business to be too much, Van Slyke decided to branch out and share the work with friends.
“We’re a punk record label, we should be a collective,” he recalled thinking. But “we had no idea what that meant.”
They eventually learned through a lot of trial and error as they got involved with local cooperative groups.
Meantime, Van Slyke volunteered at North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens teaching a class on running your own DIY record label, which helped him put his on-the-job knowledge and his alternative education coursework to the test.
It was in a Hampshire College education class that Van Slyke met Andrew Stachiw, who is now a TESA worker-owner. The class taught them “everyone’s a learner, everyone’s a teacher,” and helped bring their educational interests together, Stachiw said.
As Van Slyke planning his Division III at Hampshire in 2010, the final project for students, the economic collapse was fresh in the country’s collective mind and he saw firsthand how his friends were struggling to find work.
“Rather than doing a Division III that’s just going to sit on the shelves after I’m done with it, I really want to dedicate this year to something I can continue doing when I graduate,” he recalled thinking.
That served as the basis for TESA — a worker co-op that does cooperative education.
The company was officially incorporated in November 2011. Today, it was three worker-owners: Van Slyke, Stachiw and David Morgan. And their success means they’ve hired two others who are set to become worker-owners in the future.
Van Slyke has since relocated to Chicago, while Stachiw and Morgan live in the Valley. Stachiw, 30, of Holyoke, jumped on board after graduating from Hampshire with an intent on becoming a history teacher. After completing his student-teaching in history in Springfield, he joined TESA. There, he refined his teaching skills and learned how to effectively develop curriculum, he said.
“I was thrilled about it,” he said. “The prospect of doing work in new economy, alternative economy, as well as being in a worker cooperative and still being able to teach and develop curriculum” was ideal.
Today much of his work is focused on developing curriculum for others, though he does teach a course at the Franklin County Jail on cooperative food and farming, he said.
Chris Lindahl can be reached at clindahl@gazettenet.com