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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-88053234684072418092016-08-22T06:03:47.986-04:00I'm Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write.Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-34939421892390564362016-07-18T14:07:00.000-04:002016-07-18T14:16:06.614-04:00Everything Doesn't Have to Be a "Passion:" Why Half-Assing Things is Fine, Too
Passion. We hear the word constantly. Parents and teachers want children to "find their passion," adults are encouraged to find theirs (as if everyone has just one in the first place), and every new interest found is met with excitement: maybe they'll be good at it people think. They can monetize it, start a blog about it, get good enough to compete, even! Each interest or skill, then, is thought of as a means to an end. They might go somewhere with this one, an adult thinks with pleasure, as they look fondly on their child's new coding hobby. "You could start a business!" someone exclaims with excitement to their friend upon trying their cupcakes for the first time.

But, maybe that's not what everyone wants. At least not some of the time. Probably not most of the time. Maybe not ever.

Because I'm here to share an important piece of knowledge I've learned, and it is a very simple one: it's okay to half-ass things. It's fine to not be good at something. And even more importantly, it's fine to not want to be "good" at something!

Sometimes we can just...be, without striving for anything greater than that.

Here's the thing:

We don't have the time to be good at everything, which means we're going to prioritize some things over others.

Those world class musicians, Olympic athletes, and top notch actors? That's all they do. For years. Every day is spent practicing, honing their craft, striving for greatness. For most of us, that's just not what we want. We're more generalist than that. And even when it comes to the things we do want to invest a lot of our time and energy into, we only have so much of that time and energy, so we have to prioritize what we love and want the most. As my sister recently said, "writing and Ninjutsu are part of who I am, but playing ukulele is just something I do." Or as I believe she put it, "you can't full-ass everything!"

Things can still be fun, enjoyable, and exciting even if they're just hobbies, and not something we want to get serious about.

My sister loves being able to play ukulele well enough to strum along while she sings. It's something she gets joy out of. She just doesn't happen to want to get better for the sake of being better. She's fine with the place the ukulele holds in her life right now. This is true for all of us, and isn't something to be ashamed of. Why do we think we need to be serious about everything? Why can't we do something just because it's fun?

People's misplaced expectations cause pressure, and pressure frequently makes things not fun.

Say you're a young adult who just picked up a gardening hobby. Really you're just dabbling so far, dipping your toes in, seeing if you like it. But every time someone asks you what you're up to, and you mention gardening, suddenly it becomes Something Big. Your mother wants you to sign up for a permaculture course. "You can start a landscaping business!" Your neighbor suggests with enthusiasm. "Do you know the city has a best garden award? I bet you could win it if you worked hard!" your uncle says with a smile. Everyone has big ideas for your gardening greatness, but really, you're new at this, and you're already starting to think that you'll be happy if the extent of your gardening is just growing half a dozen tomato plants. Or maybe not even that, because you're getting so tired of people turning what was a fun hobby into something you just don't want it to be.

Outside pressure that has not been agreed to frequently makes people feel uncomfortable, and is far more likely to lessen motivation and interest than to increase it.

Yes, sometimes hobbies or interests will turn into great passions, or paid work, or great renown.

But it's not our job to decide what will or won't become a big part of someone else's life. Not if they're a child, a teenager, or an adult.

And yes, sometimes people need encouragement.

If something's hard, someone might give up due to lack of confidence: a belief that, even though they really want to pursue something seriously, they're just not good enough. I don't mean to say that people--and children especially--don't sometimes need encouragement, offers of classes or special interest groups, and suggestions of ways they can take their interests in new directions, or to a higher level. Consider this merely as a reminder to tread carefully, and make sure we're helping others--be they children or friends--achieve their own goals, not superimposing our goals or expectations onto them.

In conclusion? Having a real passion for something is great. But so is just having fun!

And what's even better? Being the ones who get to decide where are own interests are going to take us...or not.Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-71300768353038161112016-06-13T12:36:00.001-04:002016-06-13T12:36:59.161-04:00Unschooling Subjects?People just discovering unschooling often have a lot of questions. How do unschoolers learn what they need to? Do schools really have the right idea in dividing everything into separate subjects? And can unschooling really work for every individual? My short answers would generally be lots of different ways; no; and every child can unschool, but not every parent or situation is compatible with unschooling. However, I really think I need to go a bit more in-depth with those answers…

Subjects

When you really start immersing yourself in unschooling, you start to see that, barring any learning disabilities, it's easy to absorb all the basics from everyday life. Sometimes it can be helpful to observe just how seamlessly those subjects are being learned, even though eventually, you probably won't think of learning as being broken into subjects at all!

Reading is learned from being read to, dictating stories to a helpful adult or older sibling, playing word games, picking out books at the library, deciphering a video game manual or board game instructions, using computers…

Writing is learned from reading, creating stories, communicating with friends online, blogging...

Math is learned through playing card and board games, helping with shopping, managing their own money, helping with budgeting, cooking and baking…

History is learned through conversations with friends and family, books and movies and tv shows (both fiction and non-fiction), looking things up on the internet...

Geography is learned from traveling and making friends online with people all around the world, keeping track of current events (online, through news on TV, and newspapers)...

When an unschooler wants to gain higher proficiency in any of these things, they can dive into researching something they're interested in, find mentors or teachers (with parental help, depending on age and what the learner wants and needs), and take online classes or in person ones (at a homeschool co-op, college, or offered to the wider community). After all, unschooling simply means self directed (adult facilitated) learning. It doesn't mean you have to eschew all structure, it just means that the learner should be calling the shots (in partnership with supportive adults in their lives).

...Maybe not

As you gain greater comfort with the unschooling lifestyle, you start to find that breaking everything down into distinct subjects--and trying to find or create learning in every moment--is extremely limiting. Reading is writing is history is art is geography. Learning is in large part the process of making connections, following the threads and seeing where they lead, what they intersect with, and how they affect each other. When we try to set firm boundaries between various subjects, all we do is impede those connections, restraining and interrupting the natural curiosity and desire to build an ever more complete picture of the world and our place in it. If we're going to call anything "education," perhaps it shouldn't be about schooling at all, but instead about our continuous process of building and re-building that picture, looking at it from different angles, adding and subtracting from it as we learn and grow and change.

Learning is such an endlessly complex process, that to try and break it up into firm subjects seems almost absurd.

Everyone is born a self-directed learner

A lot of time I hear those who have limited familiarity with unschooling say that this type of learning helps children "learn how to learn," and my reaction to that is always that everyone knows how to learn! Children need supportive people in their lives, circumstances that allow those people to invest the time those children need, and access to resources, but if you have those important elements, everyone is capable of unschooling. Obviously, those circumstances can be hard to find in our capitalistic culture, where many people just don't have the financial ability for a parent or trusted adult to stay with children. My point isn't to minimize that, just to point out that humans are built to learn, that we all have the innate abilities needed to do so, and that while external factors might get in the way, if the circumstances are right then we're ALL unschoolers.

ALL children, you say? What about children with learning disabilities, or neuro-atypical children, or other children with special needs? It's the job of an unschooling parent or guardian to help their children gain the skills and find the resources they need to achieve their goals, which can absolutely include specialized tutoring, therapy, support groups, or other services. Remember: unschooling is all about self-directed learning, cultivating learning partnerships between children and their parents/guardians/mentors/teachers, and using a variety of resources as wanted and needed. The nature of unschooling means that each learner's "education" will be completely different, and can bend and adapt to the unique needs of everyone involved.

So there won't really be a collection of subjects that every unschooler studies. There won't be one standardized body of learning that every child has. But when it really comes down to it, the world is a very big place, and each person can only ever hope to learn a fraction of what's out there to be learned. It seems to me that the best we can do is accept that fact, and work to support each individual in living a life and creating an "education" that feels meaningful to them, and equips them with whatever skills they need and want.

We can look at how various subjects are learned in different unschoolers lives, we can use examples to explain how it works to prospective unschoolers and naysayers alike, and we can comfort ourselves in the knowledge that we (or our children) are learning some of the same everyday skills that children in school are (supposed to be) learning. But in the end, it would probably do everyone a whole lot of good if we stepped away from the idea that everything can and should be broken into subjects, and that every individual needs to learn the same things in each of those subjects.

Learning is too big for that, and it makes a whole lot more sense to just take a deep breath and enjoy the ride!
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-81670678935788669562016-06-12T17:13:00.000-04:002016-06-12T17:13:18.789-04:00Being A Good Parent--And A Good Person--Means Being Pro-LGBTQIn the early hours of this morning, a man with an assault rifle walked into a gay night club and opened fire. After a several hour standoff with police, it ended in his death, as well as the deaths of at least 49 LGBTQ people who were partying in a place where they thought they were safe. Over 50 people were rushed to hospital, meaning the total death toll is likely to rise.

Over the coming hours and days, news outlets will be rife with speculation, as the investigation continues and new facts emerge. Already there's lots of talk about it being an act of "Islamic terrorism," with none of the news outlets seemingly capable of focusing on anything else. I know that, regardless of what the shooter's religion was, I won't be blaming Muslims, or people of any other religion, as the impetus behind this horrific massacre. The shooting occurred at a gay night club, during Pride Month, in the early hours of the US celebration of Pride Day. This was a hate crime, targeting a minority that, despite the progress made in the last decades, continues to face incredibly high rates of violence, especially the most vulnerable among the LGBTQ community (queer people of colour, trans women and especially trans women of colour). It's not surprising to me that the largest mass shooting in the US since 1890 targeted LGBTQ people.

(Source)

The blame might not lie with any religion, and I fear greatly for the repercussions Muslims, including LGBTQ Muslims, will face in the coming weeks, as once again a huge population is blamed for the actions of a single person. But the blame does lie with more than just the single shooter: it lies with a culture of homophobia and transphobia, and with every single non-LGBTQ person who with their words and actions contributes to a culture of violence against myself, and everyone else in my community of LGBTQ people.

I live in a country (Canada) and a province (Quebec) where it's better for LGBTQ people than plenty of other parts of North America. Better, but not good. Trans people have to run a bureaucratic gamut to change their legal markers, and face a tremendous amount of transphobia from a frequently ignorant or even hostile medical establishment. All LGBTQ people still face homophobia from society at large, in popular media, in schools, in homeschooling groups, in almost every group not specifically designed for LGBTQ people (and sometimes even in those groups) that you can find. In times when I presented in a more gender-bending way, I had people on the street yell at me about my sexual orientation. LGBTQ friends have all been harassed in greater or lesser ways.

Violence always exists on a spectrum. At the extreme, it manifests as the largest mass shooting in the last 100 years of American history. But leading up to that exists a wide range of acts that nurtured that shooter. I blame everyone who's ever sneered the words "faggot" or "dyke" or "tranny." I blame every person who ever talked primly of "those people" with their "unnatural lifestyles." I blame every parent who ever told their children that gays were "sinners."

Because it all starts with parents. The choices you make, the attitudes you model, the words you say, they shape the future. Your words can be the difference between a child who knows they are loved unconditionally, and a child who hates an essential part of who they are with such horror and disgust that they kill themselves. Your attitudes can be the difference between raising a child who embraces their friend when they come out, and raising one who buys a semi-automatic weapon and opens fire in a crowded room filled with strangers they genuinely believe deserve to die.

Or maybe it won't be that extreme. Maybe they'll simply be the kid who sends me a message online telling me I'm going to hell. The one who calls my friend and his boyfriend faggots.

Parents don't have all the power. Our culture is homophobic, our culture is transphobic. We will be affected by this, every single one of us. A young queer person with the most loving and supportive of parents can still feel that there's something wrong with them because of their sexual orientation. The straight teenager raised by parents who always spoke positively about LGBTQ people can still learn it's okay to use the word "gay" as an insult.

You don't have all the power. But you do have such an important role to play in helping create a more just and loving world.

When I read the news earlier today, I sat and cried. Those people who were murdered early this morning, almost 1,500 miles away, were a distant part of my adopted family. I haven't been able to get this imaginary image out of my head all day, an image of a dark bar, dozens of bodies scattered across the floor, screaming and crying and a bone deep terror I pray I never get to feel. I'm heartbroken.

And I'm begging you, please, no matter what religion you follow, to stop contributing to this violence. You might think your words are so far removed from this horrific act as to be entirely disconnected, but you would be wrong. Your words build on the words of others, your actions pool with those of your neighbors, your family, your friends. Isolated ideas gather strength as they join with others, building momentum until they are laws allowing health care practitioners to turn away a gay man having a heart attack so he can die on the streets; they become pastors preaching damnation; they become a transgender girl shunned by every age mate she knows for the way she dresses and the name she asks to be called; and they lead to the death of at least 50 innocent LGBTQ people who just wanted to celebrate Pride.

Please, be a voice not just for tolerance, but acceptance, and support. Speak up, stand up, raise up powerful LGBTQ voices, and work to end every tragedy, big and small, perpetrated every day against our community.

I want everyone to do better. Because I never want something like what happened in Orlando, Florida, to ever happen again.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-21070536870527070522016-01-04T13:06:00.000-05:002016-01-04T13:06:03.819-05:00Fun is More Important Than "Education"I read a new post on how "fun for the fun of it" is good enough by Wendy Priesnitz, and it got me thinking.

I like to talk about how we're constantly learning--how we can't help but do so--and how unschooling is really just embracing that fact.

But just as important is realizing that we don't always have be learning.

Bear with me for a second.

As adults, you probably enjoy doing a whole range of activities for pleasure: watching movies, listening to music, reading novels. Adults aren't expected to justify these activities, it's just accepted that they're enjoyable, and that's considered enough of a reason to do them.

Yet somehow when it comes to children, all that changes. "Education" must somehow be crammed into everything, from games to children's TV shows. Even something as fundamental to childhood as play has to be defended by experts attempting to prove that it increases concentration, test scores, or the ability to work well in a group. Apparently if there was nothing pointing towards a correlation between play and success in school, play would be deemed useless altogether.

It seems that, in some ways at least, adults are actually given more leeway to have fun. Children are kept so busy by parents and teachers, determined to mold them into productive members of society, that some of the truly important things in life get pushed aside. Because when it really comes down to it, what are we trying to cultivate in our lives and that of our children? Is it perfectionism, competition, and academic achievement, or is it joy, creativity, and meaningful relationships? I know which goals sound better to me.

