Tomorrow is W's first day of un-schooling! I am excited for him to be free of the stress of traditional school! As a child with high functioning autism, his educational needs are much different than the average child & he does not fit the mold he is expected to fit.
Another relief for both of us is walking away from the new idea of "teaching to the test." This is just ridiculous & makes education so shallow. Now I will have the opportunity to teach W all the things he was missing out on.
I've decided he should focus on one area per day or per a few days depending on his level of interest. We are going to start out tomorrow with learning about GMO/Monsanto since he is interested in this and we will be attending an anti-Monsanto rally soon. Thankfully Netflix has some great documentaries to help him do his research.
I'm really excited about this change and I can't wait to see how it will benefit W as he starts to take more control over his own education. :)
Congratulations, and I hope this works out well for you. Too many people forget we are raising children to become adults, not to remain children. They need the whole world as their 'classroom' not just four walls!
ReplyDeleteThat is great! We can also relate to recently un-enrolling our two middle schooler's from public school and unschooling them at home. It had taken close to a month for them to detox, but they are sooo much happier and healthier now. They actually WANT to learn. I hope you experience the same joy of seeing your son get excited to discover something new and to want to learn more about it. You made the right decision.
ReplyDeleteAwesome!!
ReplyDeleteI found unschooling around he time I was preparing for our first year homeschooling Kindergarten with my oldest. Last July.
I'm still deschooling myself as some things happened that completely took my mind from it for about 7 months.
Things are better and deschooling hasn't been too difficult for me.
I hope you feel as much freedom as we have!
Yeah, today was Un-School day for me
ReplyDeleteHi Teresa, welcome to the wonderful world of unschooling!
ReplyDeleteI looked for contact details on the blog but couldn't find any so am posting it here.
We are currently in the process of finalising a new website to be launched. Using the term 'villagelearning' as umbrella term for all the various forms and methods of alternative education (adult self-directed learning, unschooling, homeschooling, Waldorf, Montessori, and democratic and charter schools), it will on the one hand provide information and resources about all the above methods. The other key element to the site will be the regional qualitative data on people *living* these principles - so you'd have a story about a homeschooling family in the US, an unschooling teenager in Europe, a Montessori teacher in Africa, a democratic school in Asia, and a self-directed adult learner in Australia.
Villagelearning aims to be a touch-base site for the person on the ground: the families and individuals out there who aren't necessarily interested in or susceptible to the 'activism' surrounding alternative education (not excluding those, of course!!), but rather merely living their lives according to some or other of these education methods, or wanting to do so. Who needs a go-to guide to check, 'Phew, I'm not alone in this, this and that and those are doing it, too.'
As full of information as the internet supposedly is, there still is not one single hub where people can go to interact with real-life examples of alternative education *doers* across the board. If you're on a Waldorf site, and happen to read about people who are living out the Waldorf principles, it normally would make no mention anywhere the existence of (and interview with) unschooling families, for example. Yet both these models have the same educational aims at the end of the day, namely a XYZ alternative to the current failing public education model.
We would be greatly honoured if you were to choose to share your story on the site. The more real-life examples we are able to present to the world, bundled into a single 'Just *look* at *this* resource, the easier it will be to further the (beautiful) current education revolution - or, as I'd like to think of it, the education evolution :)
I do hope you - and anyone else you know or who might be reading here - will be interested in joining us spread the word!
Peace <3
Nadja