Our unschooler is going to school.

I’m not going to lie: the process leading up to this decision has been challenging, heartbreaking, and eye-opening to say the least. It has brought into play all aspects of my deschooling journey, and has taken every ounce of the grieftending work I’ve been practicing over the last few years. I’m allowing myself to struggle out loud with this, as I’m hopeful this may help someone who finds themself in my position at some point in their life, just as I have been helped by the honesty and vulnerability of other unschooling mamas who have shared their experiences navigating their children’s myriad choices. As challenging as this process is, to know that there are other families who have gone through this has been less isolating, and I am grateful to anyone who has been willing to be honest about the messiness of being a youth liberationist whose child has chosen school.

To begin, I want to be clear that this decision was initiated by our ten-year-old, Z (they/she), not by us (their parents). They want to try school, and we are supporting their choice, because not going to school is only a small part of what unschooling is for our family. We’ve always felt most aligned with Akilah S. Richards’s definition of unschooling: a child trusting, anti-oppression, love centered approach to living and learning. As Akilah says, “It’s so much more than an educational model, it’s a way of life.” For us, unschooling is truly about partnering with our young people - how we spend our time, the decisions we make, the curiosities we choose to follow; we are individuals who weave our various needs and wants together. So when Z came to us saying they were thinking about following their school curiosity, they knew that they were going to be taken seriously. They knew we would do everything in our power to support their decision, even if we do not believe in the institution of school.

A big part of our deschooling work has been to see our children not as extensions of us, but as their own sovereign beings. That means that they may not make the same choices that we might make or that we might make for them. They may develop interests and opinions vastly different from ours, and we have to feel through ways of living in contradiction and complexity. We want our children to follow their curiosities and, over the years, have supported their interests in pottery, gymnastics, and nature exploration, to name a few. We’ve researched these curiosities together, and invested time and energy in them. When school became the curiosity, we acted similarly. We weren’t going to say, “We meant all curiosities, except this one.” Choosing to live an unschooling life does not mean that we are going to be able to dictate our child’s interests and choices. In our case, the deschooling journey we’ve been on (and will be on in perpetuity) is about raising free people, not having our children only traverse paths we find acceptable. This is what makes this life wonderful and wildly uncomfortable.

Believe me, there are parts of me that want to pull the ‘power-over’ card and say, “I’m the parent and I think school could be a harmful place for your body and mind so you are not going.” Over the past few months as we’ve moved through this decision, I’ve wanted to pull Z aside and say, “You know, there are so many other options,” but I know that they already know this. We’ve spent the last six years dabbling in different communities, classes, and groups. Z is well aware that learning happens everywhere. They also have a plethora of interests, time to be both social and solitary, and access to a variety of learning opportunities. All of this is true and they still have a desire to try school. Over the last six years, we have made the case for living without school, and they have countered with a desire to know what it’s like living with it.

One of Z’s more enduring qualities is their curiosity, and, at this moment, that curiosity is leading them to school. They are an observer who has a desire to know more about most everything, and they say that school is just one more thing they’d like to explore. They can’t experience what they are curious about experiencing anywhere but within those walls. Z has heard so much about school from cousins and friends, they’ve read about it in books, and they’ve seen it depicted in movies and television. Although they’ve had the opportunity to experience so much during their time outside of school, school is the thing that they have not had the opportunity to try. And, let’s be honest - even if you live a life outside of it, school and schoolishness are everywhere. There was not going to be any class or group or simulation that would have satisfied their curiosity about this. And no one was going to be able to tell Z that school wasn’t for them; they needed to physically be there, taking it all in, for themselves.

So, we listened to Z, had many family discussions, and decided that this was the time for them to follow this curiosity. We did the schoolish things: found out class assignments, collected school supplies, went to orientation, and met their teacher. We did all of these things, all the while wrestling with the idea of how to support a child who wants to attend school without supporting the idea of school itself. Because, just to be clear, this decision does not change my opinion that school is a status quo institution. I am completely aware that school and everything attached to it relies on a narrow belief about intelligence and worth. At school, success is measured by performative actions and, even in highly “progressive” schools, there is an emphasis on binary thinking and compliance. I am a person who has pushed against those beliefs, both as a teacher and an unschooling mama. Now, I am a parent of a student.

People have asked me how I’m handling this change, and my answer is pretty succinct: I’m allowing myself to grieve. Full stop. I am allowing myself to feel all of the feelings that arise from this choice. I mean (and I’m not trying to be hyperbolic), this feels like a death - of disruption, of possibility, of living outside of convention. I’m grieving the prospect that Z will get sucked into schoolish beliefs and will lose their ability to radically imagine a new world. I am grieving our former life that didn’t include fitting into schoolish boxes and schedules. On any given day I am disappointed, elated, heartbroken, optimistic - you name it - but I am practicing my grieftending skills so that I won’t try to run from the sadness or try to manipulate it for my own comfort. I’m working to ensure my grief does not affect Z’s opinions about their decision. For me, there is a heaviness to this time, but for Z it is full of exciting possibilities and exploration.

I am sitting with all of the discomfort this decision brings with it and find that when I am able to practice this grief work, I am also able to see what is positive about this choice, because - of course - there is so much nuance. I can see how going to a place every day with the same people is beneficial for them. I can see how being told, explicitly, that it is ‘math time’ or ‘literacy time’ is helpful for the way Z’s brain works when it comes to academic pursuits. I am able to see how they are able to advocate for themselves in an institution, and to be their unique self. I hear Z talk about the various experiences they are having, and I know these are only experiences that they could be having in this particular place at this particular time. And, with a deep exhale, I say to myself that it’s okay. An unschooling life, as I have understood it, is about getting comfortable with change and remaining open to a variety of different pathways and outcomes.

As a family, we’ve lived through so many different seasons in this unschooling life already, each having brought profound teaching and reflection. I can only imagine that this time - the season of school - will be instructive for all of us on many different levels.

So, with a deep breath, we take that leap.

Many years ago, I heard a seasoned unschooling parent claim that self-directed learning was about playing ‘the long game.’ She went on to explain that her son’s main focus for many years was play, and that he didn’t become interested in more conventional academics until he was 11 or 12. My children were 2 and 4-years-old at the time, ages where non-stop play was still ‘allowed’ by society’s standards. I couldn’t imagine a time when I would begin to worry about whether or not my children were reaching academic benchmarks, so I didn’t really understand this idea of ‘the long game’ in this context - but I had an inkling that what she said was important, so I tucked it into the back of my mind, knowing it would most likely make better sense to me at some point in the future.

‘The long game’ wasn’t a new phrase for me; when I was teaching, it’s how those of us who prioritized social/emotional learning (as well as academic instruction) justified what we were doing in our classrooms, especially during the first weeks of school. While some teachers immediately jumped into lessons, assessments, and rubrics, we spent the first month building a cohesive classroom community. We used that time to lay the groundwork onto which we would build our year together: playing games, discovering activities we enjoyed, and getting to know each other as people. We named our Hopes and Dreams for the school year, co-created our rules, and practiced methods of repair. Thinking about the ‘long game’, especially when it came to our classroom community, meant taking the time to build a foundation of belonging, joy, and safety. 

I’m not going to lie - I allowed my eyes to wander during the early months of the school year. I saw what other classrooms were ‘producing’, what lessons they were covering, and how much more ‘advanced’ they appeared than my students. They were flying through the curriculum, while the bulk of our time was spent deepening our relationships to one another and fostering an environment of trust and bravery. We worked to have a classroom of people who knew and supported one another, and who had the opportunity to delve deeply and meaningfully into different academic subjects. Because we moved at our own pace, the academic component of our classroom didn’t usually look like those who were plowing through lessons and units of study. Many of the students in those classrooms had little-to-no investment in what they were learning - even if, on the outside, it looked like they were accomplishing a great deal.

I remember being questioned through the years: Why is your class spending so much time talking and playing games? Why do you make time for Morning Meetings and Closing Circles? Why do you schedule extra play time? How can you give your students so much choice - won’t they fall ‘behind’? It’s funny - when I look back to my teaching years - we did get to the required curricula, we just did it in our own way and in our own time. Did we score as high on state and city assessments? I don’t know (and don’t care). I would argue that we learned as much about ourselves and each other as we did the subjects we tackled - something not valued by coercive institutions, but highly valued by me. I was told, year after year, how joyful and invested our students were in their learning. Also, how adept they were at resolving conflicts, naming their emotions, and voicing their opinions - skills I believe were worth taking the time to practice.

Fast forward a few years and I’m now a mama to six-and-(almost) nine-year-old unschoolers. They are not drawn to most conventional academics at this point in their lives. They move at their own pace. Z and K’s days are centered around play - with Lego, technology, clay, and other children for hours at a time. This is not the norm for children their age. Schooled children are spending their days improving the skills deemed important by society - becoming skilled at reading, writing, and mathematics from an early age. It can be wildly uncomfortable to see how other children are quickly obtaining academic skills while my children are experimenting with food and attempting to rescue Zelda. I mean, I’m human; I see what schooled children can do and what my children can not (yet) do. Sometimes it can feel demoralizing to know that my children are seen as ‘less than’ by people who measure intelligence by schoolish standards. I will admit that, even five years into this unschooling journey, I still sometimes wonder whether we should ditch this unconventional lifestyle and join the rest of society. But here’s the thing - instead of jumping to ‘fix’ it, I am allowing myself to be uncomfortable. Like, the sitting-in-the-muck-and-comparing-and-feeling-envy-and-wondering-if-this-is-a-horrible-mistake kind of uncomfortable. And, usually - I am able to get to a place where I can breathe and remember: we entered into this lifestyle with a desire for our children to understand themselves, to follow their curiosities, and to develop our family’s relationship to each other outside of conventional structures. 

In school, you know if you are ‘succeeding’ - there are grades and report cards and tests (I don’t agree with any of these as a measure of a person, but alas…). An unschooling life is murkier. You can’t quantify what’s happening within a young unschooler who spends their days immersed in play and conversation. But every once and a while I see glimpses of how our practices - centering relationships and dismantling coercive practices - manifest in my children’s lives. Z and K have an understanding of their own minds and bodies, they advocate for themselves and others, they work to repair after causing harm, and they luxuriate in their chosen activities. In addition to play, we converse about everything - what we love, what we find challenging, what we dream about. I know this is important, integral work and yet - I’ve had to check myself more than a few times over the course of my deschooling journey when I’ve allowed my eyes to wander away from my own children in order to compare them to those on a completely different path.

When I am able to be a witness to the full lives my children are living now, I have little-to-no desire to compare them to young people who spend their days very differently. The choice we are making to live life outside of convention is intentional; the rush to acquire academic skills is not as important to us at this point in time. Can our children do everything schooled kids do on the same schedule? Absolutely not. Will they have the exact knowledge base of someone who has gone through the school system? Nope. Is this a bad thing? I suppose it’s up for debate, but my experience and intuition says no. Schoolishness will convince us that there is a certain curriculum and a finite amount of time to learn academic skills. I’ve spent many years interrogating that indoctrination, and have come to the conclusion that we’ve been deceived. What has been sold to us as ‘necessary’ knowledge (especially at specific ages), is untrue. There is plenty of time. There are different pathways. 

“The long game” does make a lot more sense to me now that my children are older and we are constantly bumping up against conventional beliefs. My only issue with the phrase is that it implies we have the same end goal as those who send their children to school, and that may not be true. My intention is to partner with my young people on their unique path, regardless of the outcome. In order to do this, I am working to strengthen my patience and trust work: fewer ‘shoulds’ and more ‘ahas’. I’m continuing to trust: that my children will learn what they need to know when they need to know it; that taking time to savor what is happening right now is beneficial in ways that might not be visible to the outside eye, that success means a lot more than high grades, honor rolls, and accolades, and that a life outside of convention does not need to be compared to a life inside of convention.

I’m learning that it’s all part of the journey - drowning out the noise and focusing on my children as unique and sovereign beings, moving at their own pace, comparable to no one.

I’m wildly uncomfortable most of the time. Truly. On any given day I am shifting ideas, grieving past versions of myself, or holding space for a wide range of emotions - all of which make me incredibly ill-at-ease. For much of my life I saw discomfort as a bad thing; one twinge of it and I would immediately try to solve or change whatever was causing it. Instead of accepting discomfort, I would force my thoughts towards positivity, or attempt to escape the frustration or sadness in any way possible. But things are changing. I’m working to move away from deflection and into acceptance, and in order to do so I must learn to sit with things that make my body shiver and my heart pound. From partnering with my young children, to confronting my aging body, to disrupting whiteness - I am allowing myself to feel uncomfortable in some monumental ways. Akilah Richards says that deschooling is ‘a liberatory practice about meeting what is.’ As a person who’s historically tried to escape what is in favor of what’s comfortable, this practice has been revelatory (and difficult as hell) for me. 

I am a person who finds the act of parenting to be inherently uncomfortable. I’ve struggled with constantly being needed, with sharing my body and time, and with handling my big emotions whilst helping my children regulate theirs. Add partnering with my children to this mix and you’ve got a recipe for deep discomfort. To be around children in their natural state, rather than a performative one, is both exhilarating and very uncomfortable. To truly hold space for their wide spectrum of emotions, opinions, and thoughts - as well as my own - is a challenging task. We work side-by-side with our children to make decisions about how we spend our time, what food we eat, how we use technology - most anything that impacts our daily existence. This process is grounded in discomfort - so many differing opinions, so many perspectives - and because we see their opinions as equal to ours, we can’t fall back on “What I say, goes.” I’m realizing that my children’s sovereignty is bound to my ability to tolerate discomfort. Every day. During our many complicated conversations, I feel a heat rise inside my body - something I never imagined I’d allow myself to feel. When I first became a parent, I thought I’d want to have a lot more control and be able to sway my childrens’ opinions with ease. This is not the case. Turns out, I’m much more invested in collaborating with them, which is a lot messier. When I feel the heat rising in my body, I pause. Maybe I can’t ‘fix’ this; maybe I just have to ‘be’ with this. There are times I want to surrender to the neat and tidy path that conventional life promises: twenty minutes of screen time, set schedules, parents having the ‘last word’. But allowing discomfort to reside in my body is helping me see where I need to do the most work in order to show up more authentically as a partner to my young people. It’s a daily practice. 