Me, my sister, and my mother.

Yes, talking about TV shows--about the plots and character motivation and how it compares to real life--might be "educational," but at least as important is that watching a favourite show is fun. Reading novels might improve vocabulary, but the real reason we do so, no matter our ages, it because of the delight fiction brings us.

Play for play's sake, fun for the sake of nothing more than fun, is valuable. Really valuable. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of playing with my sister, and some of my best adult memories are of laughing uproariously with those I love. Doing both fun and meaningful things is what makes us feel satisfied with our lives.

Unlike some homeschoolers have suggested, unschooling isn't about sneakily teaching children what the parents want them to know: it's about centering life, not education. It's evaluating your priorities and realizing that learning runs parallel to a richly lived life, and doesn't need to be artificially engineered in children's lives.

When you realize that, you can let go and enjoy life, and allow your children to enjoy theirs. Play games, splash in the mud, watch TV, read comic books, do whatever it is that brings you and your children joy.

Have fun, and the learning will take care of itself.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-38644153779011195892015-10-20T16:48:00.000-04:002015-10-20T16:48:15.227-04:00No Classes, No Teachers, No Books? The Reality of Structure in UnschoolingI can't count the number of times I've seen article headlines proclaiming "Unschooling: No Classes, No Books!" I always shake my head in frustration.

I suppose when people hear that unschooling is not school, they jump to the conclusion that any and all even vaguely school-like trappings of classes and teachers--or even books, apparently--must be thrown out the window. Not school must mean nothing that looks like traditional learning, and nothing that looks like structure.

The reality, though, is quite a different story.

Unschooling might be against such school trappings as forced memorization and compulsory classes, but it's not against individuals choosing to learn in whatever ways they feel work best for them. In fact, that's kind of what unschooling is all about! It's the ultimate in individualized and personalized learning, which means while the lives of some individuals will look very carefree and unconventional, the lives of others might look very traditionally "educational."

Unschooling is characterized not by its lack of structure, but by its flexibility.

There are classes. As children me and my sister went to co-op classes and French classes and science classes. In recent times I've been to dance classes. My sister has been taking Ninjutsu for years, which at this point in time means two classes a week with an extra practice day thrown in. Unschooling is self-directed learning, which means you choose what classes you take (or don't take). What it isn't is learning only by yourself with no help. I'd hope that everyone can recognize that learning in group settings can be helpful and fun for some people some of the time. Would I like to only ever learn in class settings? Definitely not. But sometimes, it's really great, and no one should ever believe that unschooling means shunning a specific type of learning just because it looks traditionally educational. It's all about choosing what works best for you.

There are teachers. Not only present in classes of various sorts, but also in one-on-one situations. Sometimes the best way to learn something is by seeking help from someone skilled, which means a teacher or mentor of some sort. It may end up looking like a familiar school teacher-student relationship, or as is more often the case, it might hopefully be a more mutually respectful and reciprocal relationship. I have learned so much from other people: learning in isolation would be a sad and, well, isolating thing indeed. But by freeing ourselves from the need to be taught, I (perhaps ironically) feel that we can become much more open to all that is to be learned from those around us and those we seek out, both professional teachers, "experts," and community members.

There are books. In some cases, lots of books. In my house, the house I grew up in, there are two over packed bookcases in the living room; a bookcase stuffed with cookbooks in the kitchen; two bookcases in my bedroom; one in my parents room; two bookcases plus towering, precarious stacks shoved everywhere they can possibly fit in my sister's room; and I don't even know how many more bookcases are scattered around the basement. Point being? Between us, my family owns a whole lot of books. The internet provides lots of useful information and access to a ton of terrific essays and stories, but there's still a lot to be said for both novels and nonfiction books. It seems absurd that I should even have to say this, but generally unschoolers like books a lot. While some people are never going to really enjoy reading books for pleasure (or will be unable to due to learning disabilities), the vast majority will at the very least use books when appropriate to get the information they need.

We've established that some unschoolers will appear more "school like" in their pursuit of knowledge, or in the ways they choose to structure their learning. But while that may be one sort of "structure," even for the most freeform unschoolers out there, the patterns of life will create a structure of sorts. Daily habits and rituals, visits and activities, will build a scaffolding for the unschooling life, a structure that evolves and changes over weeks and months to support the needs of each individual and the family as a whole.

Unschooling doesn't mean doing away with any structure whatsoever: it means creating a structure based on the needs of actual people, instead of following a structure designed for the needs of an institution.

This means that sometimes unschoolers will go to classes, seek out teachers, and read books. And sometimes, they'll learn quietly by themselves, they'll teach themselves a new skill, and they'll play a video game.

However much or little structure their lives end up including, life learners are trying to open themselves up to as much of the world as possible. To pick and choose what works for them, and discard what doesn't, all with the knowledge that they can always make different choices in the future.

And those choices will quite likely include classes, teachers, and books!
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-55486975950588776902015-10-13T16:39:00.001-04:002015-10-13T16:39:42.376-04:00For The Love of Learning: Exploring Unschooling With Pat Farenga, Pam Sorooshian, and Idzie DesmaraisI was happy to be part of a recent conversation on the online TV show For the Love of Learning, along with Pat Farenga and Pam Sorooshian. We covered many interesting topics, and I was left feeling like there was so much left we didn't get to explore. While I don't agree with everything my co-guests had to say, I was still blown away by many of their insightful comments and stories, and was thrilled to be included in such good company. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I enjoyed doing it!

Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-74966555662357079222015-09-14T14:45:00.000-04:002015-09-14T14:45:16.727-04:00Unexceptionally Exceptional: A Gateway to LearningThis is the third and final installment of Unexceptionally Exceptional, which is the text from the talk I presented at the Northeast Unschooling Conference at the end of August. You might want to read part one and part two first: The Meaning of Success, and Time for Struggle, Time for Joy.

Downtime of all sorts can be valuable, and one of the way that manifests is in boredom.

I decided that me and my sister should sing a duet for the talent show because I was bored. I've been bored a lot in the past year, mainly because when things aren't going great, I'm less likely to have a good routine going with regular activities, and more likely to feel restlessness.

So, in some ways the boredom I've felt has been a sign of things not going as well as they could be. But in other ways, boredom has always been a force of creativity in my life. As I wrote in a post on the Home School Life Magazine blog back in February:

"Boredom acts as a gateway, as the beginning of something new or different, or the introduction (or reintroduction) to a new hobby or passion, something that will go on to be an important part of our days.

Or not. As important as the productivity that boredom can lead to, equally important is simply the space of boredom itself. The time for us to get past the initial restlessness or discomfort of not being busy, not doing, and settle into reflection, observation, stillness. We need the time to process and digest our learning, our experiences, and sometimes boredom can be a part of that."
To struggle, to be bored, is part of the process of learning, and of healing.

I've never sung a duet in public before. I sung in a church choir and a homeschool choir when I was young, but my voice, when others are listening to me perform, has always been part of a crowd: a hopefully harmonious small part of the whole. I've sung in small groups, casually, where everyone is messing up and messing around, playing instruments they're less familiar with and maybe trying out a new harmony. It hasn't felt like much pressure.

But what I was suggesting to my sister when I turned to her and said "we should do a duet at NEUC" was scary. Everyone would be listening to my voice. They'd hear if I messed up.

But, I was bored that evening, and I wanted to sing with my sister, and once the thought crossed my mind and the words left my mouth, I became determined to follow through with it.

We sung Safe and Sound by Taylor Swift and the Civil Wars.

Sometimes, too, boredom is the impetus to actually work through emotional shit. Keeping busy, always talking and working and doing, can be a way to hide from difficult emotions, to avoid facing difficult experiences. Boredom, an absence of busy-ness, has forced me to process what's been happening in my life, to reflect, accept, and work towards moving forward.

And as I move forward, I find myself asking again and again, what is success? It's layered and multi-faceted, and my definition is constantly changing. I'm working on being at peace with my life, with where I am right now.

I'm learning to move forward. I may still be grieving the loss of two cats who meant the world to me, yet I have two different cats who have now come to mean an incredible amount to me as well. I'm still not living the dream life, there are still so many things I might want to change. Yet the garden still grows, and my family still loves me.

My darling Bea, of the no-tail and too-many-toes.

Success isn't something you can attain in one grand swoop. I'm reminded of an Allie Brosh comic, where the author in scratchy comic form is shown gesturing sweepingly towards a purple ribbon wrapped trophy on the mantlepiece. "That right there is my ability to be responsible" she says. "I won it when I was 25."

People my age, whether unschooled or not, have so many flawed and conflicting beliefs about what it means to be a successful adult, and how that can achieved. I guess we're all floundering, at least some of the time, and just trying to figure out what we're doing.

Unschooling, too, is a practice of learning and un-learning and re-learning, trying to find a path to respectful relationships, a peaceful home, and joyful learning.

Ah, the joy. Because the thing is, no matter how hard some times in our lives might be, no matter that our lives might not always look how we think they're supposed to, there's so much joy.

Pursuing an unschooling life is pursuing joy. It's cultivating the excitement of discovery; the satisfaction of doing hard things on your own initiative; the companionship of strong relationships and time spent with people you not only love, but like.

Me and my mommy.

I spend as much time as I do talking and writing about unschooling because, despite none of this being new to me, it still fills me with so much excitement. My mind spirals into thoughts of what I've learned, with great pleasure, to do: bake pies and ferment kombucha and grow zucchinis. I think of all there is that I'm going to get to learn in the future. I think about how learning feels: the playful, relaxed, yet deeply focused intent of doing something I truly love, something that hits the perfect sweet spot of challenging yet attainable. It feels like freedom. And it's one of the best feelings there is.

How can I not consider that joy, in and of itself, a form of success? I delight in learning, and in sharing, and in making the tenets of unschooling a continuing part of my adult life.

This past year may have tested me in a hundred different ways, but I'm proud that I managed, through everything, to find those joyful moments.

It takes a shift in focus to start seeing the success in your own life. It's hard. Do I ever know how hard it is! I struggle every day to truly value my unique education, to recognize how much I've done and am doing in my life. To really feel my success.

But whenever I force myself to stop and really look, I can see it. I see the learning, and the growth, and the joy, and I know that I'll be okay. I've got this. I'm busy building the life I want one messy, difficult, enthusiastic piece at a time.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-68229214973672864662015-09-10T12:14:00.000-04:002015-09-10T12:14:19.075-04:00Unexceptionally Exceptional: Time for Struggle, Time for JoyThis is part two of my talk Unexceptionally Exceptionally, which I presented at the Northeast Unschooling Conference a couple of weeks ago. I'd suggest reading part one, The Meaning of Success, first! Look for part three on Monday.

As much as I might often be seen as "successful" by unschoolers, this past year has not been one which looked very good from the outside, and one that often didn't feel very good on the inside. This past year in my life has been rough. When I was writing the outline for this talk, I put down "the year of hell" as the heading for this section. For any Star Trek Voyager fans in the audience, you'll remember the episode of that title, where in an alternate timeline, everything just keeps going wrong: aliens keep attacking; equipment breaks; people keep dying.

My own year of hell has been a time of great difficulty for my whole family. In December, a beloved cat who had been with my family for almost 14 years passed away unexpectedly. In January, my great aunt died. In february, my grandmother's basement flooded, and shortly afterwards, she fell down the stairs, hitting her head on rough cement uncovered by flood repair work and getting a concussion. In March our other elderly cat, who had been with us just as long and been just as loved, got sick and died shortly after. In April, my father had surgery.

When I see people criticizing unschooling for its supposed sheltering of children from hard things, I laugh. My response to that concern, whenever it's expressed to me, is that the world provides plenty of difficulty all on its own: no need for parents to artificially engineer misery in the lives of their children.

There's a quote I really like by Alfie Kohn, who says:

"People don't get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. On the contrary, what best prepares children to deal with the challenges of the real world is to experience success and joy, to feel supported and respected, to receive loving guidance and unconditional care and the chance to have some say about what happens to them."
I guess my parents did something right, because I seem to have ended up as an adult who can cope with adversity. This past year success has felt like being there for my mother when her aunt passed away. It's meant rushing out of the house in record time to meet my grandmother at the hospital, and bringing my father in for his surgery along with my sister, hiding the terror we were both feeling so we could joke with him while he waited. Success meant bringing my cat's body to the veterinarian's office to be cremated, even though I wanted to just curl up at home and grieve, because she was my cat and it was my responsibility.

Sometimes success means simply doing what you need to do.

And, through it all, learning keeps happening. Not even in a growing from adversity way, though that can't help but be part of it, but just through everyday exploration. Books are still read, questions Googled, words written, Ninjutsu classes attended, skills honed and projects completed.

A large part of unschooling is seeking joy in learning: embracing learning as a playful, exciting process. But it seems that in all our discussion of that joy, some people seem to take to heart that that's all unschooling should and can be. I see people concerned that their house isn't constantly filled with light, or that life sometimes gets in the way of living in a way that looks how they think unschooling is supposed to look.

I think that cooperation and exploration and yes, joy, should always be the goal: of course we all want that. But there needs to be the recognition that circumstances will sometimes intervene in surprising and on occasion devastating ways, and what happens through that might not looks like the ideal of unschooling, but it will be real, and genuine, and the learning will still be happening, every step of the way.

My year of hell has included a whole lot of time spent not in crisis, but simply in living.

"When life is busy testing your endurance, it seems like the perfect time to bring a bit more magic into your days."

I wrote that line back in January, and that thought, that idea has come to mean a lot to me in the past year. More than any other time in my life, I've been reminded over and over again of the importance of finding joy each day, in all it's forms and in any way you can. Bringing little pieces of magic, of inspiration, into even the most difficult of days.

For one thing, I could spend hours picking berries. The only thing that generally drives me back indoors is when I've found every last ripe one in whatever patch of brambles I'm delicately working my way through. Sometimes I hum to myself. More often I'm silent, moving slowly, listening to the soft rustle of branches, hum of insects, and birdsong. Even the thorns on my favourite black raspberries seem more like a challenge than an inconvenience.

