Reschooling Posts // January 22-28, 2023
Practicing Presence with Sherene Cauley
January 28, 2023 from Consent-Based Everything
Fran talks to Sherene Cauley about gentle parenting and how we can reframe it, about the role of presence in our lives and our relationships with our children and others, and why boundary work is not really what we think it is!
Community care and self care
January 28, 2023 from Swimming Upstream
If you have kids, roommates, or partners, you’ll know that the division of labour in caring for a house is a hot topic pretty much across the board but if you’re a recovering dogmatic radical unschooling, you may struggle with this more than the average person. Radical unschooling prescribes that, by providing care for others, you can find fulfillment. By filling others’ cups, you can fill your own.
Tweens with Chris Balme
January 26, 2023 from Sage Family
Chris Balme is an education leader and writer, passionate about helping young people discover more of their human potential. As Co-Founder and Head of School at Millennium School, a lab school in San Francisco, Chris helped pioneer new learning methods for middle schoolers, based in developmental science. Chris then founded Argonaut, an online program to bring social-emotional learning to more students.
A Full-Throttled Defense of Sleepovers!
January 26, 2023 from Free Range Kids
Erika Christakis, early childhood expert and author of The Importance of Being Little, NAILS IT in her Atlantic essay on sleepovers. Noting that sleepovers have gone from age-old activity to yet another thing to fret about when it comes to kids, she says she’s sympathetic to the no-sleepover arguments. (Some of which have gone viral.) Feel free to ask about guns, swimming pools, who’s going to be home or what have you, she says. BUT: “Denying our children a chance to learn up close from other families shortchanges children’s autonomy.”
Unschooling Q&A~ With Robyn Robertson & Liana Francisco
January 25, 2023 from Honey! I’m Homeschooling the Kids
How do I talk about Unschooling with my family and friends? In Unschooling we can focus on following my children's interests but what happens when my child is not interested in anything and they are doing nothing all day? How do we go from the structure of school to freedom? What is the transition to independence?
How to Recover from a Bad Homeschool Day
January 25, 2023 from Raising Lifelong Learners
All homeschool moms have had those days. In fact, most of us have had quite a few bad homeschooling days. Last week, we had a rough day in a big (and I mean *explosively big*) way, and I decided it was important to tell you about it.
Video Games with Ash Brandin
January 23, 2023 from Sage Family
Ash Brandin, EdS, is a middle school teacher living in Colorado. After researching the use of video games in classrooms, Ash found there was very little research about how games compel players to play and how this can be brought into the classroom. Since 2016, Ash has spoken across the country about how classrooms and academic spaces can mimic game structures to make learning compelling, motivating, and engaging. Ash believes games, specifically entertainment games, can help us create better teaching, more engaging learning, and motivated life-long learners.
It's Not What You Say, It's the Way that You Say It
January 23, 2023 from Think Again
Some children are super-sensitive to pressure. It makes them curl up inside, or it brings out their ‘automatic no’. For them, it doesn’t really matter what the suggestion is, because the pressure of the expectation means they can’t say yes. These are the children who can sniff out the pressure in an ‘innocent’ comment like ‘It’s a lovely day!’ (to which the answer is, ‘Absolutely no way, we are not going out’).
Learning from Experience and by Reading Crime Novels
January 23, 2023 from Stories of an Unschooling Family
Recently, I’ve immersed myself in Australian crime fiction. I’ve read novels by Chris Hammer, Jane Harper, Patricia Wolf and S.R. White. I like the ones by Jane Harper the most, but they’ve all held my attention because of their settings. Detectives solve crimes in places with endless roads leading to outback towns where visitors who don’t know how to survive in the heat stick out like beacons. Dust hangs in the air; the dirt is red; everything is dry.
How An IEP Can Help You Homeschool Your Unique Learner
January 22, 2023 from Different Learning By Design
There was a time when I was really struggling to balance all the things. My youngest son was 10 at the time. He needed constant care for his chronic illness. We had several different therapies each week, and doctor appointments on top of those throughout the month. It was a very difficult time, and one that never seemed to let up.
The Rise and Fall of Freedom in Education in the 1960s and ‘70s
January 22, 2023 from Freedom to Learn
In 1968, a government-appointed committee in Ontario, Canada, published a glossy book-length report entitled Living and Learning: The Report of the Provincial Committee on Aims and Objectives of Education in the Schools of Ontario. The report was the product of three years of research by a committee of establishment figures from various walks of life, headed by Emmett Hall, who was Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and Lloyd Dennis, a school principal. The report was called the Hall-Dennis Report, after the co-chairs. I learned about it recently from a new book, by Deb O’Rourke, titled Can This Be school? Fifty Years of Democracy at ALPHA, about which I will say more shortly.