This practice has actually informed other areas of my life in unexpected ways - e.g. my aging body. For context, my hair has been going gray since I was 19 years old, but I never allowed myself to see more than a millimeter of it before dyeing my entire head. Gray, to me, signified old and unattractive. By dyeing my hair, I could control my appearance and didn’t have to face my actual one. For 25 years, I made salon appointments or dyed my roots myself, a knee-jerk response to looking at a reflection in the mirror that made me uncomfortable. A few years ago I began questioning this inability to withstand discomfort with my hair. I was working so hard to allow discomfort with my children - why wasn’t I able to do it with my appearance? Why was I relying on a ‘quick fix’ instead of asking myself some deeper questions, like Where did I get the idea that gray was unappealing? Did I really believe that? What would it be like to grow out my gray hair? What might surface for me? One day, about seven months ago, I decided not to dye my roots, as an experiment. I wanted to sit with the discomfort of looking at the gray growing in and not doing anything about it. I didn’t throw out my coloring supplies or anything dramatic. I told myself I could always dye it - but I didn’t dye it that day, or the next, or the day after that. It’s been quite the adventure so far - to see a reflection that doesn’t make me comfortable and not do anything to change it. Sometimes I think I’m too young to look like this or that my children are too young for their mother to look like this. I see photos from a year ago and hardly recognize myself. I’ll see women twenty or thirty years my senior still dyeing their hair, and feel envious -  I could do that, too. I could pretend I never allowed myself to go on this journey and return to a time when I was unwilling to be this uncomfortable. I’m now sifting through deeply held biases I had held about aging and what it means to outwardly show signs of getting older. I see that I’ve been manipulated to believe that I shouldn’t allow myself to look the way I naturally look. Society has told me I should do anything in my power to hide my aging body and to fit into society’s definition of attractive, but I’m disrupting that narrative. Have I proclaimed myself a “silver sister” who thinks this was the best decision I ever made? Nah - I haven’t reached that level of certainty yet. Might I dye it again at some point? Perhaps. But if and when I do, it won’t be because I want to hide. Maybe I’ll even give myself the chance to play - something I’ve never allowed myself to do with my hair. This experiment has enabled me to get curious about different ways of thinking about aging and beauty in general.

Shifting ideas and belief systems is fundamentally uncomfortable. I don’t know if I’ve fully acknowledged the toll that Changing My Mind (caps intentional) has taken on me. Adopting new ways of thinking takes research, practice, reflection, maintenance, and humility. Changing Your Mind is time consuming and necessitates detaching yourself from being ‘right’ or an ‘expert’ - positions highly valued by our society. This decolonizing process is helping me get comfortable with existing in a ‘beginner’s mindset’ - constantly staying open to new ideas that might make more sense than what I had previously believed. As many of you know, I was a teacher for over 15 years. During this time I believed there were only a few ways that people could become literate. I spent years utilizing methods and strategies that would assist people along what I believed to be an exacting pathway towards literacy. I was confident in that belief for a very long time, and tied my worth as an educator to the amount of expertise I possessed in that subject area. Then I left teaching and jumped into the world of self-directed education. I started looking at research about literacy that was not on any graduate syllabus or professional reading list. I began observing how my children interacted with words and stories. They were not interested in the methods I utilized in the classroom; they were learning how to read and write in ways I never would have imagined (maybe in ways I wasn't allowed to imagine in a school setting). Confronting new information forced me to admit that my knowledge of literacy acquisition wasn’t expansive enough. I was not an ‘expert’, and that was humbling to admit. I wanted my time in the classroom to be seen as important and I didn’t want all the work I put in - a Masters degree, extensive professional development, years of classroom implementation - to be seen as a waste. I had some ego flare-ups that almost prevented me from allowing new ideas to take the place of older ones. But instead of choosing narrow-mindedness, I allowed myself to feel grief. I grieved the fact that I believed and employed knowledge that was limiting and deficient. I grieved my obsolete status as an ‘excellent literacy teacher.’ I sat with all of the discomfort that arose without trying to make it ‘better’. Because I allowed myself to grieve, I could later acknowledge that all of the time and effort I took helping my former students on their literacy paths didn’t have to be discarded because my ideas had now shifted. I did the best with what I knew then, and can now bring a more comprehensive understanding of literacy to emerging readers and writers because I allowed myself to Change My Mind. 

It is uncomfortable to learn new information about yourself and the world that you a) didn’t know and b) conflicts with what you had previously understood to be true. This has been the case with my understanding of whiteness, which may be the most important unlearning I’ve embarked on in my life. For so long, I believed my identity as a white person to be relatively innocuous; I took whiteness for granted as well as all of the privileges that accompany it. I had no idea how harmful white supremacy culture was or that it was embedded into every aspect of our society. When I became a partner to a Black man and a mother to Black biracial children, it became glaringly obvious that I needed to confront and dismantle whiteness within myself. I was mortified when I first started listening to Black, Indigenous, and other people of the global majority explain white people’s role in upholding white supremacy. I thought I was a ‘good’ white person who could skip over all of the discomfort and proclaim myself an ally. Nope. I was informed that if I ever wanted to be helpful to the movement of collective liberation, I was going to have to tolerate uncomfortable feelings that would inevitably arise when learning the truth. I could not proclaim myself a ‘good’ white person and disassociate myself from other white people; I had to see how we were all complicit, upheld racist systems, and possessed implicit biases. I had to commit to working on my own relationship to whiteness before I could entertain the idea of entering multiracial, liberation-focused spaces. So I really started listening. And reading. And showing up in places that were not created for white people’s comfort. At first, I closed books or left meetings when the discomfort became overwhelming. But I came back, and kept coming back. In fact, these are still the books and spaces I frequent - the ones that are blunt about the healing white people must undertake in order to show up in ways that are helpful instead of harmful. Notebooks worth of stream-of-consciousness processing, as well as conversations with other white people on a similar journey are both helping me get to the stage where I understand more fully what needs to be disrupted and dismantled, both within myself and in the world. The discomfort is still present, but my capacity to withstand it has increased. 

Discomfort, for me, has become a portal to other ways of knowing and being. Allowing myself to sit with discomfort is enabling me to feel emotions that I had previously covered up or pushed away. For so long I thought I wanted my life to be comfortable, but I now see that being comfortable requires stasis as well as ignoring truths that are begging to be witnessed. I am no longer interested in comfort because I want to live with my eyes wide open.

I am replacing shelteredness with expansiveness.  

I am striving to meet what *is*. 

When I decided to become a teacher many years ago, I did so because (among other reasons) I wanted to co-create a community with young people, a microcosm of “real” life, where we were able to design and practice ways of living and learning with each other each and every day. Little did I know then that conventional school was not the ideal place to attempt this endeavor, as we were all still within a structure devoid of general autonomy and consent - but we did what we could. We collaborated to build a vibrant community within our four walls where we took time getting to know each other, experiencing joy while learning together, and working through times of conflict and harm.

Many schools respond reactively to challenging situations. If there is harm, the result is punishment. Students are sent out of the classroom, to the principal’s office, have recess privileges revoked, or are given detentions or suspensions. Whatever the specific transgression, the person causing harm is removed from the community and punished by having to sit in a room by themselves or be reprimanded (and further punished) by an administrator. Punishments never made sense to me. When I heard of classrooms or schools using punishment, I always had a lot of questions: What kinds of proactive structures were in place in the school/classroom that could have prevented this transgression? What will happen to the child after the punishment? How are trust and connection restored? How is the child who did harm reintegrated back into the community? How will the circumstances or the environment change so that the same transgression doesn’t happen again?

When I was a teacher, my students and I created our classroom community together. From what was displayed on our walls, to the jobs we created, to the ways we figured out how to handle conflict - it was not just me dictating how things were going to happen; we collaborated to create our environment (again, within the confines of the conventional system). In our classroom, we were intentionally proactive. We began the year by co-creating our rules, then revisited and revised those rules throughout the year. We had daily rituals that built community - ways that we came together and deepened our relationships. We knew each other (and yes, I am aware that it was still only a fraction of our whole selves, because, well, school) and had fun - so much fun - together. In our classroom we had internal systems of care in place, even between some neighboring classrooms, where students knew they had not only their own teacher and classmates looking out for them, but other teachers and classmates as well. Let me be clear: other teachers and classmates looking out for them, with an eye on care, not punishment. 

When you operate in this way, you have to have a belief that people want to belong, they want to be known, they want to be cared for, they want to ‘do right’ by the community. When students are involved in the creation of the classroom (or any) environment, they are more strongly invested and willing to practice accountability. Mistakes and transgressions (or ‘misbehaviors’ as they are so commonly called) are a normal part of being human. There is no world where people do not cause harm. When you shift your mindset, you begin to see harm for what it is: a call for help and an opportunity to make changes to the situation or environment by looking at the cause of the transgression. Punishment is a quick fix that looks like it has solved the problem because it stops the negative behavior in the moment, but it does not maintain the integrity of the individuals involved nor does it get to the root cause of why the problem occurred in the first place. Nothing changes about the environment or structure when punishment is used. The result of punishment is an ‘othering’ of the person who did the harm and an instillment of fear in other students in the classroom who are now afraid of being punished themselves. How does detention truly help if a student is just sitting alone, away from the community? What does missing recess accomplish except depriving a student of the movement and fresh air that they deserve? I think a question we should always be asking when dealing with the aftermath of harm is, What will we do to transform (the situation, the environment, the community)?

When I was teaching, many colleagues questioned why I didn’t use punishment. They called me naive to use approaches other than ones based in fear. They couldn’t imagine how students would “fall in line” without threats or punitive measures. The truth is, my students didn’t fall in line. They (and I) operated as humans, making mistakes and causing harm - but I believe it was how we recovered from times of conflict that made our community what it was. I was constantly  astounded by just how many times, during my tenure as a teacher, I was told how ‘this’ way of teaching was not going to achieve the ‘results’ the school wanted, namely compliance and obedience. But what schools came to understand was that I had no interest in teaching young people to obey; I wanted them to be their full selves. 

My attempt to build a thriving ecosystem of care, compassion, and joy within a conventional, hostile setting (meaning the majority of the staff is dead-set on punishments) was extremely challenging because students were not only in my care throughout the day, they also interacted with other teachers, lunch aides, playground monitors, and office staff. There were times that I retrieved my students after physical education or lunch only to hear that their actions resulted in a lost recess or detention. When this would happen, my whole body would recoil: This is not how we operate in our community. But these adults had the capacity, with the backing of administration, to hand out punishments as they saw fit and many wielded their power without any thought of the repercussions. When students would return to our classroom from spaces where there was yelling and punishment, we would come together and try to make sense of it as a community. They knew that I was not on the side of other adults who reacted in this way. I came to understand that, many times, my students didn’t understand the expectations of other teachers/staff, and were confused as to why they were in trouble in the first place. These young people understood that it was possible to cause harm and not be punished; in our classroom, we were well-practiced in going through a process of repair. When young people see what it is like to be treated with humanity and connection it becomes (even more) infuriating for them to be treated otherwise.

I taught for almost 15 years and, let me tell you, it is wholly possible to not use punishment when dealing with harm, but it’s a lot of work, and those who attempt it will make a lot of mistakes (speaking from experience here). To shift from a punitive mindset to a transformative one is challenging, especially if you have existed in conventional systems for the majority of your life. To not just resort to, “I’m going to send you to the principal”, “You are going to lose your recess,” or any other myriad punishments when faced with a challenging situation necessitates a paradigm shift within the adult. It also takes building a strong foundation of care within your community as well as alternative structures in order to not have to rely on punitive and hierarchical interventions. 

When a school environment does not value social and emotional learning, everyone suffers. Students don’t know what to expect from the many different adults they see on a daily basis. Teachers are constantly reacting to their students instead of working collaboratively with them. Everyone (including the adults) lives in fear of being reprimanded and punished. Schools must center the social and emotional components of living and learning, and I’m not talking about performative action I’ve seen at schools -- “friendship” assemblies, anti-bullying posters on the wall, and everyone reading How Full is Your Bucket. I’m talking about the daily work of getting to know each other, building trust and connection, and figuring out how to transform the community when harm occurs. Living in this way within school walls can be challenging because it goes against the grain of how school works. School is a place where students are on the lowest rung of the hierarchy, and are at the mercy of the adults ‘in charge’. Teachers see themselves somewhere on the middle section of the hierarchy, fearful of ‘messing up’ and ‘not maintaining order’ in the presence of administrators. This top-down way of governing has everyone walking on eggshells.

I believe there is a desensitization that happens to us when we spend much of our lives in a place where punishment is normalized. During the years we are at school, we see ourselves and our classmates reprimanded, losing free time, and being issued detentions and suspensions on a regular basis. Our society thinks it is acceptable for elementary students to lose playtime for talking in class and for teenagers to be suspended or expelled for what they wear. Watch any television show or read any book and you will see school punishments made to seem routine, a ‘regular’ part of a young person’s existence - kids being humiliated in front of their peers, teachers yelling, classes with their heads on their desks. We’ve normalized punishment to the point that much of society believes this is the only way to operate. I wonder if seeing all of this for the 12+ years we are in school makes us balk at the idea of imagining life without continual punishment and fear. School reinforces the belief that hierarchical systems of oppression are necessary and that trying to build something different is naive. 

