Sandra Dodd is hosting a live unschooling chat this Thursday (1/29) and Friday (1/30) on AIM Chat. Check it out! 
This article by Joyce Fetteroll was a big help to me when I originally removed my children from school (in 2004, when they were in the 1st, 4th and repeating the 5th grade) and began unschooling. The link to Joyce’s wonderful website and the original article are at the end.
Some people understand unschooling as soon as they hear about it. Others wander about in a fog of confusion, wondering how unschoolers can be so certain about something that seems so counterintuitive to everything we’ve picked up about how kids need to learn. Maybe a few, well-defined steps in the unschooling direction could lead out of at least the very pea-soupiest part of the fog.
Step One: To unschool, you begin with your child’s interests. If she’s interested in birds, you read – or browse, toss aside, just look at the pictures in – books on birds, watch videos on birds, talk about birds, research and build (or buy) bird feeders and birdhouses, keep a journal on birds, record and ponder their behavior, search the web for items about birds, go to bird sanctuaries, draw birds, color a few pictures in the Dover Birds of Prey coloring book, play around with feathers, study Leonardo DaVinci’s drawings of flying machines that he based on birds, watch Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”
But DON’T go whole hog on this. Gauge how much to do and when by your child’s reactions. Let her say no thanks. Let her choose. Let her interest set the pace. If it takes years, let it take years. If it lasts an hour, let it last an hour.
Step Two: Second, you need to make sure your child has opportunities to expand her interests. Have books, videos, kits, games, puzzles, music tapes, puppets, nature collections, and other cool things available for her to pick up when she chooses. (Think library, yard sales, and attic treasures.) Take her places as a way to spark an interest. Wander about museums and just look at the cool stuff that interests either of you. (And resist the urge to force an interest in the things you think would be good for her.) Read a book or do a kit even if you’re certain it won’t lead anywhere. Let her say no thanks if she’s not interested in pursuing something right now, or in pursuing something to the degree you think she “should.”
Step Three: Get interested in things yourself. Not interested in your child getting educated, but in learning for yourself. Pursue an interest you’ve always wanted to but never had time for. Be curious about life around you. Look things up to satisfy your own curiosity. Or just ponder the wonder of it all. Ask questions you don’t know the answers to. “Why are there beautiful colors beneath the green in leaves?” “Why did they build the bridge here rather than over there?” “Why is there suddenly more traffic on my road than there used to be?” Let your child know that all the questions haven’t been answered yet and it’s not her job to just keep absorbing answers until she’s got them all.
Step Four:Start noticing the learning available all around you. There are fractions in time and cooking and in the relationships between objects. (There are one third as many blue M&M’s as there are brown.) Tax is a percentage of the total, some items offer 20% more free, and stores having a sale will knock a percentage off the regular price. There’s oodles of science in cooking. Why does heat make the white of an egg turn from clear liquid to solid white? What process turns liquid cake into poofy air-filled solid cake? Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers. Anyone can look up the answers. Few can ask the questions. As a real-life example, by watching Xena and reading Little Town on the Prairie, my daughter was exposed to three references to Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Marc Antony. She doesn’t “know” Roman history now, but she’s got a hook or point of reference to build from tomorrow, next week, three years from now: “You remember Julius Caesar. The guy Xena hates.” Unfortunately we learned in school that learning is locked up in books and reading is the only way to get to it. It’s not. It’s free. We’re surrounded by it. We just need to relearn how to recognize it in its wild state.
Step Five:
And, finally, forget the linear approach to learning we grew up with. For instance, we learned that the way to learn is to read “all the important” stuff about a subject gathered and packaged for our convenience in a textbook and then move on in line to the next package of information. Sure, sometimes an interest will cause kids to gather up a huge chunk of learning all at once. This is easy to see. And easy to overvalue as the “best” way to learn. More often kids will slowly gather interesting tidbits, making connections as things occur to them to create a foundation. They’ll add pieces here and there over the years to build on that foundation. This is not so easy to see going on. And very easy to undervalue. So, if we can train ourselves to see that process we can help it along by valuing the times when they see Thomas Jefferson on the Animaniacs and then later on the nickel and then still later on Mount Rushmore. Those moments will establish a feeling of recognition and familiarity. Then the more tidbits they gather about Jefferson, the more interesting he becomes. And the more interesting he becomes, the more they want to know about him.
It took at least two years and a lot of posts by very patient unschoolers (and a lot of questions by other newbies who were equally confused) for me to finally “get” unschooling. Hopefully, these five steps will make your transition to unschooling easier than mine was!