Black raspberries.

A lot of what bringing inspiration into my life has meant is self care rituals: picking berries; making myself and anyone else who's around a fancy coffee; making a beautiful plate of food; cutting flowers from our yard and putting a bouquet on the table; baking a loaf of bread… Much of my self care involves food, because that's what's important to me, but everyone will have things that make them feel grounded and nourished.

And a lot of what "magic" has meant to me has been learning. I haven't taken any classes since last fall: nothing has been formal, and little has been with other people. Even turned inwards, as I've been, towards family and healing, I've found myself still learning constantly, in countless simple ways.

Gardening has been a big thing for me and my sister this Spring and Summer. My sister Emilie has spearheaded things, at times dragging me along, short on motivation, behind her. Conversations on car rides have been about the ideal soil composition for beans versus tomatoes, and how best to treat powdery mildew on zucchinis. There have been sweaty days spent building a large trellis out of branches and reclaimed posts for our winter squash, building raised beds, and transplanting small growing things. In more recent days, time spent in the garden has waned, as more and more that's left to do is simply harvest, take stock of what we did wrong and right, and discuss how we want to do things next year.

The tomatoes did especially well this year.

Besides the garden, bringing two new cats into our home, in a desperate attempt to fill the holes left by our recently deceased furry family members, has lead to plenty of breed research and new discoveries about cat behaviour, as each new animal always presents new challenges and new joys both. I canned some jelly semi-successfully for the first time this summer--the canning part was successful, though the "jelly" was more syrup than anything else. I've learned more about areas of history I previously knew little about; I've learned to cook new foods; I've learned that I can step up when needed even when I'm personally struggling.

A whole host of learning, from how to handle an overstimulated kitten and how to create an ingenious tomato watering system, to deep personal growth.

Remaining aware of all the learning that keeps happening, no matter what, can be encouraging and soothing. When it feels like you're "doing nothing," it might be a good idea to pay more attention to all the things that you, and your family, ARE doing.

We live in a culture obsessed with productivity. Whether you want to blame it on capitalism or on the puritanical work ethic, the fact remains that busy-ness, doing something, is generally considered good, and not doing anything "productive" is seen as laziness, as wasted time.

The idea that time can even be wasted, that every moment should somehow be accounted for seems like a deeply toxic idea. It's definitely proved a harmful one in my own life. I've struggled with mental illness for years, and this year has been a particularly trying one with all that's happened, and I struggle with the idea that I've "wasted" so much time in struggle.

In a culture that sees a lack of productivity as one of the seven deadly sins, people who are struggling are often seen as lazy. They just need to get over it, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

The reality is that big life struggles are sometimes inevitable, and there isn't an exact recipe for how people are "supposed" to deal with adversity. Sometimes you just need time and space to heal, and to get back on your feet.

Our two new black cats, Silver and Bea.

Both children and adults need time to struggle with those big life events, to make sense of them.

One of the core tenets of unschooling is recognizing that everyone has their own timeline when it comes to learning. The same is true of emotional difficulties and growth. When we take constant productiveness as a measure of success, we're doing a great disservice to ourselves and the people around us. Time is a great gift: time to figure things out, to grow, to process, to hibernate. Periods of downtime are essential, especially when life has been extra hard.

Part of learning to be kind to myself is learning not to beat myself up over a lack of productivity, not to punish myself for struggling. Sometimes picking a full container of raspberries is success enough.

As a grown unschooler, I might feel the pressure to excel in obvious ways especially keenly, but recognizing that the only timeline I'm on is my own allows me that space to breath, and when I'm kinder to myself, I'm more able to do and learn and grow.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-40476799149878517322015-09-07T13:20:00.000-04:002015-09-07T13:20:33.708-04:00Unexceptionally Exceptional: The Meaning of Success
This is the first of a three part series exploring what success is and means, unschooling when the going gets tough, and finding joy in the simple things. The text is from a talk I wrote for the Northeast Unschooling Conference, and I've broken it up here into more manageable post lengths. Look for parts two and three on Thursday and next Monday!

As I was preparing for this talk, I found myself thinking a lot about what success means. What it means in this culture, what it means to unschoolers, and what it means to me, personally.

Culturally, the most common middle class narrative of success runs neatly from elementary school and high school, through college, and straight into a well-paying office job.

Unschoolers, obviously, have strayed from that path right near the beginning. And I think it's fair to say that we've all questioned whether that's really the best--or the only best--path to follow. After all, as soon as you start re-evaluating the place institutional education holds culturally and in each of our lives, it's a pretty natural step to start wondering if that education is really seeking the right "results," or if we want to be focusing on different goals.

But, I often wonder if we haven't just replaced one set of expectations with another one, which, while less rigid, still falls far short of encompassing all the ways that humans can create their own versions of success in this world.

__

It's a day a couple of weeks ago. I'm curled up in the corner of the couch, knees tucked underneath me, the television playing something I'm not watching in the background. I've spent most of the day caught in a negative thought spiral of failed attempts and disappointments. In other words, it hasn't been a good day. "I'm a loser." I say. The words slip out without my thinking them through beforehand, but in that moment, I believe it. It doesn't matter that I don't want a degree: I'm supposed to have one, aren't I? I don't have a "real" job, and despite the fact I'm earning a small amount of money doing something I care deeply about, or that ongoing health problems have gotten in the way of outside work, it seems like something I should have. It doesn't even matter that, at the core of all my beliefs about people and politics and everything else lies the belief in equality, and that there aren't--or at least definitely shouldn't be--any ranking of people based on how well they're "winning" at capitalism or success or anything else.

But in that moment, I'm convinced that I'm a failure.

Those moments are just that: moments, and ones that pass. But I'm reminded of how strong cultural messages are by how easily I can get caught up in (and dragged down by) those narratives, especially in moments of emotional difficulty and uncertainty. Unschoolers or not, I think many of us can't help but be affected.

In the unschooling community, ideas about success are different. I usually feel like people consider me pretty successful in unschooling spaces: popular blogger and speaker definitely falls under the range of well-thought-of unschooling endeavors, right alongside world travel and entrepreneurship.

Writing, writing, writing...

It's nice to see other accomplishments beside the typical college to good career track being recognized for their validity. But, the things that are viewed as successful by some vague yet very much felt unschooling consensus are things that, well, look good. Things that are somewhat performative, public, and easily seen. It's the public intellectuals, the travelling writers, the startup superstars whom it seems we're most proud of.

I think it's no coincidence that the word "performative" was the first one that came to mind for me. Unschooling is often faced with such harsh criticism from uninformed non-unschoolers, and even legal difficulties in some places. When people first learn about unschooling, they don't usually get an image of the type of lifestyle many of us have lived and are living. Instead, they see one of chaos and ignorance and maybe even neglect, You mean you don't teach the kids anything?? How will they ever become productive members of society??

With that type of outside reaction, I suppose it's unsurprising that the lives of teenage and especially grown unschoolers can get turned into performances of success, most clearly seen in what and who we choose to talk about. Individuals become not just themselves: uniquely flawed and skilled people with their own lives to lead, but results. A product of a pedagogy, instead of simply people who've lead a different lifestyle. We broaden the definition of success, yes, to include more varied options. But we still want it to look damn good.

I don't think it's a deliberate choice, or a deliberate ranking of some pursuits as more important than others, yet regardless of intentions, it can sometimes feel, as a grown unschooler, that you're caughts between a dance of sometimes conflicting, sometimes complementary pressures to prove unschooling success in one way or another, whether that means more mainstream or counter-cultural narratives. And when none of those paths looks like one you want to take, it can feel really difficult.
__

My sister, Emilie is a musician, a martial artist, an amateur Arthurian scholar, and a writer of fantasy fiction. I think she's pretty impressive, as does pretty much anyone who knows her. But unlike my own life and work, which I've chosen to share in a very public way, her pursuits are much quieter. She's an excellent writer, but she only shares her writing with a select group of trusted friends. She's very close to getting her black belt in Ninjutsu, and her teacher, who's moving, wants Emilie to take over her class. Her accomplishments are real and important, but they're not necessarily ones that receive much recognition outside of the specific groups in which she practices her skills.

She makes adorable plushies, too.

Many people, unschooled and not, lead quieter lives, with less outgoing passions. In holding up the unschoolers doing TED talks or getting into prestigious colleges as the pinnacle of unschooling success, I feel like we might just be missing an opportunity to discuss, and to truly embrace, a vision of truly unique life learning. If we mean it when we say that all interests are valid and important, then we must follow that belief through to it's natural conclusion, which would be that all life paths, as long as they're not harmful to others, are also equally valid, no matter how they might look to outsiders.

If we're to do that, it seems that we need to be making a lot more space in discussions of success for people whose success doesn't follow the most popular forms.Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-57283033300968914342015-07-27T13:06:00.000-04:002015-07-27T13:06:06.469-04:00How Do We Value Ourselves?
Originally published in the November/December 2014 issue of Home Education Magazine.

In our culture, it's very obvious that we value certain knowledge and skills more highly than others. Namely skills that are academic and intellectual, communication skills, and social skills (somewhat less tangibly, seeing as those are harder to test). It seems everything else comes a distant second.

Schools are all about teaching academic skills to the exclusion of all else (though how good a job they do at imparting those skills is very debatable).

When we take school out of the equation in our own lives and families, we have the option, the opportunity, to take a hard look at what skills are valued, and decide to broaden what we personally value and encourage.

But are we taking that opportunity? Too often, I don't think we are.

My family didn't, or at least didn't to as much of an extent as we could have. This isn't meant to place blame on my parents; we're each of us constantly learning and growing, and unlearning ideas that have a negative impact on ourselves and others. My parents did the best they could in the places they were at, and I'm grateful for it. But looking back, it's very obvious that the skills they were most concerned with me and my sister acquiring were those taught in school. It was subtle, because it was unintentional, but that preferencing of academic skills, at least to some extent, was very much present.

It's easy to find ourselves trapped in an invisible framework built out of concerned queries from friends and families about how kids who don't go to school will learn math, and PSA's about the importance of graduating high school, and parental insecurities born of what they themselves were good and bad at in school.

I think it's important to look beyond that framework, though, to recognize the variety of important and amazing skills and strengths people can have, including skills that are definitely not taught in school.

___________

My sister is a caretaker. She washes dishes and dusts and tidies, she likes doing yard work, and has increasingly been taking on odd jobs around the house that my father used to do (cleaning out the gutters and sweeping the chimney, snowblowing and mowing the lawn). She likes organizing things, works as the quartermaster in her Highland band, making sure every member is properly outfitted with everything they need. Her dream is to build her own house, a hobbit hole as she refers to it. She likes to take care of spaces, organizing and making things work.

This type of domestic work, work related to home care, is not exactly highly valued. I don't think it's an accident that this type of work (besides a couple of 'manly' chores) is generally coded as feminine, either, though that's a whole 'nother story.

It's work that's deeply necessary, often difficult, and that lives at the core of each and every one of our lives. We all need to eat, need to have clean clothes to wear, need to stay healthy by living in a clean environment. Even when we move past what's strictly necessary in our current modern way of living, domestic skills often provide real enrichment: fresh food from a garden in your own yard, or homemade soap with your favourite scents. As soon as you move past the strictly necessary aspects of domestic skills, you move into the "artisanal." Which, to a growing extent, is in. It's trendy and popular to knit and make pie, at least for women.

We like cooking together.

But while the general movement towards a back-to-the-land and back-to-our-grandmother's-skills can't be a bad thing, I don't think the movement is nearly broad enough in scope, as the majority of domestic skills are still being learned by girls and women only, and the trendiness only goes so far. These skills are still just considered hobbies, things women can do in their spare time. When it comes to the more mundane skills, they remain simply invisible: if they're noticed at all, it's probably just in an outdated sense of approval that the time honoured housekeeping skills are alive and well with some women, at least.

I believe the undervaluing of domestic work is reflected in how much money is usually made in such work outside your own home, and in who's doing it (almost entirely women, and the majority immigrant and otherwise marginalized women). You can also see that attitude in what's conspicuously not thought important enough to include in a modern school curriculum.

While certain select domestic skills might be valued when practiced by certain select people, they're certainly not valued overall.

_____________

It seems strange that in many ways the most basic and integral skills needed to provide shelter and food are those valued least. Domestic skills, as mentioned above, but also trades, construction, and farming (which, even with the increased desire for organic and specialty foods, can be difficult to succeed at financially no matter what type of farming you're doing)... Some of these jobs, like select trades, do earn a lot of money (I don't find it surprising that trades are also male dominated fields(1) as opposed to female dominated low-paying domestic work), yet they still lack a lot of prestige.

Money isn't the only sign of value, of course, but in a capitalist society that values money over pretty much everything else (like the wellbeing of the Earth and the majority of people), how much money any given skill or knowledge set can make says a lot about what things--and which people--are valued most.

_____________

My sister is a caretaker. She takes care of people. Friends ask her for relationship advice, and go to her when they just need someone to listen. She told me the other day how much she likes helping out the newer people at her Ninjutsu dojo, and I've seen the amount of patience she has whenever she's in a position of helping people to learn something. There's been numerous times she's stayed up late into the night and early morning talking to a friend or acquaintance who's suicidal. She cares about the people around her, and is quick to step in and stand up to someone when she believes they're being hurtful or inconsiderate. One of the reasons she wants to have her own land and build that hobbit hole is so that she has a place where loved ones can go when they need a place to be, no matter their financial situation. She cares about people.

And as you can probably tell by now, I really admire the skills my sister has a great deal. I admire her a great deal.

But it's hard, as she confided to me recently, that the skills and strengths she values and cultivates in herself are not ones that are generally valued. They don't make money, or at least not easily, which is all most people seem concerned about, and she's left feeling like those skills, as much as her contributions have meant to so many friends and acquaintances, just aren't good enough.
______________

"There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature." William Upski Wimsatt

This quote has always felt grounding to me, reminding me when I start to panic about my (lack of) math skills or feel that my knowledge of certain parts of history seem less than a schooled friend. A reminder that the most important skills are those that actually help us function in the world we find ourselves in. This can mean knowing how to make healthy and tasty food for yourself or for a crowd, handling friendships when they get difficult, doing taxes, raising money, supporting a depressed partner while not losing yourself, or how to get soap rings off of the sides of your tub.