Our young people deserve to be treated with kindness, thoughtfulness, and compassion. They deserve not to have their names written on a board, humiliated in front of their peers, or to be excluded from their community. I wonder if we all started questioning the way classrooms and schools operate, if we might carry those questions to the world outside of school. Maybe we would start to wonder whether punitive ways of dealing with harm, namely police and prisons, are actually helping our society. Questioning things doesn’t mean you have to have immediate solutions. I think that if we all started asking more questions, we’d start to collectively figure out that there is not a lot of sense in continuing to exist in a framework dependent on systems of power and punitive measures. 

There is a world beyond punishment and fear.

From the time I could walk and talk, I was creating. I spent hours dressing up in clothes my mom had saved in a large hope chest. Most days I morphed into different characters, disguising myself in button-down shirts, thrift store gowns, and shoes double my size. I delighted in creating intricate stories for imaginary characters and getting anyone and everyone to join in on the fun of pretending. I made music, I wrote scripts, I designed structures and spaces. I had an innate belief that my creations, in whatever capacity, were legitimate and worthy. For a good chunk of my early life I was the one letting others know what I wanted to put out into the world and how I wanted to do it. At some point, though, I stopped making my own work. I bought into the idea that I needed permission from others to be an artist and sought the approval of the most impressive gatekeepers possible. I’ve tried to pinpoint exactly how this occurred, and what I’ve uncovered is that it was probably the slow burn of a few different things: a lack of autonomy over my time, a belief that others knew better than I did, and a desire to achieve some level of prestige. 

Creativity takes time - to dream, to notice, to play - and for a good part of my life, my time was not my own. I was spending my time doing what others believed was important and necessary - school, extracurriculars - fitting my interests in before and after my long scheduled days. When you have limited time, you don’t have the ability to dabble and make a ton of mistakes. For me, creativity became less about tinkering and more about being a part of a finished product,  less about pleasure and more about goals. I chose instruments to play that I believed might get me a college scholarship, I wrote solely for the purpose of scoring well on school assignments, and I acted primarily in productions that would help me get into an admirable theater program. 

After a while it became normal for me to think about creativity as something to be commodified, something that would allow me to pay my bills. Also, as is the case for many young artists who don’t come from money, I was urged to find a ‘backup’, something more financially stable because creativity doesn’t usually pay. I also narrowed down my creative interests, since I needed to put all of my energy toward the one that might help me pay my rent, alongside my ‘regular’ job. I stopped making music, stopped designing, and stopped writing. I focused solely on acting and became dependent on what was already being produced, trying to fit into existing productions and stopped imagining what I could create myself and with others. Little by little I lost my own voice. 

From an early age, I believed that others knew better than I did. There was always someone above me - who I was conditioned to believe had the right to dictate what real talent was. I allowed them to affect my beliefs about my own abilities. I tried so hard to fit into their narrow perception of worthiness and believed that it made sense they got to choose who made it through the gate. There’s a lot you have to contort in order to get through the gates. When I look back at my life as an actor, I recall all of the workshops I was instructed to attend - listening to the gatekeepers tell us what we should and should not do in an audition. The ‘right’ way to walk into the room and introduce ourselves - what to wear, where to look. Desperately trying not to make any faux pas that would reduce our chances of landing the role or opportunity. I spent all of this time trying to contort my awkward-but-in-a-charming-way self into some polished version that (I was told) would make me more appealing to the people that mattered. 

Life became performative. I was always thinking about how I was coming across, how I was being received, how to hide my ‘faults’ and diminish my eccentricities. Gone were the days of creating for pleasure, from my own imagination. I wanted, so badly, to be chosen, to get the part, to be the one. In my mind, real success was being chosen to fit into someone else’s vision. And I did get chosen - quite a bit for a while - leading me to put a lot of importance in being selected. My entire value was tied up in it. If I was chosen for something, I considered it a sign that I should continue. If I wasn’t chosen, then I took it as a sign that maybe I should quit. I had put all of my worth into the gatekeepers’ judgments of me, I had lost the innate ability to judge for myself.  This was my mentality for a long, long time, but after a while, I got to thinking, why do they get to choose (and honestly, why do they get to choose)? What makes their judgment better than anyone else’s? The way I see it now, I understand that a lot of the gatekeepers had to move through the gates themselves at some point. They jumped through the hoops and clawed their way through the door, and now they get to be the keepers. They get to uphold the importance of the gate and make it as impossible to get through so that their status remains as high as possible.

Why does society see it as more legitimate if a gatekeeper chooses your work? My two cents say that it is because we can say that we ‘won’ something - a spot on this prestigious hierarchy. Being chosen, in itself, is an affirmation that mainstream society will see you as legitimate. I was recently reading about a novelist who self-published her book and was dismissed by others as ‘not really being a writer’ because she hadn’t been published by an established company. To me, the only difference between this novelist and one who was published by, say, Random House, is that she did the hard work of putting her words out into the world without corporate assistance. She didn’t spend her time shopping her creativity around, hoping to be picked; she put it out herself. Why was she seen as less than? I sometimes wonder, would artists who have achieved conventional success still continue to create even if their work was no longer chosen by a gatekeeper? Without the clout or the possibility of awards and bestseller lists, would they still continue to create? 

What if I had just continued to create? What if, instead of hoping to achieve some level of success by being chosen by people and institutions I don’t even agree with, I had just continued to make things? Waiting to be chosen kept me from creating for a long time. But the thing is, there’s only so many publications, there are only so many roles, there are only so many gates. The scarcity is real, until you realize that the only reason there are so few opportunities is because society has made it that way; I think to keep us in competition with each other to uphold the belief that only a select few are worthy of being called artists. Honestly, I call bullshit. 

It’s taken me a long time, but I no longer want to fit into someone else’s vision - altering myself to fit others’ expectations. I want to be my awkward-but-in-a-charming-way self who can’t help but imagine and dream and create, whose artistic interests don’t fit neatly into boxes (and, most likely will never be financially sustainable <sigh>). So here I am writing these essays, one of my current forms of creative expression. No one has told me that I should be a writer or has chosen my work out of thousands of submissions (it’s substack! you can do it, too!). I’m not writing what I think will get the most likes or appeal to the mainstream. I’m simply making things again - mostly because there are things I need to say, and also because I am longing to connect with others. I’m also designing and playing the piano and singing and dancing again - tinkering and playing and making creativity a daily practice, with no intention of being chosen. 

Truly, it’s the most joyful I’ve been in a long time. 

Tell someone you are interested in unschooling and you’ll most likely be pointed to the work of John Holt, Peter Gray, or John Taylor Gatto - all white men. Look up the most popular unschooling podcasts, and you’ll land on a slew of white faces. Attend an unschooling conference and you’ll usually find mostly white presenters and white attendees. There is usually a focus on questions like, How long does it take to deschool? How will my children learn? How much screen time is too much? Will my child be successful (i.e. if they unschool will they still get into college and get a ‘great’ job like their schooled peers)? Check out #unschooling on social media, and you’ll probably see one of the following images: white women in linen, white children cradling wooden toys, or white families picking vegetables from their homesteads extolling their freedom. Even when the images are devoid of linen, they are usually white.

In white spaces, there is a lot of time spent reassuring ourselves that unschooling is a legitimate decision, mostly (I think) because it is not widely accepted in mainstream society. In majority-white spaces there is a lot of talk about personal freedom, but I can’t help but think, what are we doing with all of this freedom? What is the goal? How are we making unschooling more accessible to more people rather than merely opting out of what already exists? There are conversations that I’ve been a part of that have been thoughtful, for sure, but it only ever goes so deep. 

What is not often talked about in white spaces is how we can use unschooling as a tool to disrupt other systems of oppression, namely systemic racism. Social justice can often be seen as optional; if white people are choosing not to send their children to school for good reasons, and if their children are better off without school, then they may believe their work is done. We are also not talking enough about the lack of Black and brown representation in unschooling or why the most recognizable names and faces in the unschooling world continue to belong to white people. We are not always speaking honestly about the anti-racist work we need to do in order to safely collaborate with BIPOC to build alternative ways of living and learning.

I definitely didn’t feel at home in predominantly white unschooling spaces. I didn’t see my family represented (physically or conversationally), and also, I wanted to look at unschooling outside the lens of individual freedom. Fortunately I found Akilah S. Richards and her incredible podcast, Fare of the Free Child, early on in my deschooling journey. For those of you unfamiliar with Akilah’s work, here is her definition of unschooling: “a child-trusting, anti-oppression, liberatory, love-centered approach to living and learning.” As soon as I heard that definition, I knew I was in. Akilah’s work went waayyyyy deeper than a lot of the talk I’d been hearing in white unschooling spaces. When I engaged with Akilah’s podcast (and later, her book) I wasn’t spending a lot of time thinking about how my children would learn or be successful - I was learning about partnership parenting, transitioning away from colonized life skills, and questioning just about everything (MQA for the wiiiiiin - iykyk). It was clear how much unschooling was not just an educational choice for Akilah’s family, but a life choice rooted in liberation for all people.

Akilah’s work led me to the My Reflection Matters Village, a BIPOC-led community that centers Black and brown people interested in self-directed education. As stated in MRM’s values: 

We are in the practice of liberation. We believe in the power of the people on the ground who are most directly impacted by oppression to be able to build new systems and institutions that will center our humanity, value our gifts, identify our needs, and, ultimately, liberate us. We are not in the practice of reducing the harm that is caused by institutions and systems that are rooted in oppressive, white supremacist beliefs and practices designed to produce inequities and injustice in the very communities our society has witnessed harm against. Harm reduction--which is very necessary--is equity work; however, equity work, alone, will not transform systems. Liberation requires us to heal from colonial, oppressive wounds in order to return to our true selves so that we can build new ways of living and learning. 

During my time in the MRM village, I’ve been a part of incredible conversations focused on how to bring about change outside of conventional systems, why it takes a village (and not a pod) to raise free people, and the importance of intuition in unschooling work. My learning in this space has extended well beyond discussions about life without school; I’ve learned more about mutual aid, anti-racist sex positive parenting, and expanding white solidarity in a BIPOC centered space. Social justice is not an option in Black and brown unschooling spaces, it is the heart of the work. BIPOC unschoolers have taught me that unschooling goes (way) beyond education and personal freedom - the goal is community care and collective liberation. My Reflection Matters has helped me realize that reimagining a world away from white supremecist capitalist patriarchy is possible. 

If white people continue to be the faces and voices of unschooling, I fear we will sustain the idea that it is only for a certain type of family (white, cishet, able-bodied, socio-economically advantaged), and not a possibility for all people. When we present self-directed education through the lens of “school isn’t right for my child” instead of “the education system, itself, is oppressive” we perpetuate the idea that unschooling will only ever be an individual choice rather than a movement that calls us to dismantle a harmful structure and create something different. We white people need to step aside and amplify the voices of liberation-minded BIPOC so they are the first people who come to mind when we talk about unschooling: their books and podcasts, their social media pages, their conferences. 

If you are interested in learning more about unschooling as a tool for collective liberation rather than an act of personal freedom, I urge you to spend the bulk of your time listening to and learning from the work of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. 

• Join My Reflection Matters (and consider becoming a patron so that they are able to continue offering incredible workshops and courses to more people for little-to-no cost).

• Listen to Fare of the Free Child podcast (seriously - stop reading this and cue up an episode).

• Read Raising Free People by Akilah S. Richards and Untigering by Iris Chen.

• Explore the work of liberation-minded BIPOC unschooling voices such as Maleka Diggs, Chemay Morales-James, Leslie Bray, Domari Dickinson, Antonio Buehler, Anthony Galloway, Nikolai Pizzaro, and Tiersa McQueen.

• Attend Black-led parenting conferences such as the Rona, Racism, and Radical Parenting Conference. 

• Support BIPOC-led Self-Directed Education spaces such as Big Bad Wolf House, Liberated Kids, Abrome, Liberatorium, and Gastonia Freedom School.

I am grateful for the voices of BIPOC unschoolers that inspire me to want to build new worlds, not just for my family but for all people. What I have learned and continue to learn from them has been fundamental to the type of unschooler (and co-conspirator) I strive to be. We white people must listen to Black, Indigenous, and other people of color whose ancestral lineages and experiences have prepared them to reimagine (again and again) outside of oppressive structures. What we white people are doing and saying is important, but it only scratches the surface of what it’s going to take for all of us to be free. 

It’s interesting-slash-troubling to me that I haven’t really brought up race in any of my essays thus far. I mean, if you didn’t know me or haven’t read my “About Me” page, you might not know that I am a white woman married to a Black man and have two biracial children. I’ve wanted to write a myriad of essays that touch on race in the unschooling world, but I’ve yet to press “publish” on any of them. I think I needed to write this one first. I’ve actually been hesitant to bring up race when it has come to my parenting. This is not because I didn’t think it was important; the truth is, up until a few years ago, I felt ill-equipped. But I think it’s important to dissect a bit of where I am coming from as a white woman working to raise free Black children. 

I grew up in a predominantly white area, with mostly white classmates, neighbors, and friends. I didn’t think anything of it - I just accepted the monochromatic nature of the situation. I knew very few Black people or other people of color and learned about Black history through the public school curriculum - meaning I learned about slavery, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks. I read white authors, watched tv shows that centered white stories, and participated in extracurricular activities that had mostly white participants. I was completely insulated in whiteness.

My time at college was spent interacting with mostly white students. I was so worried about my own daily life - studying, rehearsing, working, maintaining a good GPA - I had little-to-no time to think about race (a privilege held by white people). I never thought to notice who was “in the room” and who wasn’t and I was convinced that all of us who were at this school deserved to be there (oh how little I knew about systemic racism back then). And because most everyone around me was steeped in whiteness, I didn’t have anyone disrupting my way of thinking or living. I didn’t have an appreciation of race or culture, and didn’t have a cultural identity of my own. Whiteness was the default for me.