Link to original article
Joyfully Rejoycing
Unschooling isn’t so much a method, as it is a way of looking at learning. It’s seeing the learning in everything. To me, it’s much more than just dropping the curriculum, although that’s an excellent place to start.
It’s changing the way you view learning and education.
It isn’t leaving your children to find their own way. It isn’t brushing them off and doing your own thing while they’re off on their own trying to make sense of the world.
Unschooling is being a present and mindful parent. It’s spending time with your children, being involved in their world and inviting them into yours.
Unschooling my children is enabling me to see that learning is everywhere. The more they are out of school, the more I see the curiosity and spark in their eyes.
Unschooling my children shows me that learning is fun and enjoyable. Learning is not filling in a bubble on a test. Learning is not being told to memorize a bunch of facts that they could very easily find, in a matter of minutes, online or in a book if they needed it.
Unschooling my children lets me see that their interests and passions are valid and important.
Unschooling my children is enabling me to see them…for all they are and all they can become.
Unschooling my children his enabling me to see that life really is for living and exploring and singing and creating and discovering and trying and doing and being.
More On Unschooling:
“It’s like “just say no.” Just say no to school years and school schedules and school expectations, school habits and fears and terminology. Just say no to separating the world into important and unimportant things, into separating knowledge into math, science, history and language arts, with music, art and PE set in their less important little places.
Most of unschooling has to happen inside the parents. They need to spend some time sorting out what is real from what is construct, and what occurs in nature from what only occurs in school (and then in the minds of those who were told school was real life, school was a kid’s full time job, school was more important than anything, school would keep them from being ignorant, school would make them happy and rich and right). It’s what happens after all that school stuff is banished from your life.”
Anne Ohman:
“Unschooling is active, not passive. It’s only passive in that you don’t do school. But it requires an active effort on your part to shift your own perspective and your old definition of learning. You need to work on seeing learning happening in what your children love to do. It requires active effort in connecting with your children as they are right now. It requires active effort in finding things in the world that you think would be of interest to them. It requires active effort in giving them as much of the world as you can and letting them choose from it what they love. It requires active effort in basing your life in Joy and Love.”
***originally written in 2006: updated in 2009***
I’m not a fan of bribing children to learn. Even before I removed my children from school, I hated the message that rewarding them with pizza parties, candy and money (yes, money), was sending to them. These “rewards” were held out in front the students like a dangling carrot, with the promise that it could be theirs if they learned what the school wanted them to learn.
The message? I believe it’s two-fold.
1: If someone had to bribe me to do something, my first thought would be “It must be unpleasant if you have to bribe me to do it”. When my daughter Shawna was in school, they were always trying different bribes/rewards to make her read more. It wasn’t working and the more they tried, the more she hated reading. “We’ll give you candy if you finish that book!”. She read the book, but stopped when they candy ran out. “We’ll give you a prize”. She read for the prize and then stopped when the prizes ran out. They didn’t realize (or didn’t care) they were sending her a message that reading is so horrible that she would only want to do it for candy and prizes.
I’ve always enjoyed reading and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want my kids to enjoy it also….but only if they wanted to.
Fast forward to right now. The years that she has been out of school, she’s had the freedom to read if she wants to. There are no bribes. Just shelves and shelves of interesting books for her to read, when she’s ready and if she chooses. Nowadays, she reads for 3-4 hours a day, because she enjoys it. Ask her what her favorite activities are and reading is always in the top three. It took about a year of deschooling for her to get to that point. It took me backing off and letting go. It took me trusting her. If I forced her to read, how would she ever have the chance to do it on her own? How would she ever know if she enjoyed it, if she wasn’t given the chance to?
One of her friends came over last summer (a schooled friend) and my daughter was very excited to tell her about a book she had just read. Her friend said “You have to read in the summer??!!” My daughter was confused and caught off guard. Her friend went on to ask “What are you getting for reading that book?” My daughter said that she read the book because she enjoyed it. Her friend looked at her like she had two heads.
2: Food and candy were often used as bribes when my girls were in school. Pizza, chocolate, candy and ice cream were used time and time again to get the students to learn something that the school assumed the students would not want to learn on their own. I believe this sets them up with an unhealthy view of food. If a child has their candy controlled and then used as a reward, how else will they react other than trying to eat as much as possible when they have the chance? You see those kids at birthday parties, standing by the chips or candy, eating as much as possible. I’ve had children come to my house and finish a whole bowl of m&m’s that were meant for everybody. It’s sad. Don’t schools (and parents who do this) see that their giving that candy or pizza too much power?