All the things, big and small, that truly make up the day to day art of living.

As unschoolers, we have a tremendous opportunity to rethink what's valued and what's important. It's hard to let go (or maybe more accurately throw off) deeply ingrained ideas about what learning looks like, what important learning looks like, and what should be most encouraged in children.

I think encouraging life skills can be as simple as de-emphasizing academic skills a little bit (messages everywhere are telling us that they're important. Kids are going to get that idea no matter what!), and working to expand our personal definitions of what learning looks like and what skills it's important for children to learn. If we actually believe that all those important real life skills are valuable, I think everyone around us, kids included, are going to see that belief reflected in the way we talk and the things we do. I also think it's important to, in an age appropriate way, involve kids of all genders in every aspect of running and maintaining a household: cooking and cleaning and fixing and yard work and finances and pet care. Making things into "chores" is often unhelpful; instead, I believe it's important to just live and work together as a family, including everyone in both day-to-day tasks and big decisions. Easier said than done, I'm sure (and I'll likely be even more sure of that once I have kids myself), but striving for that cooperative state seems important, and when you can achieve it it really feels great. I know it's what I'll be striving for when I'm a parent.

It's great if a kid finds manipulating numbers comes naturally, or starts reading at age three. But it's just as wonderful if a child has a real sense of when things are out-of-place and likes organizing the house, or loves working with wood, or has a knack for growing things, or a seemingly innate sense of the right thing to say when someone is sad.

Emilie tending to the garden last summer. Our garden is much bigger this year!

These skills and strengths are every bit as important as academic skills, and if we can stop the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that intellectual work is somehow superior, if we valued the unique strengths of every individual around us, both children and adults, I can't help but think it would be a better world.

Unschooling gives us an excellent opportunity to value those unique strengths, and encourage kids to develop all kinds of important, exciting, and nourishing life skills.
_________

My sister is 20. I'm 23. We're both still figuring out a lot of things, still struggling sometimes. I'm deeply passionate about food and cooking, and though right now I'm just working hard to get my health to a place where I feel I'm able to work a "real" job, I remain excited about working in that field.

My sister Emilie was asked to be the manager and caretaker of a fledgling intentional community being dreamed up by her Ninjutsu teacher (as well as friend and sometimes employer) and others. Though the land isn't bought yet, her near-future "duties" would be to do a lot of the learning and skill-gaining related to sustainable building and gardening practices, something that a lot of the older working people involved with the community don't have the time to do. In the longer run, some of the things she'd do would be organize who was there when, bringing in and managing volunteers to help build it, and living on the land during the week when those who still worked in the city couldn't be there. Basically an opportunity that perfectly suits her desires and skills! I'm excited for her, and I'm hoping it all works out. Even if it doesn't, she's still striving towards her dream of homesteading and sustainable community living.

Which I guess just shows to me that there is a place for those skills, for people whose strengths and passions are less of the academic persuasion and more about the domestic, hands on, emotional, and "life skills" realms, even if they can be difficult to find sometimes.

There are many skills that help us function and succeed in this world, whatever success looks like to the individual. Some of them are academic and some are not. They're all valuable, helping us in different aspects of our lives, some of which will help with earning money and some not. Regardless, they're all important. They all contribute to making life better, making life richer, and helping us to take care of ourselves and those around us.

In valuing all skills, not just the school ones, we're helping kids do well in all different parts of their life, and opening up doors to a wider range of possibilities.

I think that's one of the most important, and personally exciting, things we can do as unschoolers!

(1) I say this based on the findings in Women in Non-Traditional Occupations and Fields of Study by Kathryn McMullen, Jason Gilmore and Christel Le Petit from statistics Canada, and Women and Education by Martin Turcotte, the latter of which commented that, out of six trade groups (building construction, electrical, electronic and related trades, food and services, industrial and related mechanical trades, metal fabricating, and motor vehicle and heavy equipment), the only one in which women are a majority was food and services.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-3138901868571403282015-07-06T12:18:00.000-04:002015-07-06T12:18:45.525-04:00So You Want to Leave College. Now What?I want to leave college--or just not go to begin with--but how do I start? Is a question I get fairly frequently.

As a lifelong unschooler, my transition into life learning in the college years felt like a natural progression, which has definitely coloured my view of college free learning, and how I've approached it. In light of that, I wanted to share the things that have been most helpful in my own journey thus far, just tailored towards those who haven't come from the same background I have.

So, you want to leave college. Where do you start?

Find Uncollege Inspiration
Read books and blogs about learning without school. Watch TED talks on the subject. Google away, learn about the experiences of other college free learners, what they found worked and what they found didn't, and from all that you're taking in, focus on what sounds best for you. My choices might not be your choices, and you should never feel the need to follow advice that sounds like it doesn't meet your needs or reflect your situation. Get inspired, and go with what sounds like a great college-free experience for you.

Figure Out the Practicalities
If you're not going to college, what will your life basically look like instead? Will you live with your parents, rent an apartment, travel the world? Do you need to work, and if so, how will that tie-in with or be balanced with your uncollege pursuits? What resources (universities, community groups, maker spaces, libraries, art studios, etc.) are available in your community (or in the community you plan to relocate to)? Know the confines you're going to be working within, so you can figure out how you want to proceed with your life learning over the next little while.

Find YOUR Inspiration
So you're not going to college. What do you want to do instead? You can focus as broadly or narrowly as you want, on as academic or as hands-on pursuits as can be imagined. This can be overwhelming, which is why I think a great place to start is just free form research into whatever you're interested in--or think you might be interested in. Read books on paleontology or writing, watch videos about dog training or coding. Reading blogs by people doing something you might want to do can be one of the best ways to see if you want to pursue something similar, in my experience. You don't have to immediately find your "passion," you don't ever have to settle on just one thing. Just come up with a few ideas that you like, then see what books are at your local library, what activities you can get involved with in your local community, or who you might want to approach for mentorship.

Build a Support Network
If you're going to skip college, you're going to need some support. How much or how little will depend on your personal needs, but whether it's supportive parents or friends, online communities, mentors in a chosen field, or a great local group who share a common interest, finding people who want to cheer you on and help you out is invaluable. Otherwise it's just too easy to get bogged down in disapproval from less positive corners who think you should really just get a degree instead.

Check Out Your Local College or University
Even if you've decided you don't want to enroll in college or university, they can provide really great communities, and often have a lot of associated groups, clubs, and events open to the general community. Through two big universities in my city, I've gone to numerous education workshops, as well as canning workshops, dance classes, artisan fairs, and more. Colleges can provide a really accessible network of young people, and lots of readily available ways to learn about important and relevant goings on in your area. So if you're lucky enough to live near one, see what it has to offer!

Push Yourself Outside Your Comfort Zone
We all have different things that will feel scarier or more intimidating, even if we want to do them. Maybe now is a good time to explore those things, and start taking steps--small ones, if you need to--outside of your current comfort zone. Personally, I can end up becoming way too much of a shut-in, focusing on writing, baking, and following my daily routines, and I need to make sure I go out and do cool things, take classes that scare me a little, try something new, take time to travel (a good growth experience if ever there was one), and keep my life more varied and rich than it would otherwise be. Working to expand our comfort zones is always a good idea!

Make Something
In lieu of grades (a measure of accomplishment that I think has major problems), creating things can be a really great way of seeing your own progress, keeping records of what you're spending your time doing, and making something that other people can benefit from. And when I say "something," I mean almost anything: a blog, book, or ebook; YouTube videos; a short documentary; songs; a website or basic videogame; a photography portfolio; a bookshelf or chicken coop or garden… Find something you want to try doing, do it, make some record of yourself doing it, and think about sharing either your process and experience or the finished project (depending on what it is) with others. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don't treat your education as a performance for others, and don't choose your activities based on how good they'd look online. But sharing what you do can be an incredibly rewarding and useful way of improving your work and providing something valuable for other people.

Keep a Personal Inspiration/Motivation/Self-Care Journal
I first got this idea from a fellow college-free learner, who simply kept a Google document filled with quotes, passages, and thoughts that kept them feeling inspired about their learning lifestyle. I have a "self care" tag on my Tumblr blog to help me stay positive when I start to panic, and I keep a paper inspiration/self care journal which, though I don't write in it as often as I'd like, nevertheless makes me happy. It can be hard doing something unconventional, and outside disapproval can really weigh you down, so creating something to remind you of your worth and the worth of your choices is a great thing to have when you start to wonder if you're really doing the right thing.

Remember You Can Always Change Your Mind
Choosing not to go to college can feel like a Really Big Thing, both to you and the people around you. But all it is is a decision to not go to college right now. If at any point you decide that maybe you do want to go--or go back--to college, you can, whether it's a year from now, or 5 years, or 20. I feel that one of the biggest perspective shifts in embracing life learning is realizing that there are no timelines of when you "should" be learning or doing certain things. The only timeline is your own, based on what's right for you at any given time. So try not to panic: just take things one step at a time, don't decide things aren't working just because life learning doesn't look exactly the way you thought it would, but also don't feel locked into your choices, and know that you can always shake things up and change your mind about the whole college thing.

Ultimately, I can't really tell anyone else how to unschool the college years any more than I can tell anyone else what to do with their lives: the two are the same. All you're doing is trying to live life richly and well, follow your curiosity and devote yourself to exciting projects.

Unschooling college is saying what do I want to be doing right now, and what are the skills and resources I need to do it? And repeating that process a dozen, a hundred times, whenever you find something new to explore.

It can be overwhelming, and scary, and hard. It can be easy to compare yourself to others, both in and out of college or university, and worry that you're lacking. But if you keep the focus away from comparison, and away from trying to live up to outside standards of what you should be doing, you can make the space in your life to create an education--and a life--that you're proud of.

Want more inspiration, or to find out more about my own college-free experiences? See Unschooling for Adults; I Don't Want to Build My Own Curriculum, I Just Want to Live My Own Life; and Valuing a Different Kind of Education.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-89204640563991196912015-06-26T12:34:00.000-04:002015-06-26T12:34:09.805-04:00I'm Here and I'm QueerI've been wanting to write this post all of June, since it's Pride month, and today on a day when my social media dashes are blowing up with rainbows over the legalization of same-gender marriage in the United States seems like a pretty good time!

First thing you should know? I'm queer.

What does that mean to me? Basically that I have the capacity to be attracted to, get crushes on, and fall in love with people of any gender.

I'm pretty much as "out" as I can be in most areas of my life. I even make a point of saying I'm queer on my unschooling Facebook page every now and then, and I lose "likes" every single time.

I've had people say it's inappropriate to talk about "what I do in the bedroom" which is such a ridiculous statement, since I've never said anything more than I did just now in this post.

I'm queer. I'm into people of all different genders.
It's not about sex: it's about who I like and love, and how welcome--and how safe--I feel in any given group. It's about the internal struggles I've had to go through to accept this part of myself that I didn't see reflected anywhere around me, that caused a lot of anxiety and fear and a little bit of shame, too. It's about how I present myself, how I want to be seen and understood, how I experience the world. It's a part of my identity.

My queerness doesn't wholly define me. Of course it doesn't. But it is part of what defines me as a person, a piece of the Idzie puzzle.

And as with many positive things in my life, unschooling had something to do with where I'm at now. More specifically, the unschooling community, and all the queer friends I made in it at a crucial time in my life. I was really questioning my identity in my late teens, and there were so many patient, supportive new friends who listened to my fears, validated my feelings, and assured me that I didn't have to attain some pinnacle of queer perfection to identify as such.

Basically? I met a bunch of people who understood what I was feeling, and who welcomed my confusedly queer self with open arms.

So on this day, a landmark occasion in the US, I figured I'd take the time to be even more out, and to remind people that you're surrounded by LGBTQIA+ people, whether you know it or not. Don't make assumptions about who people are and who they like based on their perceived gender. Don't assume your children are straight and cisgender. Leave space in your words and actions for people of all stripes, so that when someone you love is ready to start sharing more of their true selves, they'll know you're there to listen and support them.

Happy Pride month everyone!
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-87220669191924684642015-06-12T14:37:00.000-04:002015-06-12T14:37:13.893-04:00Learning by Doing: Education Made RealMy sister got a new cookbook, all about making hot beverages: coffee, teas, flavour infused milks, hot punches. We looked through it together, quickly got excited about a recipe for spiced Moroccan coffee, and before we knew it we were pulling out the cinnamon and cardamom, toasting sesame seeds and readying my trusty little French press. It wasn't long before we were settled down together, delighting in our tiny cups of spiced coffee, sweetened and mellowed by sugar and milk.

I share this afternoon activity because I found myself thinking, as I was sipping my beverage, that this was a perfect, small scale example of just what I've been wanting to write about for the past week, which is the importance of learning and doing always being connected to one another.

When I think about learning, more often than thinking about the processes involved, I think about the feelings. Excitement, focus, joy. When I was small, learning was doing. Reading about medieval Europe quickly turned into me and my sister digging through drawers to create our very own English peasant looks. An astronomy show sent us out into the night to spot constellations. A discussion of poetry lead to us settling down with notebooks and pens, furiously scribbling haiku. We learned about plants and trees and wildlife from going on hikes, bird watching, and catching frogs.

Exploring a topic or a skill meant actually exploring it, in immediate, hands on ways. Our house was frequently filled with science experiments and playacting, building and writing, painting and gardening. I think I was in my teens before it really occurred to me that most children had a very different experience when it came to the learning they were supposedly doing in school.

The realization that people learn better when they're involved in hands on ways with various subjects is well known in education circles. A quick perusal of the popular education blog MindShift shows posts on the various ways that hands on, project based, and physical learning benefits kids of various ages. However, opportunities for students in school to experience this type of learning--nevermind experiencing it in the all-important context of self-chosen and self-directed projects and activities--are few and far between, still seen more as something highly experimental and innovative than the way all learning should be.

In that light, it feels even more special to me that my learning has always been that way. I'm so grateful that the associations I have with the word "learning" are all so very positive: delight and excitement, curiosity and exploration, immersion and just plain old fun.