When looking for jobs after college, my goal was to get hired. I was working from a place of scarcity - I needed insurance and enough money to pay my rent and other bills. In my early 20s, I landed at a very white and very wealthy private school in NYC. It didn’t take long for me to realize that it was a place drowning in white supremecist ideologies, although I wasn’t aware of that term at the time. We were having all of these “diversity” workshops while still gatekeeping, only admitting a handful of Black and brown students into the school. I was once asked to do a photoshoot with the only two Black students in my class which later showed up in the school’s promotional material. Something about it felt very troubling to me, but I was young and felt unsure about how to speak up about the tokenization that was taking place. Throughout my career, I was fortunate to teach amazing students of color, and I believe I was a kind and thoughtful teacher. But knowing what I know now, I didn’t do enough to ensure that these students were safe in my presence. I hadn’t taken a deep-enough look at the privileges I held and the marginalization they faced in order to be a trusted accomplice. 

So how does someone with this background end up partnered with a Black man and the mother of Black children? I’m not exactly sure, but I can definitively say that I was not worthy of either of these roles for quite some time. I remember early conversations with my husband that now make me cringe; my lack of understanding about how Black people exist in the world was evident and I was embarrassed by what I didn’t know. At that time I was also stuck in a pattern of not admitting when I didn’t know things; I was trapped in a place of ignorance because I felt a great deal of shame not knowing more about the experiences of Black people and other people of color. I think I was ashamed I hadn’t been around many Black people my entire life and I wanted to overcompensate by acting like it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe, too, it was that I didn’t know how big a deal it actually was. My white privilege enabled me to exist as a 30-something-year-old woman who rarely had to think about race.

All of that changed when we had our daughter and, a couple of years later, our son. My insecurities and shame came to the forefront when I suddenly realized that I wasn’t prepared to be their mother. I didn’t have the tools and knowledge necessary to parent Black children, yet here I was. I think I downplayed it for a while - I walked through the world as if there were no complications in being a white woman raising Black children. But it is complicated - I am the caretaker and protector of my children while also the oppressor when it comes to this nation’s history (and, let’s be honest, present). At the beginning of my daughter’s life, I didn’t think that race was going to play a major role in our family’s day-to-day lives. In retrospect I now know what an extremely naive and privileged way that was to look at our situation. I realized I had work to do in order to merit standing in partnership with my husband and children.

So I embarked on what continues to be an ongoing journey - unraveling the implicit biases I had internalized throughout my life and becoming more informed about the relationship between white supremacy and capitalism. I made sure to learn from Black and brown educators. I sought out groups and learning communities where whiteness was not centered and where I was not in the racial majority. When learning about different topics, I intentionally chose books by Black, Indigenous, and other authors of color, acknowledging that I had once gravitated towards white authors without a second thought. I started connecting the dots and was able to see how so much of what I had been taught in my life upheld white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (thank you, bell hooks). I began to divest from whiteness. I became honest about the ways I benefited from my race and how much my complicity held up the tenets of white supremacy. 

After some time, I began to change my relationship with other white people and became a disruptor in majority-white spaces. I consider myself a sounding board for white people who are confronting their own internalized white supremacy and help point them in the direction of incredible BIPOC teachers. I have challenging conversations constantly and try to have compassion for myself and for other white people on this journey. I ask a lot of questions when entering new (majority white) spaces: Are these white people willing to do the messy and uncomfortable work of becoming antiracist? Are they curious and open to learning and unlearning? Embarrassingly, these were not questions I was asking when I was a single white woman. They are now my most essential questions, as the safety of my family is dependent on the answers. 

My learning and unlearning over the last many years has been at different points messy, lonely, and exhilarating. Becoming more informed about whiteness and immersing myself in the teachings of BIPOC writers, activists, and thought leaders has made me aware of realities I was able to remain ignorant of well into adulthood. Sometimes I still have guilt and shame about this fact, but honestly  - I didn’t know what I didn’t know - and when I realized I could do better, I got to work. My goal is to be a safe person for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color - devoid of white fragility and white tears. I want my children, husband, and other Black and brown people to be able to count on me to be a trusted co-conspirator and I continue to do the work to make that a reality.

I cried the other evening because I feared I wasn’t going to live long enough to learn all of the things I want to learn and do all of the things I want to do -- yup, my kind of Saturday night. I had just returned from an invigorating walk at sunset where I had listened to an episode of the podcast, Upstream. As I listened, I walked and nodded and flailed my arms (as per usual), my mind was moving a million miles a minute as I listened. Solidarity economy, collective housing, building something new - the podcast was hitting on so many of the things I dream about daily. The guest, Francisco Perez, mentioned the various collectives that were on the ground working to build these new ways of existing. As is usually the case, I stopped many times during the walk to type out the names of new people, books, and organizations that Perez mentioned. By the end of the walk, I had at least 5 new tabs open on my phone and a list of 10 questions and thoughts typed into my notes app to research and/or write about at a later date. This is a typical walk for me. 

It took me a while to fully acknowledge that I am an investigator at heart. I love to ask big questions and to learn about the roots of various issues. I delight in systems thinking and synthesizing information. I love to learn the interconnectedness of everything. I love dreaming about possibilities and imagining different solutions. I want nothing more than to be collaborating with others and building new worlds - and, at 45 years old, I am still a beginner when it comes to understanding so much of what I am curious about. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that there is so much I don’t know and do not understand. 

Sometimes I think about how my life would be different if I had been able to spend time researching my own questions when I was younger. I was a young person, like a lot of young people, who thought deeply about the world. I had big questions about economic inequality, racial inequity, and childism (although I didn’t know those terms back then). Unfortunately that is not what we were studying at school. We were talking about neat and tidy topics that had specific right and wrong answers. We were learning just enough (whitewashed) history to regurgitate that same information back into five paragraph essays. No teacher inquired about what we wanted to study, what we noticed, or what we were curious about. I was told that the school’s curriculum was more important, so I spent my time memorizing the names of Henry VIII’s wives as well as the starting and ending dates of different world wars. I sometimes wonder, if given the time to truly explore the topics that interested me when I was a teenager, would I have come upon research that would have had me questioning capitalism back then? Would I have been able to uncover truths about racial inequity? Maybe, maybe not. But I do wonder. 

I probably could have researched my questions during my free time, but school kept me pretty busy - completing mandatory assignments, trying to keep my GPA high enough to get into a “good” college, and doing my extracurriculars. My mind wasn’t able to research my questions when I was finally free late at night (also the library, with the microfiche I needed, was closed - iykyk). Also, I really started to question whether my questions were worth researching anyway. When you have these ideas but they are not being talked about in your educational spaces, you wonder if they maybe aren’t important enough to be asking. The adults in charge tell you what is important and what is not. In my case, I put my questions away and trudged on - dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s and making the most of my schoolish life.

Most of the time I can make peace with the fact that most of my life was spent in classrooms learning conventional ways of being and thinking. I mean, I am a middle-class cishet able-bodied white woman - I’m fine. And yet, when I think about the time that was taken from me, the years I spent learning other people’s curricula instead of asking and researching my own questions. The years I spent filling in the blanks and coloring in bubbles when I could have been delving deeply into truly important topics. How much deeper might my understanding of different issues be at this point? What could I have helped build by now? And, before you say, “It’s never too late” - know that I already know this. This is not an essay about regret; it is only an admission of sadness of a fire put out by conventional school.

I played the school game for a long time - enough to get a bachelors and Masters degree. I followed the curriculum, even though so much of it was not what interested me. I worked in schools for many years, asking just-big-enough questions that made minimal disruptions in an otherwise conventional setting. I played the game, for the most part. Also, I was so busy, I didn’t have the space to ask the big questions. It seems by design that adult life (um, capitalism?) keeps us so focused on our individual survival - bills, insurance, jobs, rent/mortgage - that we have no time to investigate the big questions that affect the collective. It seems intentional to not have too many of us researching why things are the way they are. Keep us busy and struggling to make payments on things that should be guaranteed human rights. When you have all of that to worry about, you have little time to question anything. 

It actually took me getting rejected from a PhD program to find out that I was not made for learning or living in a conventional way. I had recently finished my 15th year in education and I was eager to research the big questions that I had carried with me throughout my years in the classroom. I wanted the time and space (and funding) to study and observe and interview and listen - things I couldn’t do when I was a teacher busy with the day-to-day aspects of school. I could barely contain my excitement for my proposal as I met and chatted with different professors in the program. I really thought I might get accepted - I had played the game for so long! I had years of leadership in schools and in life! My questions were deep - stemming from years of actual experience in classrooms. Maybe I now finally had the right to ask my big questions and spend my time finding answers. But, no. In the end, my experience and my questions were not what they wanted. To be honest, I was crushed, and I thought to myself once again - maybe my questions were not worth exploring.

But what I’m finding is that my questions are worth exploring, it’s just that I am not meant for school. I don’t think I ever was. I tried to fit into its boxes for so long, but I am meant for something deeper and more complicated than the tidiness of conventional education. My interests do not fit into one major or degree. My curiosities cannot be arranged in a given curriculum. Since being rejected from that program, I have gone on to study what sets me on fire: youth rights, antiracism, abolition, a post-capitalist world, emergent strategy, disability justice, fat liberation - the list goes on and on. There is no end to my studies and I will not earn a degree. I will never have fancy letters after my name and no one will know the extent of my knowledge because there will be no way to quantify it. That’s okay. I don’t need the validation in the same ways I did before. The fact that I am finally able to dive into these topics is enough. The joy I feel as I learn now is a feeling I never felt while I was in conventional school. 

So yes, I cry sometimes on my walks, but they are tears of exhilaration and of hope and of awakening.

I am so grateful to be learning on my own terms. 

The other evening, I was FaceTiming with one of my favorite 8-year-olds, V, who happens to attend conventional school. Because we talk mostly about her interests outside of school, our conversation centered around the miniature creations she was making and the elaborate cup structures she had designed. It was delightful. She then paused and her eyes widened, “I have to show you something.” She ran into the other room and garnered a piece of paper which she excitedly pushed up against the camera. “I got a 100 on my multiplication test. The teacher made an announcement that only two people in my class got a 100 - me and Joe. And look - my teacher wrote this: ‘Keep working hard.’”

My heart sank. 

Maybe that’s not what you were expecting. Wouldn’t I just congratulate her and be so immensely proud that she is rocking multiplication? That’s what most people would feel and do, right? But it’s not that simple for me. Of course, I congratulated her and we talked a bit about multiplication and the 9s times table (her favorite). We chatted a bit more and then hung up, but I couldn’t get the test or the teacher or what transpired out of my head.

I wanted to know why the names of those who got a 100% were announced. I wanted to know in what order the tests were returned and what the teacher said as she handed each test to each student. I wanted to know how this teacher speaks about tests and grades, in general, and how much value she places on this type of assessment. I wanted to know her understanding of mathematical thinking and how much time she devotes to learning about multiple intelligences and social-emotional learning. I wanted to know what was written on the tests of those who received a 70% or 50%. I wanted to talk to those students and see how they felt about what transpired in the classroom. 

I was angry on V’s behalf, too. What does the public praise from getting a perfect score do to a student? How does that affect her relationship with her peers? Now there is a clear delineation between them - she has scored a 100% and they have not, and it has been made public knowledge. Also, what happens when she doesn’t get the 100% and she is suddenly not held in such high esteem by her teacher? What will that do to her confidence? How will that affect her teacher’s opinion of her? In school, where a teacher’s opinion of you holds a great deal of weight, I worry about these public proclamations and how they affect those who get the praise and those who don’t.

I’m also disheartened to hear that tests are still being used, especially in elementary classrooms. A test is not an accurate representation of what someone knows on any given topic; mostly they show who is good at taking tests. I’m concerned for students who do well on tests and are therefore labeled “good at math.” In my experience, they are the ones who see mathematics as something else to “check off” their list, while resisting the complexity and depth of the subject. “I know how to [insert skill here], therefore I get to move on to the next thing.” Conversely, I worry about the students who don’t do well on tests who are continually labeled “bad at math.” This is a label and a mindset that follows people throughout their childhood and well into adulthood (I argue that no one is ‘bad at math’, it’s how the subject is facilitated - but that’s another essay). I am curious how testing students and then announcing the results provides a safe environment for anyone to truly learn anything.

I taught elementary mathematics for many years. Guiding students to develop mathematical ideas, to play with numbers, to solve complex problems, to communicate their thinking - these were absolute highlights of my years in the classroom. I did not need a test to tell me what my students understood about the topic at hand.  In most cases, tests are the most unimaginative assessments possible. Math congresses, partner work, games, number strings, conferencing - these were the ways I could comprehend the depth of my students’ understanding. There are many different ways to be “good” at multiplication, and barely any of them can be communicated via a test. I had students who were able to effectively communicate elegant strategies but struggled to solidify basic facts. If I had given them a test, I would have only seen their deficiencies instead of their strengths. When you really look at mathematics beyond computation (on which school focuses heavily), you see how narrow-minded it is to give tests that ask everyone to solve the same equations.

And to anyone who is thinking, It’s just a test, stop making a big deal out of it, I say this: it is these kinds of incidents that stay with people long after school has ended. Since becoming an unschooler, people have come out of the woodwork to tell me their experiences of being emotionally scarred by these (seemingly) insignificant occurrences while they were in school. Adults who still feel the sting of being in the “low” reading group, whose work was publicly displayed as “what not to do,” who answered a question wrong in front of the entire class (or school) and were mercilessly teased. Add up these “insignificant” events and you have a pretty traumatic school experience. 

Environments of endless competition and comparison can be harmful. In school settings, students are separated by ability levels. Terms such as “honors” or “advanced” are used to describe students with high grades and “regular” or “slow” are used to describe everyone else. It is demeaning and causes resentment and frustration for everyone involved. Part of me believes that V’s teacher made those 100% test scores public knowledge in the hopes that other kids would work harder to achieve a higher score on the next test. The idea of publicly naming certain kids as the “goal” sounds like a fool-proof plan. Make a big deal out of two students’ perfect scores and other students will start working harder, right? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen this strategy work for anyone. If anything, it promotes anger and resentment on both sides.