Not only do I never use food as a bribe, my girls don’t have their food controlled. It didn’t happen overnight though…it took lots of discussions and modeling on my part to get to this point, but I now have two daughters with a healthier outlook of food than most adults I meet.
When we first adopted them, my middle daughter was that child hovering near the chips at a birthday party. She was the one who gorged herself on candy in fear there would be no more. So when a parent says “If I let them, they’ll eat candy all day”, I agree because if a child has their candy controlled and doled out only as rewards, yes, they will try to eat as much as they can get. Can you blame them?
But…if children are given the freedom to learn things as they come up naturally in life, there’s no need to bribe them with the promise of a reward to force them to learn something when they’re not ready. I believe that rewards motivate students to get rewards, not to learn.
PS: We’re almost done unpacking here at the new blog. If you help us tell others that we’ve moved, you could win an amazon.com gift certificate! Just a way of saying thanks!
*originally written in 2006-updated in 2009*
I have several questions that I hope someone (many people – I would love to hear lots of opinions) would be willing to answer for me.
I have three kids that I removed in 2004. They were in the first, fourth and repeating the fifth grade when I removed them and were 6, 9 & 12.
2- Do you develop activities/projects for them (with their help, or on your own, etc.), and, if so, how do they take to this?
We all think up ideas for various activities and projects. Sometimes I suggest something, other times one of them will. My two daughters are very into creating things and experimenting with stuff (especially my 9 year old) and they’re usually up for anything.
3- Do you make them learn about certain things, or do you completely let them follow their own interests?
No, I don’t make them learn certain things. That would go against everything that I know about unschooling. I think what would help the most is to spend more time deschooling yourself.
4- Do you try to expose your children to new ideas/concepts/activites, and, if so, how do you do so?
Yes, we do this by just trying to live an interesting life. They expose me to lots of new stuff also. A museum near us had an exhibit of dresses that belonged to Princess Diana and my daughters asked if we could go. It was a fun day and we found out a lot about her that we didn’t know. If it wasn’t for my daughters suggesting it, I probbaly wouldn’t have gone.
5- Are your children resistant when you try to expose them to new ideas/concepts/activities, and if they are, how do you deal with it?
Sometimes…but I have found my kids enjoy trying new stuff so they’re pretty much open to new ideas. When they don’t want to do something I suggested, I try very hard not to take it personal, or at least not to let it show. That’s been tough for me but I’m better at it than I was.
6- Are your relatives supportive, and if not, how do you deal with them?
My mother was very supportive. She thought homeschooling and unschooling was fantastic. As far as other relatives, it doesn’t come up much but they’re kind of used to me and my off-the-beaten-path ideas.
7- If you have a shy child, do social interactions, or lack thereof, concern you? What do you do to help your child overcome his or her shyness, or do you feel that he or she will simply outgrow it?
Can’t help you there. All three of my kids are quite outgoing and are usually the first ones to introduce themselves to other kids and start playing with them.
I don’t think being shy is something you should help your child overcome or hope they grow out of it. It’s part of who they are right now. That needs to be respected, not changed. People change on their own and evolve over time so she may well end up a more outgoing person later on in life but honor her for who she is right now. If she wants help with making new friends or starting a conversation, then by all means, help her. But if she’s fine with it and it’s not getting in the way of her being happy, I’d leave it
alone.
8- If you have an anxious child, how do you help your child to deal with the anxiousness?
My middle daughter has had anxiety issues since she moved in with us. (We adopted her when she was seven) and will worry and become overly anxious about things. It was hard in the beginning because that anxiousness was mixed in with a lot of anger. As the anger subsided, so did a lot of her fears (weather was a big trigger for her) but I have found that two things helped her the most. One is talking to her about things before they happen. The other is giving her tools to calm herself down.
9- Any help or advice that you could give me would be appreciated – right now, I need all the help I can get!
Just what you’re doing is great. Asking questions and reading about
unschooling is a step in the right direction.
The best advice I can give someone who is just starting to unschool their kids is to keep your worry to yourself. Don’t project that onto your kids. Spend time reading about ‘deschooling’….for yourself, not your kids. Once you start to change your own ideas about what education and learning is (not what the schoool system wants you to think it is), a lot of your fears will subside and that, in turn, will help your kids.
It takes time though, so in the meanwhile, just BE with your kids. have fun with them. Don’t turn every fun moment into a “teaching” moment. That’s what school does – they suck the fun out of everything. Have some patience and practice taking deep breathes. Everything will be fine.
PS: We’re almost done unpacking here at the new blog. If you help us tell others that we’ve moved, you could win an amazon.com gift certificate!