I feel the same kindling excitement today, when I put together a new style of coffee with my sister, as I did when I used to rush out to watch how the ants in my yard behaved after watching a fascinating nature documentary. Trying new things, watching and doing and experiencing is fun, whether it's in the kitchen, the backyard, or anywhere else.

I'd prefer all my learning to feel like it did when I was a child: tactile and immediate and exciting. That doesn't mean I eschew hard work, just that I prefer my projects and my education to feel more real and personal. More hands on.

I think part of the reason I've stayed so enthusiastic about all things education--and the accompanying writing and speaking I do about it--is because I've held on to a lot of the attitudes about learning that I had as a child. I want to share how amazing--and amazingly simple--learning can be, without all the artificial construction of "learning experiences" that fill most schools (and some homeschools). Learning is one of the simplest things we can do (though not always the easiest or most effortless), because all you need to learn is to do. Small things and large; daily activities and all-encompassing, months long projects; writing and building; making food and budgeting for a trip; the things you need to do and the things you want to do…

We all learn and remember what matters most to us, so having a real connection between the abstract and the concrete, between the theoretical and the practical, is what builds a bigger picture in our learning. What makes an "education," some might say. When you've cultivated an unschooling lifestyle, those connections are being made all the time, in everything you learn, everything you do. Our education becomes real in the truest sense of the world.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-20557281928477536672015-05-13T15:16:00.001-04:002015-05-13T15:16:36.105-04:00I Don't Want to Build My Own Curriculum, I just Want to Live My Own LifeI read a lot of posts by young adults who skipped college in favour of self-directed learning, from both unschooling and traditionally schooled backgrounds. It's pretty exciting for me to see people discovering unschooling at all different ages, and I love that so many young adults are embracing it! I love to read about the discoveries and experiences of fellow happily unschooling 20-somethings. But I find myself noticing lately how often "uncollegers" talk about the process of their learning, the detailed plans and self constructed curriculum, and I'm struck by how very different my outlook is. It gets me thinking about the positives--and the negatives--in my own learning, and how it compares to others' experiences.

In some ways, I wonder if my own less structured approach is a sign of how long I've been unschooling, and how much deschooling I've done. Many seem to feel a strong pressure to create something school-like, something to point to and say "look, I'm learning, just like if I was in college!" This is a pressure which, while I sometimes feel it, it doesn't really affect my learning. I've been an unschooler for so long that I'm very aware of how ever-present learning is, so I notice and appreciate how much I'm learning and growing without needing to justify the validity of my education, at least to myself.

On the other hand, I think a little more planning would do me good, and maybe a little more thinking about my learning. I'd like to have a posting schedule on my blog, and manage to convince myself that self imposed deadlines are still "real." I'd like to get better at saving and organizing all the articles I read on a variety of subjects every day. I'd like to get better at networking with like-minded people in my local communities.

But when I start questioning whether I've been approaching my college free life learning in the best way, the conclusion I find myself coming to is that far more important than building your own curriculum, or getting caught up in all the details of your "education," is understanding what you want from your life. Knowing your strengths, your weaknesses, your values, and what type of person you want to be. If you know the answers to those questions, from that base the paths to follow and the steps to take start to become a lot clearer.

I know that I'm good at communicating, and feel that that's a big asset in my life. I'm not so good at consistently putting myself out there in the "real world," networking, making friends, and getting involved in exciting projects. I find learning in front of other people scary, so I know that taking classes can be a really good way to stretch myself and overcome that fear. I write most prolifically when under the pressure of an imminent deadline, so I know that deadlines provide a certain helpful structure and much needed push when it comes to growing my writing career. I know that I pretty much always regret not trusting my gut, or making sure a situation or opportunity is in line with my values and with who I want to be as a person.

Yes, I need to get better at being organized, at being reliable, at producing even close to as much writing as I want to be doing. I'm working on it, struggling sometimes, finding moments of clarity other times. But whenever I start to flounder, detailed planning never seems to help much. Instead, going back to that base, those important questions, taking a deep breath, and setting a few attainable goals seems to be the best course of action so far. Different ways of learning work for different people, and I know for some, the excitement is in the details and organization. Just not for me.

I'm still figuring out what I want to learn and do day by day, and I think to some extent I always will be. As we all know, learning isn't finite: it's a lifelong journey, an endless series of experiences and choices.

My education outside of college isn't perfect. My life is not exactly what I might want it to be right now. But it's mine. It's my choices, my experiences, my values and goals. And it's something I value deeply. I'm not building a curriculum. Instead, I'm just busy figuring out what it means to live a good life.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-65748080336236600042015-04-21T14:34:00.000-04:002015-04-21T14:34:03.713-04:00Building Life on a Foundation of Untamed LearningI originally wrote this for possible inclusion in a magazine. It didn't end up getting accepted, so I'm sharing it here instead!

I never went to school. Or, to be accurate, I went to half a year of kindergarten before leaving to learn from life instead. My family practiced unschooling--sometimes called life learning--which basically means learning from parents and friends, group activities and classes, books and the internet and nature and everything else that comprises the day to day happenings of our lives. It's learning that's guided by the interests, goals, and needs of the individual and their family. Supported by parents and mentors, a life learning education isn't confined by an externally imposed curriculum, by grades and test results and lists of what should be learned at what time.

It's the opposite of standardized education. Instead, I'd say it's untamed learning. And this way of learning has had a very large impact on my life.

___

When I look at the choices I'm making now, and at the type of life I want to lead, when I think about the activities I'm drawn to, what fills me with joy and a sense of purpose, and even my political views and world outlook, I find myself asking the question, how did I get here? Why do I think and believe what I do? What led me to this place? When I trace it all back, I always seem to find the roots in growing up as a life learner.

The ability for a child to freely follow passions is one of the core tenets of unschooling, if unschooling can be said to have core tenets. For years I was interested in anything to do with pioneer-settlers. I loved the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, and I adored visiting a local living history museum. There was a textile mill, a smithy, a doctor's office, a schoolhouse, a farm... I remember watching people bake bread, make candles, and milk cows. I loved getting to chase piglets at the farm and card wool at the mill. I even had a "pioneer" themed party for my eighth birthday, where we made candles by dipping wicks repeatedly into a pot of hot wax, and lanterns to place them in by hammering holes into old aluminum cans.

As I got older and learned more about the history of colonialism in North America, and the genocide and destruction settlers wrought across this continent, the way I viewed those pioneers certainly changed. But what had drawn me to that museum had never been the supposed pioneering adventure, it had always been the connection to the everyday necessities of life: building your own shelter and spinning your own yarn; growing and cooking your own food; caring for animals that provide you with fiber, and food, and even wax for candles. A life that felt connected to place, daily tasks that felt involved and immediate, not distanced and mediated by corporations and retail stores, until you never see where the products that support your life come from, and you never meet the people who grew or created them.

I recently laughingly told someone that my dream life--that of living somewhere both rural and wild, building community with friends and family, keeping goats and chickens, planting big gardens, and best of all, spending lots of time making delicious food in the kitchen--was largely the same as the dreams of my six, eight, and ten year old self. Time might have changed, but what excites me now in my early twenties isn't all that different at all.

____

As a child, the choice to leave school was made solely by my parents. I was pretty indifferent to my brief kindergarten experience, and felt perfectly fine leaving after just a few months. I had a good childhood, filled with memories of taking turns reading poetry together as a family; learning about edible plants on homeschool group nature walks; catching frogs and grasshoppers; spending hours reading historical and fantasy novels; painting and playing and creating… I took the strangeness of the life I was leading--one without school buses and homework--largely for granted until I hit my teenage years and started to have doubts. It took a lot of personal research into radical education, along with some serious introspection, before I came to embrace life learning again.

In my teens I started questioning not just the necessity of schooling, but the necessity of many institutions and cultural practices that most people take for granted. Everyone thinks you have to go to school to "get an education," which obviously isn't true. So what else is everyone wrong about? Because of the way I grew up, I experienced learning, both hands on and more intellectual, as something joyful and exciting. Because I chose how and what and with whom I learned, I considered all different pursuits important, and for the most part I learned to value all different types of skills and knowledge (despite cultural messages to the contrary and the insecurity I sometimes still feel). Being trusted in my learning from a young age, I learned to trust my own thoughts and feelings, and perhaps that's why I trace so many parts of my current identity back to the way I was raised. I see the influence of unschooling tangled into my thoughts on horizontal organizing instead of strict social hierarchies (hierarchies that begin in and are entrenched by the structure of both the traditional nuclear family and schooling institutions). I see it in my belief in the human potential for growth and change and living respectfully with each other. And I know that life can be more joyful than many people seem to think, because I've experienced what it's like to live life on your own terms.

One of the definitions of "wildness" is that of being "uncontrolled and unrestrained," and it seems when many people first hear about life learning, they automatically think that children must be running wild in the most negative definition of that term, without structure or what is believed to be much needed control.

In reality, life learning functions more like so many systems in nature function: there are routines, repeating cycles, stages of life, and surrounding environments that all shape an individual's day-to-day living and learning. It's a lifestyle that sometimes feels calm and comforting, sometimes wildly exciting and exhilarating, and mainly something that just feels like living a rich life.

It is learning that's uncontrolled by teachers or institutions, and unrestrained by externally mandated curriculum. It's also learning that's supported by parents or caregivers or mentors, who help an individual develop self-control and self-restraint of their own.

Untamed learning in the most positive definition of wildness.

____

It's a good foundation, really, though building up from it can still feel incredibly daunting, frustrating, and difficult. I find myself still living in the suburbs with my parents, and struggling with how to create a financial reality that can support the type of lifestyle I most want to create for myself. I have to remind myself that every step brings me closer to where I want to be, and to focus on the parts of my life that feel good and right for me. It's in the moments of flow when reading about the fascinating subject of fermentation, or the joy of kneading bread, or burying my fingers in cool soil that I feel the sparks of rightness. This is how life is supposed to feel, I think. It feels like the hours of make believe I spent as a child, like the unadulterated excitement of learning about something new. It's that connection to the practices that shape my life, it's about how authentically satisfying real work feels, and it's about always pursuing the subjects and skills about which I'm most passionate. Life and learning that's truly untamed, shaped by our communities, shaped by the natural seasons, by the stages we all grow through in life, and by the unique experiences and interests we all have and hold dear.

I'm always going to be a life learner, and it's in this lifestyle and practice that I feel I can best create the type of life I most want to be living.

Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-34301223417840685022015-02-02T19:45:00.000-05:002015-02-02T19:45:38.725-05:00You Don't Need an Ideal World to Unschool: Why the Concerns of Progressives are Misplaced

There's a frequent criticism of unschooling that comes from progressives, liberals, and even anarchists of various stripes, which is that, by removing children from schools, parents are hurting the schools themselves; lessening the quality of said schools (since they're no longer involved in school improvement); and taking money away from where it's most needed.

I've always found this argument to be both puzzling and misguided for several reasons.

Parents are unable to make a real impact on schools and how they function. Even teachers have virtually no control over the structure or curriculum found in schools, and are often left frustrated by the bureaucracy and standardization stopping them from making any significant changes, even in their own classrooms. If teachers have that little impact, than parents certainly don't have a bigger one.

Secondly, in many regions a large portion of each school's budget comes from property taxes, meaning that schools situated in more affluent neighbourhoods will have a bigger budget, leading to more resources, more enriching activities, and at least nominally better schools. This is a true cause of inequality between schools and students, along with institutional privileges and prejudices that lead marginalized students to do worse, even in the same schools, when compared to more privileged peers. Some parents choosing to take their kids out of school, or to not send them there to begin with, are going to have a negligible impact on the finances of a single institution.

Yet even if both of the above concerns could actually be backed up, the argument still doesn't hold a lot of weight to me. "Other children have to attend an outdated institution--one that often feels like a socially toxic environment, where the basic rights of students to free thought and movement are sharply curtailed in favour of imparting a top-down, universally mandated curriculum to be given to age segregated groups of children--so you have to go too."

To me this seems akin to deciding that, because some communities are food deserts-- areas where poor residents have no access to fresh and healthy food--everyone, no matter their finances or neighborhood access, should avoid fresh food on principle. Instead, the approach should be to recognize that inequalities exist, and start having important discussions with people in your communities about what can be done to help solve those inequalities. Start taking real steps to enact change, or support the individuals and groups who are doing said work. Whether we're talking about food deserts or a failed education system, the proposed solution shouldn't be to subject everyone to the same level of bad, but should instead be a search for solutions that allow everyone to have access.

It seems to me that progressives have a long list of reasons not to unschool: It takes away from schools by removing parental and student involvement; there aren't enough community resources; there isn't enough parental support… All of these seem to hinge, not on a disagreement with the actual underlying philosophy of unschooling, but instead on the premise that the world at large and the individuals in it just aren't ready for unschooling.

I wonder if this points towards a larger problem in how progressives and anarchists attempt to solve various societal problems. Most progressives don't actually seem to be making all that many different choices in their lives when compared to people with more mainstream political views, regardless of their economic status or the amount of support available to them. Is the issue of education just another sign of fear holding us back? Is there a widespread feeling that we just need to wait, need to focus on broad incremental change instead of radical changes made in our own lives, and those of our families and close communities?

Individuals have to make the choices that are best for them, based on their unique situation, and I certainly don't believe that everyone should or has to unschool. But I also don't think we need an ideal world to be able to make important and radically different choices about how we live and learn. Yes, to focus only on our own lives at the expense of the wider culture would be a mistake. But I don't see why we can't have both: a push for broader change, and choices made that are actually best for you, your families, the people you care about most, when it comes to where, or whether or not, your children go to school.

We need to stop waiting for everything to be perfect to make any significant changes, or we'll never make changes at all.

I hope more progressives can stop making excuses about waiting for the ideal, and instead focus on creating something better for the children in their own lives, as well as pushing for better alternatives for all children.

Further reading
Learning About Culture & Community: Unschooling in the Real World by Eva Swindler
Re-imagining School: Public Educators & Unschoolers May Have Much in Common by Eva Swindler
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-20178231584939006232015-01-20T12:57:00.000-05:002015-01-20T13:03:01.423-05:00Learning to Eat: How Life Learning Principles Helped Me Develop a Healthy Relationship With Food

Originally published in the November/December 2014 issue of Life Learning Magazine.