Teachers must think twice before creating an environment where some students are applauded while others are demeaned. When I was a student, teachers and administrators made it clear who they considered smart and good. In our middle school, the names and photos of students of the month and honor roll recipients were displayed prominently near the front entrance. Many times those students were seen as exceptions-to-the-rule, meaning they could be “trusted” to be in the hall without a pass, while other students were reprimanded for the same offense. Everyone knew which students were at the top of the hierarchy and which were at the bottom. I can safely attest to the fact that this environment of comparison and competition caused years of trauma for everyone involved. 

When I was in middle school, my ‘honors class’ compatriots and I were physically and verbally assaulted by other students who had had enough of being on the bottom rung of the ladder. They were angered by our grades, the high praise we received, and our “exceptionalism.” We were endlessly harassed; one of my friends had her head bashed into a locker by a peer while another was scratched and hit repeatedly while we all played hockey in gym class. At that time, I blamed the bullying behavior on the kids themselves, but I now know better. The school environment was competitive and rewarded only a certain kind of student - one who could jump through all of the schoolish hoops. We were publicly held as the example for others to aspire to - for years. This kind of bullying behavior wasn’t an individual issue, it was a symptom of a larger problem: the adults in charge had created an environment of comparison and competition where we were always pitted against each other - for higher grades, different rewards, and their overall approval. Even at a young age, I recognized that these adults played a significant role in creating an environment where students detested coming to school. 

What was interesting-slash-horrifying to me was the lack of empathy the school had for any of us and the effects that comparison had on our relationship with each other as a student community. They saw the fractures within our class that resulted from their actions and looked in the other direction when things went awry. It seemed the adults had no idea how to lead except to make school a competition with clear winners and losers. There was no real community building. No joy. No opportunities to make mistakes. No variety of learning opportunities or assessments. No acknowledgement of multiple intelligences. There were only public announcements of who was exceeding their expectations and who wasn’t. And what was the result? Fear, frayed relationships, distrust, resentment, and anger. Our class never recovered.

That’s why my heart sank when I heard V’s story.

I want better for her.

I want better for her classmates.

I want better for everyone.

The other day an instagram post  got me thinking. It included the following:

We know we have truly evolved as parents when compliments given to us about our child don’t feel like compliments anymore and might even worry us. 

When our friend, family member, babysitter, or child’s teacher tells us:

• “You have such a good boy/girl!”

• “Your children behave so nicely!”

• “They listen to me so well!”

• “Wow - your child is so mature for their age!”

• “Your child is an example to the class. Always doing what is asked.”

• “I’m so proud of your child.”

Translation: “Your child makes my life easier.”

I was one of those kids. The “pleasure to have in class” kid. The “good” kid. The “mature” kid. I was praised for listening, behaving nicely, and not causing any trouble. From an early age I was singled out from my peers and asked to be an example to them.  

It was uncomfortable.

Don’t get me wrong - I didn’t want to be in trouble, either. I saw how those kids were treated and I didn’t want one bit of that. I feared punishments such as detention and even winced at the idea of a teacher scolding me for something as trivial as talking. I didn’t want to be singled out for negative reasons. I actually didn’t want to be singled out at all, but I weighed my options and decided that being complimented felt better than being reprimanded. If I had to be an example, I would rather be the one that made the adult happy. But being a “good kid” came with a lot of pressure and expectations. It was assumed that I would act more like an adult than the child I actually was. I was not given the opportunity to make mistakes. I was held to a different standard from my classmates. Not only did this create a problematic dynamic among my peers, it instilled in me a vigilance to remain “good” instead of allowing myself to be fully human.

I believe the educational system needs “good kids” in order to operate as intended. If everyone were lashing out against the way things are, as the “bad kids” do, the system would collapse. If there’s anything I’ve learned about “bad kids”, it’s that they let us know that what is being asked of them - mainly sitting for hours a day doing things they don’t want to do - is inhumane. The good kids won’t dare speak out against the inhumane conditions mostly because they (we) operate from fear - fear of being wrong, of being scolded, and being labeled as “bad”. So the good kids are given accolades and gold stars to prove that complying is a better option than railing against the system.

I stayed quiet when I was told to stay quiet. I did my work and never complained. I did what I was told and didn’t protest. I kept being told that I was so mature for my age but was I, really? I argue that these adults weren’t getting to know the entire person. I was able to put my best foot forward knowing that the adults around me would approve. Looking back I have to wonder - did they really think that a child never got angry or upset? Did my teachers wonder why they never saw me talking out of turn or voicing my frustration? Weren’t they concerned that I was always on task and never out of line? Did they ever think about how singling me out may have affected me? I wonder why I had to be “good” in order to be valued. Adults’ acknowledgement of me being a “pleasure” to have in class while other students were a “problem” only got me wondering what about those kids made them less worthy of acceptance. Was it because they “talked back” or because they had difficulty conforming to the school’s demands? Looking back, that doesn’t seem all that awful - attempting to express your discomfort. Being a “pleasure to have in class” is different from being valued for who you are. I now understand that to be a “pleasure” means to be without complication. How I was able to contort myself to making others believe I was without complexity for so many years is a mystery.

Being a pleasure in class didn’t really help me in the long run. For a long time I thought it would make me immune to getting in trouble or being seen as difficult by adults, but what really happened was that I developed a fear of bringing my full self into most adult-led spaces. I pushed my more uncomfortable emotions down in order to be more acceptable to the adults around me. I kept my head down and did what I was asked to do. My tenure as a “good kid” also proved to me that the acceptance and trust I had from adults was only there until I made a mistake. If I dared to be any less than “good” I was informed that not only was my behavior unacceptable, I was now “letting [that adult] down” because they had “expected more” from me. I became fearful of being anything less than perfect and of disappointing the adults around me. I began to equate “messier” feelings and behaviors with being “bad” instead of what they are: a normal part of being human.

Years later when I became a teacher, I vowed that I would never allow our classroom to become a place where anyone felt that they had to hide parts of themselves away in order to gain my approval. My goal was to not hold any young person to unrealistic expectations or to be an example for others to follow. I didn’t want students to feel like they had to behave nicely in order to make my life easier. From day one we had many discussions about how we were going to make mistakes, we were going to have different moods, we were going to delight and disappoint each other - even (especially) me. There were no “good kids” or “bad kids” in our community. In our classroom, there weren’t hierarchies when it came to behavior. I made it a point to check in with all of my students, not just the ones who were most vocal about their feelings. I wanted everyone to feel safe to be exactly who they were at any given moment. I worked hard to make this a reality, which is very difficult in a school setting- because, as I stated before, “good” kids make it so much easier to allow us all to pretend that what’s being asked of us at school is acceptable.

Young people should never have “more expected” of them and to be held to unreasonable standards. When adults praise children for being good, I get nervous - especially when these children are in a coercive environment with little-to-no autonomy. What do these young people think will happen to them if they show other parts of themselves? There’s lots of discussion about the kids who don’t behave in a way that school deems acceptable, but what about the kids who do? I argue that the “students of the month” and the “pleasures to have in class” are also suffering - maybe just in quieter, subtler ways. Maybe in ways that will emerge in adulthood, when they realize they’ve been altering themselves in order to make others comfortable.

I am a recovering good kid. For the last several years, I have worked to squelch my people-pleasing tendencies and bring more of my full self into the world, even the parts that make others uncomfortable. I am a complex person who now understands that living for the approval of others while forsaking parts of myself is harmful to my mental health. Hoping to be liked, especially by authority figures, kept me quiet for a long time. It kept me from speaking up for myself and others, fearing I would be disliked. But here’s the thing: You can’t be a disruptor while also trying to be liked. You can’t be honest while also trying to be polite. And I would rather live in a way that is true to myself and my values. I am hoping to instill in my young people a belief that they are not here to make my life (or any adult’s life) easier. They are people who contain an abundance of complicated emotions and behaviors, and they can be whatever they need to be at any given moment. 

I don’t want them to be “good.” I want them to be human.

I’ve read countless stories of grown unschoolers who learned to read in their own time, in many different ways. In these accounts the unschooling parents - maybe because they are reflecting on a process from many years ago - confidently state, “Oh yes - my child really learned to read independently around age 9 (10,11,12,13).” They sound joyful and secure - no doubt because they are on the other side of it. I am aware that at some point down the line I’ll be able to say, “Oh yes - my children learned to read on their own terms,” with assured confidence. But being in the middle of the journey is so uncertain.

When young people turn 5 and enter the school system, they will be taught how to read and write - whether they are ready or not, whether they want to or not. Those who can learn to do it in the allotted time with the instruction given will be deemed successful; those who don’t will be labeled as learning disabled and will require remedial work until they have “caught up” to their peers. This is why we see many parents of 5, 6, and 7-year-olds requesting tutors for their “struggling” children. Unfortunately, schools and society are perpetuating the idea that independent reading (decoding, fluency, comprehension) should be solidified by age 9, where students move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” We’ve all read the headlines about our “failing” kids who can’t read “at grade level.” There’s mass hysteria that we are raising a bunch of young people who will never know how to read or write. 

My husband and I have decided not to join in the hysteria and instead have made the decision to follow our childrens’ leads when it comes to reading and writing. It’s quite an adventure, to be sure. When you decide you are going to go against the grain, defy societal norms, and let your children lead the way, things progress differently than they would in a school setting. What I am learning is that the child-led reading journey is a lot about the inner work of the parent, not the child. It takes shifting our entire idea of what is normal and necessary. It takes questioning conventional beliefs.

The process of facilitating a young person’s reading journey is exhilarating. In school, this is more of a methodical process because reading standards and curricula have been prescribed. If the student is working on a book about short vowel sounds and they are able to decode words with short vowel sounds then they have reached the objective. Maybe they will get a higher score on their formative assessment. Maybe they will move to a more advanced reading level. We can put a check mark next to “short vowel sounds'' and move onto the next objective. Learning to read outside of school and curricula is a lot messier. There is no clear order. There is no exact science. There are different questions that arise for the reader and we figure out how to answer those questions as we go. What I am discovering is that if we are truly following the child’s lead rather than dictating their next steps, it is going to be messy.

As confident as I feel about this process and as much as I’m enjoying facilitating it, there are schoolish moments that emerge where I feel uncertain and uncomfortable. There are times when I question everything, comparison gets the better of me, and I am affected by the external gaze. I want to reflect on where I am in the process, in real time. I don’t want to write this piece years after my children become independent readers and I dreamily state, “It was all so effortless and wonderful!” I want to be honest about the highs and the lows in real time, because going against the grain is nothing if not wildly uncomfortable.

Some truths:

• It can feel difficult when Z’s peers move into being independent readers. A month or so ago we were visiting with a friend we’ve known for a long time. Her oldest son and Z are around the same age, and my friend informed me that he’s become an avid reader. She described his love of different chapter books, how he’ll get lost in what he’s reading and be immersed in books for hours in his bed. When she mentioned this, a wave of uncertainty ran through my body. That’s not Z. She’s not reading independently in her bed for hours. Am I doing something wrong? In moments like these, I somehow forget all of the things my children are doing and focus on what they’ve not yet done. Because that is the truth: they are doing different things for hours a day, it’s just not independently reading chapter books. And I have to remind myself that reading books for hours a day is not better than doing other activities for hours a day.

• My stomach is always a bit in knots when we are at an event with other homeschoolers who are of the “school-at-home” variety (those doing lessons and curricula - just outside of school). When we gather, inevitably there will be some kind of activity for kids to write something - what they are grateful for, their favorite things, etc. - and my eyes will widen as I watch kids of Z’s age procure their pencils and begin to write essays about the given topic (okay, I exaggerate, but…). Everyone else can do this activity independently and my child cannot. Will people think less of us? Will her *not* being able to write independently be the reason people say, “See - *this* is why we are not unschoolers”? I want to be clear that it is my stomach that is in knots, not my child’s. Z grabs a writing utensil and comes over to me as we collaborate to get her ideas on paper like usual. 

• There have been a couple occurrences where an adult will have been speaking with Z for an extended time. They’ll be locked in conversation and, afterwards, the adult will let me know how wonderful it was to speak to a young person who was so eloquent and engaging. In a few instances the adult will still be in proximity to us when Z asks me to help her decode a word (a sign, a book) and I will see the adult’s facial expression change from endearment to concern. Oh, now they don’t think she’s smart because she can’t decode these words. I usually can calm myself down in a moment or two because I know that person probably has a limited view on intelligence, but still - it can sting.

• Over the summer a local theater group was holding a camp for young people ages 6 - 12. Z was eligible to go, but when I read the description, my heart sank. Campers would be required to read from different scripts on different days. Now mind you - it’s not that Z was asking me to go to this camp - I was merely doing some research. But my schoolish mind went into overdrive: Well she wouldn’t be able to go to this camp because she can’t read independently. I guess everyone else’s child can do this (yes, this is where I get into the “everyone else” kind of thinking). I’m failing her as a mother. I’m failing as a former reading teacher. 