I made a chocolate pudding with a whipped cream topping this past week. Using just coconut milk and semi-sweet chocolate, with some vanilla and rum for added flavour, the pudding tasted and felt more like a mousse than anything--rich and dark and creamy--and was in fact rich enough that none of my family could eat much at a time.

In other words, it would be classified by some as "not good for you," though I think it was an ideal treat, fun to make and eat.

My sister and I, both adults now, have grown into adulthood with remarkably few issues around food. Neither of us have ever dieted, we've never counted calories or gone out of our way to avoid "bad" foods. I care whether the food I'm eating is healthy for me (which is why I tend to avoid soy, which messes with hormone levels), but I also feel strongly that health, when it comes to food and other areas of life, is about our emotional health as well as our physical health, which means that when I get a craving for noodles with fried tofu, the next time I'm at the grocery store I buy a big block of the stuff.

In short, my approach to food is one of listening to my body and mind, and approaching both cooking and eating with an attitude of excitement, fun, and enjoyment.

Guilt or limiting has nothing to do with it.

The fact that my sister has a similar attitude kind of amazes me. Two women from the same house, and both of us have a healthy and joyous relationship with food? In the world we live in, which places a whole lot of pressure and guilt on women especially when it comes to food, I don't think there is a magical set of steps that guarantees children will grow up with a good relationship to food (I certainly have my own set of issues when it comes to other aspects of life, regardless of my upbringing). Some of the reasons are probably as diverse as genetics, the communities we've been a part of, our personalities, and pure chance. However, I feel like some of the ways I was raised created an environment that was conducive to that positive relationship.

Life learning wasn't the sole contributor, for sure. But, I can't help but think that my upbringing did have an impact… We weren't radical unschoolers, we didn't have unlimited access to sweets, and we were generally only allowed to have dessert after supper. I can't really say whether that was a harm or a help, though I have felt that certain foods being "treats" meant that I only really discovered I wasn't so fond of them later in life. Mostly, though, I don't really care about what limits were or weren't placed on food when I was young, since at this point in my life food is such a marvelously positive thing.

I was never told I had to finish what's on my plate. It was okay to stop eating when I was full.

I didn't have to eat if I wasn't hungry. We had regular mealtimes because it was important to my father that he get to eat at certain times, but I didn't have to eat then if I didn't want to.

My mother felt very strongly about never trying to trick us into eating "healthy" food. I never had to look at my meal suspiciously, wondering if something I hated was mixed in there. Any discussions we had about healthy eating were open and honest, and not a matter of manipulation.

My parents never commented about our weight. It just wasn't mentioned. There was no "you need to exercise more, you're getting chubby" or comments about food being too fattening. While my mother might have frequently had insecurities about her own weight, that was never transferred to me or my sister.

My parents very clearly and vocally valued us for things other than our looks. While my grandmother focused very much on prettiness and looks and activities that she deemed appropriately girly (in a well-intentioned though very misguided way), I always had the strong feeling that she was wrong to do so, a feeling that my mother very much validated.

My mother always had great excitement for trying new things. That doesn't mean my sister and I always felt the same. Children especially can be good at being very picky! But both of us did eventually develop a similar love for new flavours, cuisines, and dishes, as well as a love of making exciting new dishes ourselves.

When I started to become really into food, my parents supported that passion. They didn't discourage me from pursuing something so un-academic, or feel that I was wasting my time. Instead they just found me cookbooks, acted as very happy tasters, and encouraged me to pursue more food-related opportunities. They liked seeing me so happy about something, and I don't think it much mattered to them what that something was.

I'm a cook, and I've done some cooking professionally, and I've spent many more hours in my own kitchen. I can tell just how passionate I am about creating tasty food by how exciting a thought it is that no matter how many new dishes I make, there will always be more to try! Food holds a large and important place in my life. I love reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows, talking about food with friends and thinking up new dishes. Cooking is a main artistic outlet for me, and just generally causes a whole bunch of warm and fuzzy feelings.

I'm drawn to the philosophy of "intuitive eating," as it just seems really right to me that most people, if they're never taught to distrust their own bodies, can figure out quite well what and how much is best for them to eat. We're all different, and will all require slightly different fuels in different proportions, guided by personal tastes and preferences and availability. Instead of fighting against an individual's naturally developing relationship with food and eating, telling them that certain foods are bad or "unclean," and introducing a whole bunch of guilt and body shaming into the picture, it seems we would be much better served by always treating food with the respect it deserves. Food is about our physical and emotional health, it's about our cultures and community, it's personal and it's social and it holds and expresses so much history and creativity and innovation. No matter how you look at it, food is important. And if we can embrace it with a sense of joy and discovery from a young age, hopefully it can remain something deeply positive throughout our lives.

My upbringing wasn't perfect. And no matter how good my upbringing was (because it really was pretty good), there are still a lot of negative messages and pressures to be found in our current culture. However, I do think that my parents got some things really right when it came to food, and I'm so grateful for the place it now holds in my life.

I have a beautiful relationship with food, and I think that life learning helped me to develop it.Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-23096360765273223432015-01-05T17:04:00.000-05:002015-01-05T17:04:15.695-05:00Why You Should Start UnschoolingI'm seeing a tag going around, proclaiming today to be National Start Homeschooling Day. In honour of that, I figured I'd share my top reasons to start unschooling. I understand that, for any number of reasons, unschooling just might not to be doable in your life. If that's the case, I hope you can still glean inspiration for doing your best to devalue standardized assessments and instead place value on passion lead, self directed learning, no matter where it takes place. If, however, you are considering leaving school or taking your kids out of school, I hope these reasons will prove so inspiring that you actually do it!

Building a self-directed education
Forget teachers and standardized curriculum dictating what and how and when you should learn. Instead, learn about whatever really interests you, what you feel is truly important and relevant. Your learning then becomes truly personalized, unique to you and based on what you want and need. You get to spend as much time as you want doing whatever it is that you wished you could be doing instead of sitting in a classroom, bored by the current lecture.

Learning and growing without externally imposed timelines
When you control your own learning, timelines of when certain things "should" be learned become irrelevant. Your child isn't a "late" reader, and you're not "behind" in math when you're no longer comparing yourself or your kids to others, based on what the school system thinks you should be learning. Instead, you can learn and grow at your own pace, and in your own way. We all learn differently, and unschooling allows us to truly embrace that.

Recognizing that we all have knowledge and skills to both learn and share
In school, there are teachers there to impart knowledge, and students attending in order to have knowledge imparted to them. Outside of school, you start to recognize that everyone can fill both of those roles at different times, and that the relationship between those who are teaching and those who are learning can be a cooperative, collaborative, and respectful one.

Improving relationships between parents and children
Parent-child relationships, especially parent-teen relationships, can often be contentious. Fights often revolve around issues of homework, bed time (early school days seem to require one), and other school-related things. When you remove school from the equation, and when parents start striving to trust, respect, and truly listen to their children, relationships can change dramatically, and "teenage rebellion" can become a thing of the past.

Socializing on your own terms
The forced socialization of schools, complete with bullies (both other children and sometimes even teachers), a lack of freedom of choice and movement, and an inability to choose more or less socializing based on each individual's needs, does not exactly promote the development of a healthy social life. As an unschooler, socializing can be based on the emotional needs of each child, and you can build a social life that truly feels good to you.

Learning in the real world
Instead of learning in a single, age segregated building, unschoolers learn in the real world. You can learn at home, in nature, at the library, at museums and community centers and yes, in classes. The world opens up, and you start to see all the myriad opportunities that are all around you for learning that feels relevant and important in your life.

Growing in an environment that feels supportive and safe
For many students--including LGBTQ people, disabled students, and students with mental illnesses--schools can feel anything but safe or supportive. People learn best and are most creative in their learning when they're not stressed and afraid, so if family life is nurturing and loving, home can make a much better base for learning.

Having time to daydream
Instead of being pushed to focus constantly, school-free learning leaves plenty of time for relaxing, processing, daydreaming, playing, and quiet introspection. As an unschooler you can reject ideas of "laziness" and choose to value the whole learning process, including boredom, not only the parts that look most active and productive.

Doing real work
When you're not simply studying for a test or producing a project or paper that will never be seen outside of a single classroom, you can instead focus on work and creation that actually feels real. You can volunteer doing important work in your community, get a job or apprentice in a field that fascinates you, write blog posts and articles for an actual audience, create visual art for a community exhibition, and otherwise share yourself with the world. You have the time to do things that feel genuinely meaningful, and that make a real impact on the lives of others.

All of these are compelling reasons why many of us have chosen unschooling for ourselves or our families. I hope that they encourage you to choose a freer, more personalized, more exciting way of approaching learning in your own lives, as well.

Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-39434494772867105662014-12-29T19:50:00.001-05:002014-12-29T20:03:28.520-05:00Unschooling Isn't "Unparticipating:" Responding to Attacks on UnschoolingLooking over the writing I've done this past year, I'm realizing how many things, though they were shared multiple times on my Facebook page, never made it onto the blog! For instance, that I was interviewed for an article on unschooling in the Montreal Gazette way back in August (a sidebar to the accompanying longer and more negative main piece), and the reactions lead me to send in a letter to the editor. One particularly frustrating letter lead me to write a long response for Life Learning Magazine, and fellow frequent contributor Jennifer Head was also moved to write a response! Those two pieces were then put together by Life Learning into a lovely free PDF booklet. Here's a sample from my portion of the booklet:

Will children really gain the exposure they need outside of school?
"The premise of the 'learn what excites you' is one that we all hold in high regard," Writes Ms. Sanders, the author of the aforementioned letter. "That being said, we don't know when we are young what we don't know, and education is that door opener."

No, children don't "know what they don't know." But where the mistake is made is the idea that a. schools are the only place to gain exposure to different topics, b. that schools provide exposure to the most important things, or the things every single child should know, and c. that schools do a good job of imparting knowledge on the subjects they do expose students to.

I'd counter that all three of those assumptions are wrong. Inside of schools, only a few subjects are taught. Outside of schools, learners have the whole world to choose from when it comes to their learning. It's also important to note that unschooled children are far from alone in this process. Parents, acting as facilitators, seek to provide exposure to a variety of things, and children find interests--find learning--through friends, neighbors, family, the internet, the library, homeschool coops or groups, local classes, museums, travel... The world is a big place, and it's full of a whole bunch of options.
To read the rest of my article, as well as Jennifer's great piece, click on the image below!

Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-67818070520374882662014-12-11T13:40:00.000-05:002014-12-11T13:41:56.672-05:00Authentic, Personalized, Flexible Learning: Why Curriculum Will Never Be Good EnoughI've always been against the use of any type of curriculum that isn't chosen expressly by the learner themselves, but I found myself wanting to explain why I felt that way. What was so irredeemable about externally mandated educational plans? This is the answer I came up with.

A curriculum is stagnant. It's created as a solid, linear plan, detailing what facts, theories, and formulas an individual should know and in what order they should learn them. It's designed by people other than the learners themselves, it's based on the idea that there is one core body of knowledge and set of skills that hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of children should all have, and that they should all learn it at the same age. It doesn't grow with the individual, it doesn't bend or adapt. It exists as a series of check marks, a string of benchmarks and numbers that have little to do with what's actually best for the learner, what they care about, their unique strengths and quirks and ways of being in the world.

True, deep, and meaningful learning can never be contained in something so stifling as a standardized curriculum.

There are some words and phrases I go back to again and again to describe my own life learning experience. My learning was always authentic, I say, because it was always learning that felt relevant and interesting. It was personalized, unique to me and what I wanted and needed at any given point. It was flexible, because I could always choose to learn different things in different ways with different people.

This kind of learning is pretty much the exact opposite of a pre-packaged curriculum. It's learning that is constantly evolving and changing as the learners themselves evolve and change, alongside their family and communities. It's the ultimate in authentic, personalized and flexible learning, better in my mind than any faddish new curriculum or teaching methodology that's taken those terms as handy buzzwords.

Reading selfie!

If the learners themselves aren't deeply involved in the shaping of their own education, if they aren't able to make important choices about what and how they learn (with supportive adults there to give a helping hand, find resources, play games, and otherwise enjoy the ride), then I don't think learning really can be any of those things. It becomes, instead, a pale shadow of what learning should be, as it's strangled by adults' desire for control over a process they can never truly own, a bureaucratic need for measurable educational progress, and a deep-set distrust of children and their innate abilities.

In this desperate attempt to make learning into something controllable and measurable, not only do we miss out on the richness that comes of learning for the sake of learning, but learning also becomes something that's complicated in really unnecessary ways. The more talk of methodologies and new teaching practices, or the latest curricular advancements and improvements, the more education--and by extension learning--starts to sound like something arcane and difficult, something that must be left in the hands of well-trained experts lest ordinary folks mess it up by not knowing the correct approaches or methods.

This has always bothered me since in my own life, learning has never been complicated. Difficult sometimes, confusing on occasion, but never complicated. You go where you need to go to get the knowledge and skills you want, which means that sometimes turning to an expert for a specific topic or trade is what will serve you best. But the actual process of learning isn't nearly as complex and hard to understand as so many educational experts seem to think (or at least seem to want other people to think).

If you believe that learning is complicated, then you believe that it has to be carefully designed and constructed, which means curriculum. But when you realize how unnecessary and actively harmful a standardized curriculum can be, the whole world opens up. Suddenly there are so many different things you can learn about and explore and do. There's no rush, so it doesn't all need to be packed into a certain time frame; you can learn from many different people, not just teachers.

It's exciting, fun, difficult, sometimes overwhelming, but it is always rewarding. Outside the confines of a curriculum, I've been able to focus on what's interesting and important to me, the things I feel genuinely matter. I feel very good about my "education," because it's mine. It's not the education someone else thought I should have.

That owning of your learning, the authenticity and joy it can bring into your life, can never be replicated by outside forces with big plans. It has to come from you, and your own exploration of the amazing world around you.