• The former reading teacher role brings up a lot of different feelings for me. I sometimes get into the mindset that I am at fault because my children are not yet independent readers. Shouldn’t I be spending our time together building word walls and working on phonics? I sometimes feel conflicted because I’m told I do have the tools, the knowledge, the training - to teach my children to read. I’ve worked with so many students! I have a Masters Degree in Elementary Education! Then I stop myself. What does it matter if you have a degree or curriculum or lessons if the young person doesn't want the instruction? And that is the case for my children. They do not want to sit and do lessons. I don’t know if they actually ever will or if they’ll figure out a way to become fluent readers in ways I never would have imagined. But I can sometimes feel the judgment coming at me from others. I imagine them thinking, “Isn’t she a teacher? Why isn’t she teaching her children to read?” Oh, if they could only be privy to my deschooling journey…

So, yes - the comparisons, the judgments, and the self-doubt are present, but there are things I know for sure:

• Even though my children may not be reaching schoolish milestones at the same time as their peers, my ideas about their intelligence have not wavered. Not even a little. People have asked me about the possibility of different diagnoses down the line, and I have to say that I am quite comfortable with that possibility. I have never agreed with the idea that neurodivergence makes someone “less than” - quite the contrary. I believe our world needs neurodivergence. The fact that many neurodivergent minds are being stifled to fit into a world built for neurotypical ones is a travesty. We need minds that are given the freedom to synthesize big ideas, notice details, solve complex problems, and focus for long stretches of time. If learning to read becomes something that causes our children distress, we will take the necessary steps to alleviate that discomfort. Until then, we are happy that they haven’t spent their young lives at school feeling less intelligent because they haven’t reached an arbitrary milestone. Truly, I wish that for all children.

• When I listen to others talk about their children reading independently and begin to feel envious, I pause. Is that what I really wish or what I’m told I am supposed to wish? Because I absolutely love reading together - completely immersed in a book, laughing and discussing the many characters we’ve encountered. I love playing word games and  listening to audiobooks together. I am in no rush to have my children doing these things on their own. It’s the rest of society that’s telling me I should want to have my children be completely independent of me. 

• I no longer think that there is a science to the reading process. Yes, there may be ways to “get it to happen faster” if that’s what you are interested in, but there is not one way that is going to work for all people. If anyone is telling you there is one way, be skeptical. The methods of reading instruction that emerge continue to not consider the individual person or a diversity of learning methods or child development. The “reading wars” have been there for a long time, with “experts” battling over phonics and whole language instruction. Every few years there is an announcement that “the old way” is problematic and “the new way” holds the key to success. Schools trash their old curricula and spend large percentages of their budgets on training and materials in the name of “evidence based instruction.” There is a belief that this new approach will “crack the code” for all emerging readers. Now think about this: I’m facilitating two young people’s literacy experience at home and they have very different learning styles. So how can we think that one approach or system will work for an entire classroom, school, or district? I’m also curious why we are never centering the emerging reader in these conversations. It's usually about raising test scores and “closing the gap” rather than growing lifelong readers. A recent New York Times article announced: Schools are returning to phonics and other evidence-based literacy methods, and already there are signs that the switch is paying off in improved scores. No mention of what the students are reading, how they are immersing themselves in books, or the deep conversations that are occurring while reading together. It’s about the test scores. 

For the most part my children don’t seem to be bothered that they are not yet independent readers. Every once in a while I’ll notice a hint of curiosity in Z who is now 7, but it’s not yet led her to seek out instruction of any kind. As I’ve mentioned before, being able to read on her own isn’t necessary for Z’s life at this moment in time. She did ask for a “school-at-home” day when her peers were headed back to school. I prepared a word study exercise that my former students used to enjoy. For the first five to ten minutes she was enthralled, flipping cards and making different words. Then, she started moving more slowly, looking around, and getting antsy. I could tell her steam had run out.

“Okay. I’m done with this now.” 

I paused for a moment and thought to myself, Whattttttt? There’s at least 20 more minutes of “fun” left in this activity! 

But she had no need to continue. She got up from the table and started making herself some lunch.

“Maybe we should leave it out in case you want to come back to it,” I offered.

“Probably not. I’m going to make my Elsa and Anna video after I eat. That was enough.”

That was enough? If she were at school, she would have to sit there for the 20 more minutes (not to mention the other six hours) of “learning” that was coming her way. But she has autonomy over her time and she decided to stop the activity. She didn’t see the need for it. For her, it was this fun little activity. The meat of her work that day was making her video - and she didn’t need that word study activity in order to do it. Unschoolers in general shed a lot of light on what is “necessary”: Why do I need to spend time learning things that I don’t need right now? Why would I need to spend time working on this activity when I’m not going to use that knowledge today? I mean, I could regurgitate that new information back to you to make *you* happy (as what is done in school), but it’s not necessary for me at this moment. Today, I want to make my video. When I need to know something, I will figure it out.

Unschooling is a lot about being in the moment and learning as it becomes imperative. When Z first began making videos, she figured out how to navigate her tablet in order to find the app, begin recording, stop recording, and share it. She didn’t need a lesson on vowel sounds to assist her; she needed the information pertinent to making her video. Unschoolers show us that learning for a possible future need instead of an immediate one is something we should question. Why are we learning for what we might need to know instead of learning for what we definitely need to know, at this very moment?

If school and the effects of school on our society weren’t a factor:

Would all of us be so concerned about how quickly our young people could read and write on their own? 

Would we approach literacy differently with our children if there wasn’t a stringent timeline?

Would we be able to enjoy reading and writing in ways that felt natural, without wondering if what we are doing is “enough?” 

Would we read and listen to stories purely for pleasure? 

Would we approach words as something fun to investigate and play with rather than something to be drilled into the minds of young people, fingers crossed that they’ll hurry up and read on their own? 

Would we be able to talk honestly about independent reading and admit that it is a process that happens at different times and different ways for different people, just like learning to walk or ride a bike? 

I sit here in this messy place: I have knowledge about how learning - real learning - happens, while also navigating a world that is built on conventional beliefs and expectations. So even though I know that we are doing something that feels right, I am still dealing with the cacophony of opinions and judgments that flood our daily life. To say that those opinions and judgements have no effect on me would be disingenuous; but I want to become (even) stronger in my conviction and knowledge of child-led learning in order to drown out that noise and listen to the most important voices - my children’s. Because all of this messiness is my work. Our children are just fine.

I’ve been thinking a lot about observing and what it means in and out of school.

When I was a teacher, I did a lot of professional development around observation. My colleagues and I would learn best practices about how to observe in a way that would inform our teaching. Observing in a school setting has an intended outcome - to ensure a student will meet or exceed a given standard. The observing has to be something that can be qualified or quantified and is usually notated somewhere - a clipboard, an app - because school demands evidence at every turn. Observing in this schoolish way readied me for the 1:1 conferences and anecdotal narratives I wrote during report card season. What is this student doing in any given subject? What are this student’s strengths and “weaknesses”? How has your teaching helped advance this student? A teacher must be ready to answer these types of questions at a moment’s notice. 

I became quite adept at observing in my classroom. I had many ways to notate different methods or strategies I saw my students using as I circulated the room. My observational records contained a myriad of symbols that helped me separate students into different strategy groups quickly and effectively. Don’t get me wrong: learning to observe in this way is helpful in a classroom setting, especially where there are 20-30 students and one desired and/or mandated goal. But my years now outside of the classroom have shed some light on why schoolish observational methods aren’t enough.

Observing in the way school dictates is very one-sided. It is not consensual. It gives little-to-no agency to the person being observed. As a teacher, I was required to observe my students, name the help (I believed) they needed, and then intervene. But they never really asked for this kind of help. If I saw that someone was “struggling” to write a satisfying ending in their realistic fiction piece, according to rubrics or other assessment tools, I was quick to assist. I would ask questions and share mentor texts that might help them think about how they might revise what they’d written. But I never asked if they actually wanted to write a more satisfying ending (or if they wanted to be writing at all). It was required of both of us. 

Observing in a school setting is also a lot about doing. As a teacher, you are always watching and assessing, watching and assessing. The assessment accompanies the observation -  most of the time you feel like you can’t ever just notice for the sake of noticing. If a student does “x”, a teacher had better be able to explain what came before, during, and after that occurrence. At school, observing is for documenting and conferencing and improvement. It’s actionable. It is also based in control. The belief seemed to be that If I could observe and then intervene, resulting in the curriculum’s intended goal, that would prove I was an effective teacher. Teachers help students get from point A to point B. We’ve been told we have techniques that are effective in improving that student’s outcome. But this way of thinking demands that points A and B are really the only points that exist, and that learning happens in a linear way - both of which are untrue. 

When my daughter was born I had been working in classrooms for almost 15 years, so these schoolish observational techniques were deeply ingrained. I had a really difficult time just being with her; I was always thinking about what I could be doing. I had a feeling of guilt whenever I did allow myself to just sit back and watch her. Teaching instilled in me a sense of productivity as worthiness. I believed that if I didn’t intervene then I wasn’t being productive. If I waited for something to happen in its own time, I wasn’t working hard enough. Here I was with this new baby, so unsure of myself, relying on years of well-established habits to inform how I was going to be with her. I would watch my daughter try to roll over, crawl, and walk. But I wasn’t just present with her, able to marvel at these amazing feats she was attempting and trusting in her process - I was thinking about how I might best intervene. I would observe with an eye on improvement. How could I insert myself to make things happen better/more efficiently/with a satisfying final outcome? I had an agenda and an already-formulated idea of how things would/should go. It was exhausting (and no fun at all). After some time I started asking the bigger underlying questions: What am I doing? Why am I trying to figure out how to help this baby walk more efficiently? Just…why? Do I not trust that she will? Do I really think I know better than she does? Do I think that my worth is tied up in her being able to do something sooner rather than later?

I sat with the discomfort that arose after asking those questions. I started thinking about what it would mean to truly observe my young people with a beginner’s mind instead of an “expert” approach. I took a step back and shut my mouth and really began to watch. It was challenging at first, but what I began to notice was that I observed differently when improvement and efficiency were not the goal. I stopped asking, What could I be doing? and How could this be improved? and began to trust. Gratefully, my children helped by pushing back almost as soon as they could formulate sentences. Most days I would hear, “I don’t need your help,” “That’s not what I was trying to do,” “I’m doing this by myself,” and “I’ll do it when I’m ready.” It was so very different from my role as teacher. It was thrilling.

I did not teach my son to ride a bike, I facilitated his experience. I waited until he expressed an interest, made sure he had the tools he needed, gave him opportunities to ride in the ways he felt comfortable, and held my tongue when his methods clashed with mine. Was this always smooth sailing? Oh hell no. There were moments along the journey that were incredibly uncomfortable for me. In the beginning I had preconceived notions of how it would go, based on my limited understanding of how a person would learn to ride a bike. I mean, I know how I learned to ride a bike - but that’s not the only way, by far. Sometimes my suggestions were heavy-handed and laden with my hopes of how it would happen. But he pushed back. So I reminded myself: He knows what he needs. He will do things when he is ready, in his own way. Observing his process was immensely exhilarating and humbling.

Recently my daughter has been attempting cartwheels. On her first attempt, she turned to the side, crouched down, planted her hands, and awkwardly threw her legs an inch off the ground. I wanted to intervene. I could see where (I believed) she needed improvement and where (I believed) I could help her. She could see it in my eyes and put up her hand. “Nope. I’m going to do it my own way.” So I backed off - not only in her presence, but in my own mind. Beginner’s mind. Stay open. She has her own way. Little by little I began to let go. I got curious. I remembered to trust. Over the last month she’s let me know how I can help. I’ve sat with her researching YouTube cartwheel tutorial videos, helped her set up practice spaces, and observed her figuring out how to best place her hands, gather momentum, and extend her legs. I’ve been a witness to Z’s unique process and to her growing confidence in this endeavor. She has taken the reins and I have become the co-pilot. What a learning experience for us both.

As a teacher I never really had the time to really just notice my students - to observe them without any thought of how what they were doing could be improved upon or how we could get from point A to point B. I wasn’t able to know them as full people in their natural state, because there were these roles of “teacher” and “student” that kept us very busy. In schools we don’t have the time, space, or freedom to know what the young people in our presence really want to learn and how we might be able to facilitate that learning. I’ve been heartened to know there are networks of facilitators at alternative spaces such as Agile Learning Centers, unschooling cooperatives, and Sudbury schools doing the important work of observing and facilitating young people in a community setting.

I am grateful to my children for their honesty and self-awareness. They are helping to guide me in my journey towards becoming a better observer and facilitator. I am getting better at listening intently to their curiosities, offering opportunities for exploration, being open to their unique methods, and ridding my mind of conventional expectations. 

I’m in the practice of learning how to listen and to notice in a way that feels sacred.

I’m learning to trust the process.

I’m learning to trust the person.

What does it mean to be impressive?

This is not an exhaustive list, but I would say that prodigies, doctors, lawyers, ivy league graduates, millionaires, award winners, and multi-hyphenates are the people we consider the most impressive in our society. Impressive people have a higher position on our manufactured hierarchy; maybe they have more achievements, or money, or titles than those who live a quieter, less impressive existence.

Now I was never what mainstream society considered impressive, but I did believe that people could look at me and think, Wow! Look at what she’s accomplished. I could revel in the idea that people knew something impressive about me - where I went to school, where I worked, what achievements I’d attained - and put me on some kind of pedestal. I was a person who needed the approval of others and looked for external validation at every turn. Other people’s opinions about my talent, my intelligence, my profession, and my hobbies were as important, or more important, than my own. If other people were impressed by me, that meant I was succeeding. In a society that validates exceptionalism, I believed that being unexceptional was the worst possible outcome.

But being exceptional comes with a caveat: the bar keeps moving. Since being impressive is really about comparison, there really is no finish line. You can be impressive for some time until someone or something comes along to lower your standing on the hierarchy. This can have a profound effect on self-confidence, especially if your value is defined by others’ opinions and ideas.

I remember when I had reached the point where I was considered an “impressive” teacher. People would say, “Wow - you are excellent at what you do, but you are teaching in an all-girls school. Imagine if you had to teach boys, too? Now that would really be impressive.” A few years later I moved to a co-ed school. People would say, “You’re great at what you do, but you are teaching in a private school. It’s not as difficult as teaching in public schools.” A few years after that I moved to a public school and people said, “You’re an awesome teacher - but this is only elementary school. What if you had to teach older kids?” I got it in my head that if I could find the most challenging job with the least amount of help or resources and still do that job well, I would have been seen as truly impressive. So I kept toiling away, hoping to someday be awe-inspiring, but here’s the thing: it wasn’t even possible. Not when the qualifications for being impressive kept changing.