A big thanks to Sol, Chantal, and Lua for their editing assistance on this post! Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-82075595524007588512014-11-19T14:47:00.002-05:002014-11-19T14:49:13.245-05:00Socialization, Homeschooling, and Life Lessons
I currently have a very unpleasant cold, so getting something new written for the blog this week hasn't really worked out. But once I realized if you don't subscribe to my newsletter, then you probably don't know about all the writing of mine that's been shared other places over the past month, I figured I would share that content. There's a fair bit of it!

There's a new home education magazine out there, with a terrific layout, and secular content covering everything from books reviews and resources, to thoughtful columns by such writers as Patricia Zaballos. While the magazine is not an unschooling magazine, plenty of contributors to Home / School / Life are unschoolers. Including myself! Or, more accurately, I'm a regular contributor the the Home / School / Life blog. I've been pleased to share two posts on that blog so far, and I'm happy with how each of them turned out!

How to Talk About Homeschooling (So That People Will Listen)

I left kindergarten for a life of school-free self directed learning, so I've had many years to get used to talking about home education. Some people are curious or excited, some angry or defensive, but what remains a constant is that almost everyone has an opinion on the topic and some questions to ask. I still freeze up sometimes when asked an unexpected question, or stumble over a simple explanation, but for the most part I feel that I've gotten pretty good at dealing with the range of questions and reactions that come from different people.

The approach I take hinges on a couple of key questions: who is it I'm talking to? And, what's my goal for this conversation? It all depends on the answers to those questions. (Read more)
How Unschooling Shaped My Social Life

We're all familiar with the tired old myth of the "unsocialized" homeschoolers, spending their days locked inside, interacting only with their family members. I've certainly spent my fair share of time disputing these myths (earlier this year I even wrote a post addressing every possible misplaced socialization criticism I've ever heard). Yet while there are plenty of wrong ideas on home education and socialization, I find myself pondering how unschooling has impacted the friendships I make and the communities that I'm a part of now, as a 20-something adult.

Like many homeschooled families, when I was young my family participated in a range of activities, from homeschool coops to French classes, group hikes to choirs. What set us apart from many other home educating families in my area at the time was just how much input my sister and I had in the activities and outings we were involved in, and on whether we stuck with those activities. I knew that my mother would step in when asked (and occasionally when not asked!) to help solve a problem–such as when the musical director of a production I was involved in was trying to use me, a "good" kid, as a human buffer between the two most disruptive children in the group–and that if there wasn't a good solution that I was free to quit. If I didn't like a group of kids, or found that certain adults treated me and other children unfairly, I was never forced to spend time around those groups or individuals. (Read more)
Not only am I now a regular contributor to the Home / School / Life blog, but also to the new website Vermicious, created by author and unschooling parent John Seven. I've only shared one piece on that site so far, but I'm excited to be taking a departure from my usual education writing, in order to explore some different topics. My tagline is "Idzie Desmarais learns from the rituals of life," which really sums it up perfectly.

Lessons from the Dog Park

Last year my family brought a new dog into our house. I've grown up with dogs, we've

always had them around, but while I still live with my parents, this dog search marked the first one that I truly participated in as an adult. After months of searching, of countless calls and emails and visits to shelters, we finally found an Irish Wolfhound cross named Blue, with soulful eyes, a habit of leaning against your legs to better look up at you with said soulful eyes, and a deep streak of goofiness, who very quickly won all of our hearts.

This year, in an attempt to help him get the exercise he needed–and hopefully socialize him out of the habit of jumping up and down at the end of his leash screaming at other dogs–we started bringing him daily to the local dog park.

As human socializing goes, it's pretty low key. The dog owners sit and stand around a central picnic table, watching their respective furry creatures romp, talking about funny pet stories and pet health problems, discussing which dogs haven't been seen in a while and which dogs we hope never to see at the park again. It's pretty telling that I remember the names of a couple of dozen dogs (not just my own dog's best friends Crystal and Lexi, but also Heaven and Elvis, Bunker and Merlin), yet only know the name of one dog owner. It's pretty clear to everyone who the truly important individuals in that park are, and it's sure not the humans. (Read more)
Now I'll leave with an excerpt from another piece of mine that has recently been shared, this time in Home Education Magazine. If you're a subscriber, check out the November/December issue!

How Do We Value Ourselves?

In our culture, it's very obvious that we value certain knowledge and skills more highly than others. Namely skills that are academic and intellectual, communication skills, and social skills (somewhat less tangibly, seeing as those are harder to test). It seems everything else comes a distant second.

Schools are all about teaching academic skills to the exclusion of all else (though how good a job they do at imparting those skills is very debatable).

When we take school out of the equation in our own lives and families, we have the option, the opportunity, to take a hard look at what skills are valued, and decide to broaden what we personally value and encourage.

But are we taking that opportunity? Too often, I don't think we are.

My family didn't, or at least didn't to as much of an extent as we could have. This isn't meant to place blame on my parents; we're each of us constantly learning and growing, and unlearning ideas that have a negative impact on ourselves and others. My parents did the best they could in the places they were at, and I'm grateful for it. But looking back, it's very obvious that the skills they were most concerned with me and my sister acquiring were those taught in school. It was subtle, because it was unintentional, but that preferencing of academic skills, at least to some extent, was very much present.

Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-89500718432943779912014-11-12T12:22:00.003-05:002014-11-12T12:22:59.288-05:00How Unschooling Works: Finding Balance and Learning in PlaceWhen I received a message yesterday from a prospective homeschooling/unschooling parent, I thought that I would respond in the form of a whole blog post. She brings up a couple of concerns I hear expressed a lot, so I wanted to take the time to address them in-depth!

Learning in Place

How do I as her mother give her opportunities to discover things that interest her? S. writes, concerned that as an expat, Many of the opportunities that I would have given her in the US (parks, swimming pools, zoos, museums, and so many other things) are infinitely more difficult [here]. However, there are opportunities [here] that would be impossible in the US. I worry that she may be interested in things that we won't be able to explore as fully...as we could in the US.

Our learning will always be shaped by our geographic location, by our family, and by the communities we're a part of, as well as by our personal interests and goals. The world is full of an infinite amount of things that can be learned, experienced, and explored, and each of us will only ever know a fraction of those things. So I think it's kind of exciting to just work on embracing the experiences, the culture, and the community you find yourself in, no matter where in the world that might be. The unschooling community online looks pretty US-centric (even as a Canadian I sometimes feel kind of frustrated at how US-centric it is), so the examples we see can look similar in a lot of ways. I don't think that says much about what an "ideal" unschooling life should look like, though, and instead just says something about the relative popularity of unschooling in the US! There are travelling families, such as Lainie and Miro, who took their learning on the road and never looked back. There are also families like the Hewitt's who, while living in the US, very strongly value the intense on-the-land learning that's afforded by their subsistence farming lifestyle in rural Vermont. Successful unschooling doesn't depend on being able to have a specific body of experiences and resources: instead, it's shaped by our surroundings, whatever they may be.

It seems that parents often feel a lot of pressure to expose their kids to everything, or at least as much of everything as they can possibly fit in. However, I think exposure is more about quality than quantity, and can simply be having an internet connection, access to both fiction and nonfiction books, some games of various types, some crafting materials... The specific interests expressed by the child can guide any further things you introduce, and beyond that, just exploring what's available near you is enough, I believe. We'll all have different experiences and different educations, but that's largely true whether or not you're unschooled. School curriculums vary by country and by region, what's taught in a more or less exciting way varies by teacher, and what you actually remember is dependent on what seems interesting and relevant to you personally.

All we're doing with unschooling is embracing the uniqueness of each person's education, encouraging individuals to approach learning with curiosity and joy, and working to value all different types of learning, not just the learning deemed properly "educational" by schools. While lack of access to time and resources can be a major impediment to unschooling, if you have those things, you have enough.

Finding Balance

How do parents balance providing guidance and a certain level of boundaries (based on their greater experience and responsibility to protect) with giving the freedom to learn for yourself? S. asks. I am truly interested in knowing how to find the balance for my family between child led learning and parental involvement in teaching.

I think Pam Sorooshian said it well when she expressed that, instead of unschooling being "child-led learning," it was "more like a dance between partners who are so perfectly in sync with each other that it is hard to tell who is leading. The partners are sensitive to each others' little indications, little movements, slight shifts and they respond. Sometimes one leads and sometimes the other."

My mother and sister, circa 2010.

It's a very school-based way of thinking that sees one person as a teacher and one as a student, one a leader and one a follower. In reality, unschooling quickly starts to look more organic, more flexible, and more collaborative than any ideas of people having to embody just one role (that of a learner, or one who imparts learning). Sometimes a parent excitedly learns about something alongside their kid, who finds the subject at hand fascinating, and thus initiates the exploration. Sometimes a parent will introduce a subject or activity, and be the main force behind bringing it into family life.

Can it be difficult for parents to find that balance? I have no doubt it can be, and I'm sure unschooling parents would be in a much better position to talk about that difficulty with you! I know that from the perspective of an unschooler, I was pretty good at letting my mother know when I felt she was being pushy about something I had no interest in learning, and I think that's true for most kids. They're pretty good at letting you know when they're not interested!

Experience is Better Than Theory

Ultimately, while I hope the words of unschoolers can be helpful to you, I think actually practicing and experiencing life learning is the only real way to feel out how it works. It's a matter of deliberately and consciously working to let go of schoolish ideas about what an education should look like, and instead focusing on the actual learning and growth happening for your child, and yourself, moment by moment and day by day. It's a difficult process--even for someone like me who spent very little time in school, yet still managed to internalize a lot of bad ideas about successful education--but an infinitely rewarding one.

Wishing you all the best with whatever form life learning takes in your own family!
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-86703926009441766122014-11-05T16:06:00.000-05:002014-11-05T16:06:08.094-05:00Valuing a Different Kind of EducationThis piece was written back in July, for a writing project that ended up being shelved for the time being. So, I thought I'd share it here instead! A look at how I value (or don't value) the uniqueness of my education.

I had an epiphany about my own relationship to my learning and education recently. This came about after a couple of different minor events.

First, I had a lovely exchange with a reader. They referred to me as a "successful young professional," and continued to say that "I guess my definition of success (at least what I had in mind when I was writing to you) is that it is based on the connections you've made with the fellow people in your field, the ideas you offer to your field, and your mastery of the subject. Your blog has allowed you to make those connections and get those ideas out there. And considering that you've been unschooling for more than awhile, I assume you are, at the very least, on your way to mastery." I was taken aback, never having been referred to as a "professional" before, and flattered that someone thought I seemed so successful.

Secondly, after my parents had spent the day with some old friends they hadn't seen in a while, I nervously asked what they'd said about me and my recent pursuits. How did they make me sound? I wondered did I come across as successful, or a real loser?

The next day, in the car with both parents, I got in a conversation about school and work. I said that I couldn't see myself taking courses in non-fiction writing through a university, because I felt for the most part they were teaching a style of writing and communication that is somewhat outdated, as I don't think most universities (and the professors who teach at them) have fully embraced the changes that the internet and blogging has brought. I also talked about how outdated traditional CV's and resumes are becoming, as increasingly what's important is building some type of online portfolio, especially when showcasing any type of work that you can fairly easily do without any type of degree or diploma. Experiences are now starting to matter more than degrees, I said.

Later that day, the epiphany came. I thought, wait a second, I say all this, but I don't actually believe it when it comes to myself. Over the last couple of years, I've become expert at making myself sound as traditionally successful as possible. "I worked catering last year," I say. "I'm considering going to culinary school." I tell people "I was homeschooled," and try to assure them that I turned out perfectly fine.

I've become invested in making myself seem as normal as possible.

I didn't set out to do that, and in part I ended up doing so just out of a desire for privacy. Why should I expose my life and choices to the judgement of near strangers? I thought.

"Normal" sisters? I don't know about normal,
but I think we're pretty cute regardless!

That's not the only reason, though. There's a part of me that feels ashamed of my background. Ashamed of what I haven't done. Namely that I haven't worked in a "normal" job, ever, or ever been financially independent. Ashamed that, at 23, I don't have more to show for myself.

This has lead to a series of attempts to at least try and look successful, even if I don't feel like I'm actually that successful.

I suppose this says something about how deeply embedded these cultural messages are, that someone with my background in education, who regularly talks about how great self-directed learning, unschooling, and skipping college is, can so blithely fall into a trap of judging my own success by such rigid standards.

Not only is this bad for my self-esteem, it's also bad for my success. If I really believe in everything I say, which intellectually I do, then I need to actually start acting like it.

I have been successful in many ways. I've built an extensive online portfolio, in the form of archived blog posts and a personal website chronicling various pursuits and experience. I've had my work published in various alternative education magazines, journals, and even a book, and have spoken at several conferences. I've turned down some media interviews and accepted others, and I've had many people express that my work has impacted their lives in a meaningful way. I've met and talked to people doing similar work whom I admire and who provide inspiration to me.

All this is to say that I've created a body of work that is appreciated by lots of people in specific alternative education circles, all while feeling really positive and excited about the work I was doing.

In Blake Boles' book College Without High School, one of the suggested Zero Tuition College "assignments" is to "become a public intellectual." Expanding on what that entails, he writes: "public intellectuals research, think, talk, and write about a social problem but don't necessarily hold formal credentials. They spread their messages via blogs, websites, books, magazines, podcasts, videos, and other media platforms." I told my sister, Emilie, "apparently I'm a public intellectual." she laughed. "That sounds amazingly pretentious," she added.

It does sound more than a little pretentious, it's true. But it's the first time I've seen essentially what I've been spending the usual university years doing laid out as a desirable and worthwhile alternative to college or university.

It's also yet another reminder, among the many that lead to my aforementioned epiphany, that what I've done in my life, so far, is not just important and meaningful, but "marketable."

When I strive so hard to make myself seem more normal, my choices more conventional, and my experiences more in line with my traditionally schooled age-peers, I lose out on an opportunity to not just sound more impressive, but share the genuinely cool accomplishments I've made and experiences I've had.

My unique background is an asset, not a weakness. A reason people might find me interesting to talk to at the least, or offer me amazing opportunities at the most. The reputation and body of work I've built for myself can continue to be both meaningful and challenging, as well as leading to money making opportunities (either through opportunities I create myself, or through a potential employer wanting to hire me based on my experience).