Even after I had my first baby, the chase continued. I wanted to be seen as an exceptional mother. I wanted to excel at feeding my baby, anticipating her needs - all of the things that defined just how well I was doing in my new role. And, again, the bar of exceptionalism kept moving. “You’re doing great, but you are lucky you are raising a girl - they’re so much easier (again with the comparisons between boys and girls - can we please stop this?).” When I had my son two years later, people would remark, “Two under the age of three? Whoa! But at least you can stay home with them. Imagine if you were also working full time? Now that would be impressive!” Two months after giving birth, I was cast in a theatrical production that rehearsed in the evenings and weekends. I spent all day caring for my newborn and two-year-old, while also memorizing my script. In the evening, I would feed my toddler, bathe both children, and nurse my newborn to sleep before racing to a four hour rehearsal, getting home right before the first (of several) night feedings. Some people, after hearing this would say, “Wow. But imagine if you were a professional actor with two babies?”

Ugh. 

I was not going to win this contest. There was no way that I was ever going to be impressive in other people's eyes. There was always going to be someone more accomplished, or busier, or less resourced doing the same (or better) things. But I had to stop and wonder why being in the contest mattered in the first place. Why were other’s opinions of me so important? This question has been (and continues to be) a big part of my deschooling work. I am working to downgrade and, at some point, completely abolish the importance of the external gaze. Slowly but surely I am living a life that decenters other’s opinions and expectations. This is the least impressive I’ve ever been. And the happiest. I’ve got nothing to prove. I’m living for me.

So what do you do when you are living without the intention to impress? What do you do when you are living life for yourself, and not for the external gaze? Well, in my case, I’m pursuing my interests -- not for notoriety, but because they bring me a great deal of joy. I also try lots of new things which was not the case when I was trying to be impressive. Currently I am wildly mediocre at sewing, gardening, cooking, lifting weights, and repairing things. Being a beginner does not scare me like it used to, most likely because I am not aspiring to be the best. I am also an imperfect parent; I make a ton of mistakes and apologize to my children on a daily basis. We spend our days making doll beds, creating stair forts, traversing the woods, and reading an unfathomable number of Frozen-themed books. 

All of it is wonderful. None of it is impressive. And that’s fine by me.

I am basking in my unexceptionalism.

The majority of our population has been schooled and it shows. 

We are living in a country with a countless amount of social, economic, and environmental injustices occurring every day and a lot of us seem frozen -- watching it happen and accepting it as some kind of new normal. A lot of us don’t believe we can do much to help or change things. We are waiting for those “in power” to come up with solutions.

Of course there are many reasons why this is the case, but, in my opinion, at least part of it can be traced back to conventional schooling. 

• For 12+ years we are told what to learn and how to learn it. 

• For 12+ years we are told to respect “authority figures” such as teachers, coaches, and principals without question.

• For 12+ years we hold no real agency over the majority of our time. At least 7 to 8 hours a day are spent at school. 

• For 12+ years part of our value is dependent on the assessments of people who hold power over us.

• For 12+ years we are told when to eat and when we can use the bathroom. We lose the ability to trust our natural intuition and, instead, do what is necessary to abide by the school’s schedule. 

• For 12+ years we see detentions, suspensions, and expulsions for those who don’t follow the school’s rules. We fear “stepping out of line” and get used to becoming invisible so as not to attract attention from the school’s authorities. We learn not to speak up or speak out, and to look in the other direction when we witness injustice.

• For 12+ years we are in constant competition with each other for grades and rankings.

• For 12+ years the word “failure” holds a negative connotation. 

• For 12+ years we are conditioned to see only certain types of people as “smart” - usually those with high test scores and good grades. Those with neurodivergent brains (autism, ADHD, dyslexia - the list goes on) are seen as deficient and in need of remediation.

After so many years of this kind of conditioning, of course we are waiting for other people to “figure all of this out”; unless we are told exactly what to do and how to do it, we have difficulty - not because we are naturally inept, but because we have been trained to do as we have been asked. Conventional schooling was developed to standardize learning - to transfer information to the masses in the most efficient way possible. The system was never intended for truly unique thinking; most of us do what we need to do in order to get by according to school standards, and our unique intelligences - those that could help solve problems or imagine new possibilities - are either stripped of us or go unnoticed.

Another issue coming out of conventional schooling is that we don’t know how to build a true, intentional community - the kind of community that takes care of one another and re-imagines together through unprecedented times. A big reason for that is capitalism, and compulsory schooling falls under the umbrella of that system. From a very young age, children are pitted against each other, vying for the best grades, believing in a narrow pathway to “success.” In this system, learning is a race with a predetermined goal - and there are definite winners and losers. We are told to “keep our eyes on our own papers” and to view other students as our competition, rather than as our collaborators.

In our family, we want to disrupt this narrative. We are working to raise young people who know themselves and their inherent, unique value. 

• Our young people work with us to live according to their body’s natural intuition - to eat when they are hungry, sleep when they are tired, and use the bathroom as needed. They are learning to trust their body’s simplest and most natural impulses. 

• Our young people live in a home that welcomes their dissent. They are vocal about what they find important or unjust. And, yes - this can be wildly uncomfortable for us parents (and why deschooling in community is so very necessary!). We are working daily to dismantle the power-over dynamic between adults and young people. Day by day it is happening. Our young people know their voices are important.

• Our young people have the opportunity to figure out their own solutions to problems that arise (with our help, of course). They are not waiting on a teacher, a principal, or an “authority figure” to solve their problems for them. We collaborate on problems big and small every day. 

• Our young people work with us to build a day that is intentional. No one is scheduling their time without their consent or handing them activities and curriculum in which they’ve had no input. Because of this, they are learning what brings them joy and following their curiosities. 

• Our young people fail every day. They see it as a natural part of life. Failure is celebrated.

• Our young people socialize with a variety of people of all ages in ways that are not based in power, control, or competition. They have a say in who they spend their time with, and also find joy in spending time alone. 

• Our young people’s unique intelligences are accepted and celebrated. They are not compared to anyone else and are able to learn in ways that suit them at their own pace.

Our hope is that our young people will know themselves and their power, will see others as collaborators, and will have a thorough understanding of their own unique intelligences so that they are able to contribute thoughtful, out-of-the-box thinking when facing unprecedented problems, as is surely going to be the case on this planet in the coming years. Our hope is that more people will question the way things currently operate. Asking questions like, Why is this the way things are? Why do I believe this to be true? Is there a different way?, that might lead to new perspectives and shifting paradigms.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.

A lot of people ask me how we came to unschooling. It’s a long story with lots of zigs and zags and twists and turns - but, for now, I’ll share a (relatively) short version of how we got here.

The first time I heard the term unschooling was about 20 years ago. I was single and child-free and had recently begun my teaching career. I was visiting a childhood friend who told me that she was not planning to send her children to school. My friend explained that they wanted their children to learn while being “out in the world.” I was aghast. At that point I equated learning with school, and I had no idea how one would learn otherwise. But I also remember, so distinctly, how my friend and her partner were with their young children that day. It was different from a lot of other parent/child relationships that I saw in the world. These children were treated as people. They were seen as capable - I remember the three-year-old going to fix her own hair and her younger brother helping cook dinner. Something struck me about this family and I never forgot it. At that point I was many years from having children, but I knew that when and if I did - I wanted something akin to what I witnessed that day.

Fast forward many years - of teaching in a variety of schools, and being someone who began to question everything (that essay is in the works). When our daughter was born, it didn’t take me long to start thinking about how she was going to be educated. I started reading everything about schools in the area. I got on all of the websites and in the chat groups where parents discussed their experiences. I was a sponge - I tried to gather as much information as possible.

We knew we weren’t going to send our children to the school in our town - Black children were notoriously mistreated there - so we knew we had to look elsewhere. I started visiting other schools in the area - Z was three at the time - and keeping detailed notes of what I saw. Luckily, for me, all of those years as a teacher helped me assess classrooms and schools pretty clearly. When I saw a Kindergarten classroom where all of the art on the walls looked identical, I knew that it was not a space where creative expression was valued. If I saw all students reading the same text or working on the same math problems, I knew there wasn’t a belief in choice or differentiated instruction. When I didn’t see true Morning Meetings or Closing Circles built into the schedule, I knew there wasn’t a strong classroom community where students felt a sense of belonging or joy.  When I heard loud teacher voices constantly reprimanding students or threatening to take away recess, I knew that it wasn’t a safe place for young people. If I saw sticker charts or traffic signals hanging in the classroom with students’ names positioned in various places, I knew that there were students who were going to be labeled as “problematic”, as well as a teacher who had antiquated beliefs about classroom management (a term I don’t even use anymore, but nevertheless…). If I saw honor rolls posted or “Students of the Week” celebrated, I knew there was a known hierarchy in the school, and that most students probably felt “less than.” And don’t get me started about tests and test scores; if there was any reasoning given why this school was labeled a “good” school because of test scores, I knew that we differed on what made something “good.”

I asked a ton of questions - about curriculum, about racial diversity, about social-emotional learning. I visited about ten schools, and never once left a place feeling satisfied with the environment as a whole. Never. But here’s the thing: I didn’t once think that we would choose something other than school. Everyone was choosing school and seemed okay (field day! science fairs! field trips!) and so I came to the following conclusion: We are going to have to choose the best of these not-so-great options. 

But something was nagging at me. I tried to imagine Z walking in a silent, straight line for the majority of her primary school days. I imagined her being afraid to speak (her default in more conventional settings) and being labeled as quiet and shy by adults who didn’t know how to relate to introverted people. I imagined her not being able to show her disappointment, anger, frustration, or exuberance until she got home. I imagined her spending her days following orders and becoming adept at appeasing the adult gaze. I imagined her managing social interactions that were based in power-over dynamics. I imagined her spending her days doing worksheets or test prep or active shooter drills - all things that have become synonymous with conventional schooling in America. I imagined her being away from us for most of the day, and only getting to hear about her life through anecdotes told to me at bedtime or the car ride home. 

I began to wonder why we were going to settle. Was I going to be willing to subject my children to systems and people who didn’t have their best interests in mind? Was I going to allow them to be ranked and compared to others for the rest of their lives? Was I going to deny their interests and curiosities in favor of what conventional schooling said was important? Was I going to send them to places where there was a good chance they were going to be treated differently because they were Black? The answer to all of these questions was a resounding no. 

So I switched my research goal. I stopped looking for the best of the not-so-good options and began to think more expansively. I remembered that day from so long ago with my friend’s children. Although we were now only in touch via social media, I could see that her young people were thriving in communities where they were pursuing their interests and being treated as full humans. It was possible to live life without school. I opened my mind and allowed for possibilities to emerge. The term “unschooling” began to pop up. Someone in a Facebook group mentioned the name Akilah S. Richards, and everything shifted. Again, I became a sponge, only this time I was a joyful one. I listened to an endless amount of Fare of the Free Child episodes, and read and watched everything Akilah had put out into the world (at that time, Raising Free People had not yet been published, but I preordered it as soon as I was able). Akilah’s work introduced me to other unschooling mamas such as Maleka Diggs, Leslie Bray, Domari Dickinson, Tiersa McQueen, and Chemay Morales-James to name a few. The ways these women talked about young people, consent, and autonomy was thrilling. I devoured texts about the importance of play and what it means to develop partner-based relationships with children, rather than one based in power. My husband and I talked for hours about what we truly wanted for our children’s education, and in turn, for their (and our) lives. We talked with Z and K about how they wanted to spend their days. We started to make the paradigm shift. 

It was clear from very early on, just how much unschooling was the right fit for us. It’s interesting to reflect on those early days, as the reasons why it continues to be right have grown and changed and deepened. But I’m mostly struck by the idea that I/we didn’t allow the narrow possibilities to dictate what we were going to do. We went with our intuition. Unschooling is definitely not the easiest choice, but it is the one that continues to help our family grow into our fullest selves. Instead of choosing the best of the not-so-good options, we expanded our vision of what was possible. 

We allowed ourselves to reimagine. 

It’s summer and everyone is sending their kids to camps and classes and we are not. Some people have inquired why this is so, and my response is two-fold: my children have not yet asked to attend and I don’t trust most adults to treat children as people.

As a general rule, parents know so little about the people and places where we send our children. There is not a lot of information out there that goes beyond the basic name, course/camp description, and what one is required to bring on the first day. If parents are lucky, they get to meet their child’s teacher once before the school year begins. Maybe. And this is the person/people with whom their child will spend the majority of their day. If parents knew how their children were being spoken to by teachers, counselors, and the general adult population, would they continue to send them to these places? 

The other day I had the opportunity to observe a camp at a local pool. This was purely a coincidence; we were just there to swim on some hot days. I had no idea I was going to have a front row seat to the goings-on of this camp. 

I should mention that I was a teacher of young children (primarily ages 5 - 10) for many years. This pool camp was not the first time I’d seen adults interact with young people in a large(r) group, but this was the first time in a while - especially after the years I’ve spent deschooling and learning more about youth rights.

The first group of campers, probably aged 5 - 7, walked into the pool in a line (always in a line…). Many of them squealed as they entered, feeling the cool water against their legs and arms. I immediately heard the instructor shout, “Stop screaming!”, followed by, “It’s not that cold.” The campers quickly jumped to order, muffling their squeals. Some had a more difficult time, and were scolded over and over each time an “Oooh” or “Ahhh” emerged from their young mouths. It was sad to watch and it made me imagine what it would have been like, had space been given for these children to fully express how dipping themselves into this chilly water for the first time felt. Imagine if their expression of surprise and delight was met with, “I agree! It’s chilly at first!” or “It’s such a funny feeling!” instead of immediately dismissing what these young people were expressing. They were shushed and scolded for communicating their natural reactions, as it was made clear that squeals were not welcome.

Another group of young people, probably ages 6-8, was waiting along the pool wall to begin their lesson. They were informed, immediately upon entering the water, that if they were to be “fooling around” during the lesson, they were going to have to “sit against the wall”. There was no mention of the excitement surrounding what fun/cool things they’d be learning that day or the acknowledgment that waiting for ten other people to do something before you have your one singular turn was challenging. The warning was set right away: obey or sit out. These were 6, 7, and 8-year-olds -- “fooling around” seemed to be only the natural impulse to splash, go underwater, and laugh with other campers. But they promptly stopped doing those things and waited what seemed like an eternity to be able to participate in ways the adults had deemed ‘productive’. It was boring. Like, the kind of boring where once eager campers’ attention began to drift away from the reality that they were in a pool (!) for the first time this summer. The class was not planned with young people in mind. It was clear that there was an objective that everyone was supposed to meet, but there was no thought given to how that objective might be able to encompass the biological and social necessities of young children. Of course there were empty threats voiced throughout the session (“If you do that one more time…”) - so many, in fact, that they drowned out any words of encouragement that may have been voiced. As a result the campers were quiet and complacent. I’m sure that many adults would have described them as “well-behaved”, but I only saw it as a result of trying to appease the adult gaze (and keep themselves out of trouble).

Other than these two instances, there was just a lot of “talking down” to kids during the camp session: scolding them for leaving their lunches in the wrong spot, the constant yelling of “No running!”, and reprimanding campers for jumping on a counselor’s back during a game (nothing was said to the counselor who initiated the game). Most verbal interactions were negative - what the campers weren’t supposed to be doing, how they had broken some kind of rule, what they had done wrong. What I witnessed at the pool was not what some might call “horrible”; I’m sure many of us have experienced similar occurrences over the years. When I was teaching, I was both astounded and disgusted by the amount of threats, manipulative language, and general disrespect that was directed at children by the adults in charge. 

What does surprise me is the nonchalant manner in which other parents seem to view these occurrences. “I was treated this way and I turned out okay,” is the refrain I hear quite a bit from other adults. “Don’t we need kids to just toughen up and learn how to deal with it?” No. Hell no. I don’t think that learning how to sit and accept dismissive and threatening language from anyone is healthy. It numbs us to subtle cruelty and gets us used to being spoken to in ways that are inhumane. We’ve accepted these microaggressions as normal and a required part of growing up. I firmly disagree. 

I’m in the minority of people (I’m guessing) that believe that those who work with young people should have extensive time and guidance focusing on how to decolonize their own relationship to power and control. I don’t believe that ‘just anyone’ should be working with young people. I will also admit that I slip up/falter with my own children all of the time. The difference between what happens with us and what happens in a camp or school setting is that I am working to decolonize my relationship with young people almost every minute of every day. My goal is not compliance and obedience, but rather a mutual understanding that being together in community takes work. It takes a lot of time and humility and patience. I am here to say that this kind of work is not at the forefront of a great number of people who interact with young people in conventional settings. I’ve been in the staff meetings and in-service workshops and I’ll tell you - it’s not what is being discussed. 

I am heartened, though, by knowing there are adults who are doing the work to create relationships with young people that are not based on correcting and diminishing, but rather acceptance, joy, and mutual respect. I am also heartened to learn that the young people are not having it. I’ve heard from a few friends, just over the last month, whose young people are reporting that they don’t like the way the adults in charge are communicating with them. They don’t feel that the tone and the words these adults use are acceptable and they want to speak up against it. 

As a parent, I am unwilling to subject my children to adults who see them as ‘less than’ or rely on a power-over dynamic to gain compliance. I’m not willing to have my children’s natural impulses be squashed to appease the adult gaze. I don’t feel like our unschooling kids are ‘soft’ or ‘unable to exist in the “real world” -- quite the contrary. I believe unschooled kids have a sharpened bullshit detector and are unwilling to accept being treated in ways that most schooled people view as a ‘given’. Free children can help us realize that maybe what we’ve been told is “normal” really shouldn’t be.

Listen to young people. If they are uncomfortable with the way they are being treated, don’t dismiss them. Ask them how they are spoken to when they are outside of your care. Let’s expect more from the people who work with our children. Let’s dismantle the current power structure and make room for more respectful, partnership-based relationships between adults and young people.

The other day on Twitter, a (very) schoolish person wrote that her daughter had finally learned to read and that she was glad to finally be able to see just how intelligent she really was.

The tweet stated: 

“And now that she can freaking READ it turns out that she’s actually a pretty bright kid!!”

I needed to catch my breath.

I was so angry. For her daughter. For the millions of young people out there whose intelligence goes unnoticed by others because they aren’t completing arbitrary schoolish milestones on an arbitrary school schedule. For those young people who are put into remedial groups or classes because they are unable to read by a certain age. Studies have shown that these young people have difficulty recovering from these labels and are seen as less intelligent than their peers for the rest of their schooling life purely because they aren’t able to do something that they may not be biologically ready to do when school says they must. School rushes the reading process because reading is one of the only ways to learn at school and a big part of how students are  assessed. At school, “how much” a student is “learning” (according to the schoolish definition of learning) can only be seen through reading and written work. 

I think about our Z. She is 6 ½ and is not yet reading independently. I mean, she’ll read the stray word or sentence but she doesn’t have the interest right now. Let me say that again: she doesn’t have the interest right now. At this moment in time, reading independently isn’t a necessity in her daily life. And here’s the thing: it’s not getting in her way. At all. She leads an amazingly full six-and-a-half-year-old life without reading independently. She plays all day long - fiercely. Her play is full of excellent storytelling, rich character development, empathy, and humor. She watches shows, listens to podcasts, and devours YouTube videos. Her ability to absorb new information isn’t hampered just because she can’t decode. I find it extremely telling that, when a six-year-old lives a life free of schoolish mandates and benchmarks, it is wholly possible that reading independently is not necessary. 

Z is one of my favorite people to read aloud to. Together we’ve enjoyed novels such as The Tale of Despereaux, The Wild Robot (and its sequel), and the entire Ramona series. We linger in books together, savoring characters and storylines. Z remembers details from books long after we’ve completed them and will routinely refer back to specific moments or characters when making a connection to another book or her life. We’ve had deep, thoughtful conversations about themes that emerge from something we have read together. 

I routinely listen to a wonderful episode of the podcast, Living Joyfully, where Pam Laricchia and Anne Ohman discuss the “un-reading brain” and that time when young people are using strategies other than decoding in order to make sense of the world. The way un-readers are able to envision, the way they memorize images and facts - they use clues that those who read independently might not be able to fathom. Everything changes once you learn to read; you rely on the written word to decipher the majority of what is happening in the world. When you are not yet reading, you build a toolbox of other kinds of clues and skills to help you do what you need to do. I see this every day with my young people. 

I want to be clear: I do not base my beliefs about Z’s intelligence on her ability to decode words in a book. I have always believed Z to be much more than a “pretty bright kid” - I think she’s brilliant (I know, I know, I’m her mom, but still…). She does not feel one ounce of lack about what she is not able to do. She does not see reading as the top of the hierarchy, as is the norm for our society. Z views reading with the same importance as riding a bike, figuring out how to make a smoothie, or constructing bathing suits for her dolls: when she needs to do it, she figures out a way.

When she decides to read on her own, which she will - because, well, life - she will have an abundance of other skills that she’s had the time and space to sharpen while her brain pieced together the puzzle that is reading. She knows she has been a reader all of her life (because, yes, everyone who picks up/listens to text is a reader). She will read because she needs to and wants to, not because she has been coerced. She will know that information and stories can be consumed in a variety of ways, and that one way is not superior to another. She will not have any doubt of her intelligence and she won’t be focused on what she wasn’t able to do at certain times in her life. Mostly she will have the advantage of having people around her who already know that she is a curious, creative, thoughtful human being. We weren’t waiting until she reached some arbitrary, schoolish milestone to finally discover her intelligence. We’ve spent time getting to know her - talking, listening, observing. 

We know what it is in her mind and heart -- and it’s pretty freaking brilliant.

People don’t know what to do with free children. I know it’s talked about quite a bit in unschooling circles, but it gets me every time we encounter it; how much adults don’t know what to do with children doing things outside the conventional path.

Case in point, Margaret.

Margaret is a retired lawyer who has done everything from schooling to mothering to lawyering by the book. She is impressive and accomplished and all of the words that we use to describe those who have played the game and “succeeded”. She is a lovely person who shows a great deal of kindness towards Z and K - - AND I can tell how wildly uncomfortable she is seeing us out and about in the middle of the day. I can almost see the “Shouldn’t they be in a building somewhere doing equations?” look emerge on her face whenever we meet.

The other day Z exclaimed while seeing Margaret out and about, “I miss Rocky (Margaret’s dog)! I want to practice getting her to roll over again.”

Margaret replied, “Well I bet you’ve been busy inside doing school lessons with your mom.”

Z’s eyes popped out of her head for a minute. “I don’t go to school!” as she laughed. I think she believed Margaret somehow understood her unschooling lifestyle.

Margaret said, “I know - it’s just… I bet you do school-like things with your mom like lessons during the day, right?” Her face looked tense and was getting redder by the minute. I could tell she was hoping that I’d save the situation by magically revealing my workbooks and curriculum guides.

I wanted to tell Margaret about the beautiful day we’d had playing with new friends, running through the woods collecting sticks and playing hide-and-seek. I wanted to tell her that Z and K had been able to play games with kids ages 2 through 12 and had the ability to say whether or not they wanted to participate without judgment or punishment. I wanted to tell her about the cafe they’d created when we got home. How they worked together to plan what to make, who would blend the slushies first and where they’d display the fruit. I wanted to tell her how they’d cheered each other on through new sections of their video game and completed a course they’d been struggling with for days. I wanted to tell her about the new book we’ve discovered and how Z and K sketched and dug in the dirt as they listened to me read aloud in the warm sunshine. 

I wanted to tell her that learning happens in every moment of every day. I wanted to tell her (or, rather, shout from the rooftops) that real learning looks so very different from how we learn in a school environment. I wanted to tell her how we are redefining and expanding the definition of education. I wanted to tell her that the things I might have taught my children in a planned lesson at our kitchen table would pale in comparison to what they actually learned over the course of this day.

But this wasn’t the time. There are some moments that are teachable moments. Some people ask when they see us somewhere they don’t expect. Maybe they see happy kids out when they’re usually at school and think, I didn’t know this was possible. Some people inquire with an open mind and we have a cool conversation. 

This wasn’t that moment. Margaret did some deep breaths as I (again) told her that we mainly spend the day following our curiosities. She nodded nervously and quickly changed the subject. We exchanged some mild pleasantries about the weather (improving!) and our town (friendly!), and she was on her way. 

I’d like to think, though, that just by knowing us - seeing these free children learning through living - that maybe something inside of her has shifted, even if we can’t see it. I’m not saying she’s going to get off the conveyor belt herself or recommend her grandchildren become a self-directed learners, but I’m choosing to believe that we’ve ignited a spark that has her wondering about this unschooling thing, even if it’s in the safety of her own mind.

This week I’ve been bombarded with different messages - on social media and beyond.

• “Is your child ready to learn?”

• “Can you use Magna-Tiles to learn?”

• “Many students have struggled to engage with learning.”

• “We can help children feel inspired to learn again.”

I think there are some big misconceptions here

because, the thing is

if you are conscious - you are never not learning.

If you are playing on a tablet, you are learning -- even if you aren’t on an “educational” site. 

You may be figuring out how to search and download an app of your choosing, then figuring out how to play it, and determining whether or not it suits your interests.

You are learning more about your preferences.

If you are exploring with Magna-Tiles, you are learning -- even if you don’t use them (explicitly) for fractions and multiplication.

You may be tinkering with different sizes and shapes of tiles, working to design a structure with your sibling.

You are learning that building takes planning and patience and negotiation.

If you are walking in the forest you are learning --

even if you aren’t able to name all of the species of flora and fauna

You may be quietly listening to the sounds of the rustling leaves or enjoying how the sun shines on your face through the trees.

You are learning to appreciate nature.

There is legitimacy (and beauty and strength and creativity and...) in all kinds of learning.

And, yes, you are always ready.

I am the most myself I’ve ever been when I’m around my children. 

The thing that made me feel so scared to be a mother was that it was 24/7/365.

I was not used to being around anyone for that prolonged amount of time. 

I always had the option to leave, to escape - 

I was terrified that I didn’t have the stamina for being around others all day every day.

I think that’s because, from a young age, I understood that bringing my full self into spaces was not okay.

There were always expected ways to be --

at school

at dance class

even at home

I never got a break - a chance - to figure out who I was without the expectations of the adults in charge.

As a result, I hid parts of myself away.

I came up with a version of myself that would be acceptable to others

and only allowed my full self to emerge when I was alone.

Things are shifting, though.

With my children, there is no chance to not be exactly who I am because it is 24/7/365.

There is no putting my ‘best foot’ forward

and

there is no need to escape in order to allow my true self to emerge.

They accept me - all of the messy and exhausting parts that I hid away.

I can finally exhale. 

I think about my children.

How they have the space and time to figure out who they truly are.

They don’t have to act in any way that isn’t who they are in a given moment.

The relationship they have with each other - and with us - is unfiltered and raw. 

There is a trust that everything will be okay.

And I think about the fuller lives they might be able to lead

in terms of friendships and relationships of all kinds

because they haven’t been placed in situations where they’ve had to curate the most palatable parts of themselves in order to be accepted.

They already see the magic in being exactly who they are. All of the time.

Damn. If that’s all they ever learned as unschoolers, I think that would be enough.