Perhaps all this should have been obvious. Bits and pieces have been, at different times. I've been proud of some work, greatly valued some experiences, knew that some of what I had done was important to others.

But I didn't really value the unconventionality of my lack-of-college experience, or appreciate just how much I've gained by doing things differently.

After having the thought that I was ashamed by what I hadn't done over the last few years, I was quickly flooded by excitement at the idea that I could speak with pride about what I had done.

Such a simple yet profound shift, to go from "look at all I haven't done" to "look at everything I have done."

Whether you're a teen or grown unschooler, an unschooling parent, or a young adult who's chosen to forego college or university, I think it's important that we cultivate just such a mindset. It's so easy to get caught up in comparing ourselves to those who are doing things more traditionally, but we do a great disservice to ourselves when we do that. In focusing instead on the value in the true uniqueness of our experiences and education, we can instead be proud of what we've done and how we've chosen to "get an education" in our lives so far. Feeling confident in the skills we've gained and things we've done outside of school seems important to me primarily because of how much better it is for my emotional well being. But it's certainly also of great benefit being able to share that confidence with others. If you're secure in the worth of your unique experiences, work, and skills, you're going to be better able to present yourself and your accomplishments to the important people in your life, and better able to turn your skills into ways to earn money, make important connections with people doing work you admire, and build a life that feels truly successful to you.
Idzie Desmaraishttps://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-39493724018378659712014-10-28T15:33:00.002-04:002014-10-28T15:33:51.768-04:00The Role of Boredom and Dabbling in Pursuit of Passionate LearningOne of the greatest benefits of unschooling, it's frequently said, is that it gives children the time and encouragement to truly find and embrace their passions. I agree with this, for sure, yet I've noticed that many people new to unschooling or self directed learning, whether they're parents or young adults newly risen out of college, panic when they don't see a passion immediately manifesting itself in their life or the lives of their children. We're supposed to be driven by passion and digging deep into real learning, they think, so what's with all this boredom and flitting from one thing to another?

I'd say that both of those things, instead of being signs of failure, are just part of the process.

Deschooling

"For me, it was probably about a year before I felt like we were truly unschooling, not deschooling. There was no announcement, no graduation ceremony, but one day I realized I no longer felt like I was emulating the lifestyle—we were living it. I was no longer trying to wrap my mind around the principles, instead I was spending my time supporting how those principles were playing out in my unique family." Pam Laricchia, Why Deschooling?
If you're new to life learning, I think the first thing to realize is that it's going to take time. Time to adjust, to move past school ideas about what learning looks like, time to figure out how your new learning path is going to work in your own life. I feel like people tend to rush things, or feel like the change is going to be immediate, when in reality we're all taking things step by step, no matter where we are in our life learning journey. As I regularly tell myself in a variety of circumstances, slow down, breathe, and try not to panic if things don't look the way you'd imagined right off!

Boredom

"What if, I wondered, as I enjoyed the sights and smells of the early morning, more people paid attention to the journey of life, not just the destination? What if they paid more attention to their experiences moment by moment? I suspect they would find that boredom is, as F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, a filter through which emotions, experiences and, yes, solitude can pass, resulting in a soaring of creativity and imagination." Wendy Priesnitz, The Benefits of Boredom

"Out of boredom, interests spring like mushrooms in moist soil. In the autonomous zone we have created, students have the time and support to explore each of these interests as fully as they choose. If that interest pays dividends, if it engages the student in a compelling way, sufficiently meeting her intellectual, emotional, kinesthetic, or other needs, she will stay with it, dig deeper, until she achieves what feels like mastery to her. Then she can apply those lessons of perseverance, effort, and excellence to any other topic, well into adulthood. If it does not meet these needs, if its hooks do not catch, she will let it go and return to the difficult but rich soil of boredom, until the next mushroom appears." Michelle Loucas, Bored? Explore It!

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury

Before I sat down to write this post, I frustrated my sister by chattering, singing deliberately off-key, being melodramatic about everything, begging her to let me have coffee, and otherwise being difficult. In short, I was bored, and showing it by being very exuberantly annoying. Complaining is part of my writing process, I recently said on Facebook, and while I wrote it with a smile, I believe it to be true, because boredom is part of my writing process. It's in the restlessness and frustration of a mind that has nothing else interesting to focus on that a post starts to take shape. It's while I'm lying awake in bed, unable to sleep (which must be the ultimate in boredom), that I start to build a narrative for an article I've wanted to write for ages, or start putting together a menu full of interesting new dishes to experiment with.

Without boredom, I wouldn't be able to create, to be creative. I'd say that's true of most if not all of us.

Not only does boredom lead to creativity in the areas we're already proficient in, but it also leads to new discoveries. Whether you're new to unschooling or not, I think boredom is just a part of life, and while boredom that becomes a continuous and ongoing companion might definitely be an indicator that changes that need to be made, in general, boredom is just the space that allows us to discover new things we wouldn't otherwise discover. It's boredom that leads me to pick up a guitar for the first time in many months and try to learn a new song, or read about a new subject online.

Boredom is an essential element in both creativity and discovery, and should be recognized as the restless stage that proceeds a new project, passion, or breakthrough.

Dabbling

"This is not to say that, when the student finally decides to engage in an activity, it will always be immensely satisfying or long lasting. She may flit from activity to activity for quite some time. She may embrace art for weeks, with devotion and drive, only to drop it unceremoniously one day and lapse back into a painful bout of boredom. Or, she might trade in art for kick boxing, a passion that she adopts fiercely and exclusively for a day or a month, only to abandon it as well." Michelle Loucas, Bored? Explore It!

"It might appear that some children are more prone to 'quitting things' and less able to 'commit' to activities and stick with them – but what if you flip that around and view those children as dabblers, experimenters – open to the world and curious about everything? Those are the children who, if their trust is not eroded by parental control, will try anything once (or more than once). And yes, they will quit more things than those children who dive deep and stick around longer with one activity. But that's due to the sheer volume of things they try! If you have a child who decides she wants to put everything she has into martial arts and music, and then decides later that she actually prefers martial arts and is tired of music for now, she has a fifty percent quit rate. If you have a child who tries sixteen different things in one year, and ends up liking four of them a lot, that child might have a seventy-five percent quit rate, but he now has four activities he loves, not just one." Lyla Wolffenstein, Dabbling, Digging Deep, and Quitting: The Real Costs of Parental Pressure
 I've gotten more than one message from a parent concerned that their child can't settle on anything, each day drawn to a new interest or subject, forever flitting from one thing to another. As the above quotes point out, this "dabbling" is likely either due to the personality of the individual, or is simply part of the process of finding a passion.

One of the things I've always appreciated about unschooling is that I never had to spend more time than I wanted on any specific subject or interest. There were hundreds--thousands--of questions answered by Google or a quick look at a book from our home or community library. Just because something is interesting, doesn't mean that interest has to last longer than it takes to find the answer to a question, and if it doesn't end there, it may take just an hour or a day's exploration to feel satisfied. Because really, that's what you're looking for: satisfaction, or the discovery that something really isn't for you, which is a satisfying sense of closure in itself.

The way you decide if you want to do something is by trying it. And if you look around and feel yourself excited by the vast plethora of options available to you, then you're probably going to try a whole lot of things. Most of them won't stick, won't be as interesting as you thought or will take up more time than you're prepared to commit, or perhaps just won't feel quite right.

That desire to explore, try new things, and take risks is a very childlike attitude, and one that shows strong curiosity and a joy in learning and discovery that too many people lose as they grow into teenage and adult years. Instead of seeing dabbling as a failure to stick with things, it should be valued, and those who practice it should be recognized as the curious individuals they are.

Dabbling, the same as boredom, is an integral part of exploration. For some, this dabbling style of learning will remain lifelong, and for others it will simply be what happens in between periods of more intense focus on a specific activity or topic. Either way, exploring a wider range of topics and activities is certainly a positive thing.

Play

"For a small child, there is no division between playing and learning, between the things he or she does 'just for fun' and things that are 'educational.' The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play." Penelope Leach

"When we treat children's play as seriously as it deserves, we are helping them feel the joy that's to be found in the creative spirit. It's the things we play with and the people who help us play that make a great difference in our lives." Fred Rogers

"The central problem is that we undervalue pleasure. We live in a culture that is consumed with the Protestant work ethic. Work as work, not work as play, is a powerful pressure against play. In that ethos, pleasure for itself is frivolous. So play is not widely seen as a value in itself for adults. I have learned, to the contrary, that play is, in short, excellent for my health — for brain, mind, and emotions, all of which promote well-being in my life, economically, emotionally, and spiritually. For health, everyone should choose and pursue activities that are playful and truly pleasurable." Bernard De Koven, Reshaping The Brain Through Play

This guy brings a lot of playfulness into my life.

Dabbling in learning, that free flowing exploration without a strict timetable or set goals or an authority figure looking over our shoulders, is learning that's playful. Increasingly, play is being recognized for the important role it plays in learning and health, for children especially but also for adults. I recognize that playful, free flowing feeling when I'm reading a funny piece of history aloud to my sister while we both laugh, or when I'm so deeply immersed in a cooking project, simultaneously focused and relaxed, a bright joyfulness burning in me while I fiddle and create. I feel it when I'm playing with my oversize shaggy puppy, both of us focused intently on each others' body language and vocalizations, completely engaged in communicating and playing together.

All of these activities feel deeply engaging for my brain, as well as being undeniably fun. Yet despite the growing recognition that play isn't just helpful, but an essential part of growing and learning for countless species, humans included, it's still often not seen as "real" learning. Educational things are supposed to look like work, not play, and too few people realize that you can be engaged in both at once.

Passionate Learning

"We learn because we want to learn, because it's important to us, because it's natural, and because it's impossible to live in the world and not learn." Peggy Pirro
When my sister Emilie was young, she was fascinated by Egyptian mythology. Sparked by a love of Yu-Gi-Oh, which takes inspiration from that mythology, Emilie spent lots of time reading about and researching the subject. She'd talk about how different gods changed over time and by region, she made a presentation for a homeschool expo, and when touring the Smithsonian Museum of History in Washington DC, she indignantly pointed out that one of the items in the Egyptian exhibit was mis-labelled. A middle-aged man, acting as a tour guide for his companions, and talking about the exhibits in Cairo that he'd seen previously, looked down at this small child in shock, and said "you're right."

Finding passions to focus deeply on will be an integral part of unschooling for almost all of us. I do think it's an immensely positive and important part of learning for people, at least sometimes and with some things. However, I'd stress that I think that it's an important part of learning, not the be all and end all of unschooling. We need to recognize the important roles of boredom and dabbling, of free play and exploration. Some things will turn into passions that stay with us for years, but many other interests will be dropped after the briefest of perusing. Countless hours will be spent in exploration, yet that exploration will likely be precipitated by boredom. It's all learning, it's all part of the process, and it's all important.

When we embrace learning as a lifestyle, and as a lifelong passionate pursuit, we learn to value the whole package, boredom and all. We learn that the restlessness comes with rewards, that no time spent in exploring is ever wasted, that idleness breeds creativity, and that play is essential. I'm still re-learning these things over and over again, despite how little schooling I've had in my life, and I'm being reminded daily of how important it is to take my own advice on learning to heart. But what I'm striving for, always, is to live a life filled with joyful learning, with all its inherent struggles and rewards.

I hope you'll join me in this passionate pursuit. Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8805323468407241809.post-85717115308986028032014-10-21T14:11:00.000-04:002014-10-21T14:11:13.432-04:00Unschooling My Way to a Love of Classic PoetryI've long held that I don't think "classic" literature is any better than newer literature. I think stories and reading are wonderful things, but I also believe strongly that which of these are good or not is a subjective matter, to be decided by individuals not experts.

I wanted to like the classics when I was young. I had visions of myself curled up in a comfy chair, reading Jane Eyre, and being able to tell people, modestly of course, what my latest reading material was. Amongst the much more traditional homeschoolers I was surrounded by, learning Latin and reading only books older than 50 years was a big trend, and I kind of wanted to include myself in that. I tried, but I just couldn't do it. I picked up various classics at various times, hoping that this one would finally be the not-boring one, but I never found one that I didn't have to struggle through.

Finally I gave up, deciding that the classics obviously weren't for me, and furthermore that the snobbery surrounding reading choices was counterproductive and harmful to readers of all ages. I moved on, and enjoyed years of reading modern historical novels and fantasy fiction.

There was one area, though, where I did find myself enjoying old writing.

My mother, sister, and I developed a ritual of sorts, not one we practiced every day, but a frequent

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas...

occurrence: we'd curl up together on my bed in the evening, along with a stack of poetry books, and take turns reading aloud to each other. My mother's favourite was The Owl-Critic by James Thomas Fields; Emilie liked The Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear; and I was a big fan of The Lady of Shalott and The Eagle by Tennyson, the Introduction to the Songs of Innocence by William Blake, and Walking Through Woods On a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost. Though we all had favourites, together we read countless classic poems by dozens of different writers. We all enjoyed poetry, but it became a special passion of mine.

For a homeschool talent show, I once recited The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I loved the melodrama of it and, inspired by the rendition of that poem in one of the Anne of Green Gables movies, I decided to memorize it myself. The audience was impressed, and although I was somewhat pleased by that, the real joy I took in the process were the hours spent alone, quietly reading and practicing. It was relaxing and joyful, an activity that filled me with contentment.

I still believe strongly that there's nothing inherently better about classic writing, whether it's in the form of fiction or poetry, but I did eventually find some classics that I was happy to make part of my own life. I'm not sure if children outside of school are more likely to be drawn to classics or not, but I do think that not having to read them means that learners won't be turned off from them en masse.

When everything is treated as valuable, no matter when or by whom it was written, then classic works become just another potentially interesting option. I could never get into anything by Jane Austen, but I sure did enjoy exploring the works of countless famous poets from the last few centuries. Had I been forced to read those works, to analyse and tear them apart, my experience would probably have been a lot less joyful. Instead, my exploration was done freely and enthusiastically, guided by my interests and whims and determination. In short, it was fun.

That's the way learning should be in childhood, whether it includes anything classic or not!
Idzie Desmaraishttps://email@example.com