The Relaxed Learning Cafe

Learning Behind Closed Doors

2010-08-11T12:16:00.001-07:00

One of the profound lessons I've learned from unschooling is to let people be. Children, especially. I'm not just talking about hovering or helicopter parenting, although I'm certainly not in favor of that, either. I'm talking about letting kids go into a room and close the door without worrying about what's going on in there. Unless you have probable cause to think your child is a drug addict, what's going on is probably educational, certainly valuable, and most definitely none of your business.

We all learn in stages, and some of those stages need to happen in private. My daughter, for example, enjoyed learning the sounds the letters make, as a game, with me and her father. We had a white board, and I would write words on it every day---hop, pop, top---and she would add words---mop, stop, chop. But when it came to reading books with simple words, she didn't want me around. I did not become a part of her reading life again until she was well past "hop" and "pop." She wanted and needed to complete that interim stage of learning to read all by herself.

Closed doors can be scary. The closed door to Regan's room in the film "The Exorcist" scares me more than just about anything else I can think of. But when your child is on the other side of a closed door, he is not being possessed by a devil. If anything, he's being possessed by himself. Kids are sensitive creatures. They haven't been here as long as we have; they're not as accustomed to the assaults our five senses endure every moment of every day. They need to feel the softness of their quilts against their skin, to hear the sound of their own breathing, to let their minds float and flow and rise and fall in random thoughts. It's a form of exercise as important as running. It's a part of learning.

So, when you see a closed door, smile. It means somebody you love is having a good time. It means something good is happening. When the door opens again, know that something has been accomplished. What's that saying about a closed door meaning an open window? Think of it that way.

Susan Gaissert is an unschooling parent, writer, and editor, who lives and learns in the northeast US and blogs at The Expanding Life.

Three Reasons Why You Need to Go Check Out the New Carnival of Unschooled Life

2010-06-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

1) It's painstakingly well-done, on the first of each month, at my friend Susan's blog.

2)It is the antithesis to the sad, false portrayal of unschooling shown a month or so ago on Good Morning America.

3) I'm in it!

Here is where you go. Enjoy!

Karen, an interest-led learner like her nine-and-five-year-old boys, is currently obsessed with knitting, learning to make the perfect biscuit, and adoring her family's five hens, of whom she is no longer afraid. She blogs about life and homeschooling as The Stone Age Techie and writes a monthly column, Food and Family, at Parents and Kids.

Sir Ken Robinson at the 2010 TED Conference

2010-05-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

Ken Robinson is funny, insightful, passionate and persuasive about what education should be. If you have fifteen minutes or so to watch this, see if you agree with me:

Karen, an interest-led learner like her nine-and-five-year-old boys, is currently obsessed with knitting, learning to make the perfect biscuit, and adoring her family's five hens, of whom she is no longer afraid. She blogs about life and homeschooling as The Stone Age Techie and writes a monthly column, Food and Family, at Parents and Kids.

Follow Your Dreams!

2010-05-17T18:06:00.000-07:00

I know the title sounds like a cliche' but I like it. I'm doing it. I'm following my dream. A dream I never really thought would come true. (I've written about writing and what I want to be when I grow up a bit before. ) But I felt the need to talk about it and having dreams of your own again.

I asked to contribute a post here at the Relaxed Learning Cafe and Karen asked if I would like to contribute monthly. To tell you the truth my heart skipped a beat. I told my husband I was really excited. I'm fulfilling a life long dream. I have always wanted to be a writer. And being a blogger has helped me to fulfill that dream.

I mentioned before that I have notebook after notebook of stories that I have written and I've always hoped that one day one of those stories might be published. But I was always afraid to put myself out there and look for a publisher to check out my writing. Well I'm putting myself out there now. I have always been worried about what people would think about how or what I had to say. After blogging this past year I've come to realize if I have something to say then say it. Maybe someone will take it to heart an use what information they find useful, or no one will listen and I've just said what I felt I needed to say and it just felt good to say it to the world.

I want my kids to follow my example and follow their dreams. I don't care what it is as long as they are happy doing what they want to do.

I used to get teased because I wanted to be a "toll booth operator". Yes I know it's not the highest job to aspire too, but I always thought what a great way to talk to people and meet people. I'm a people person and I thought that would just be a fun job. I also wanted to be a pig farmer or just own a farm with cows, chickens, pigs and horses and just live off the land. ( You know I'm a country girl at heart). We'll I'm not a toll booth operator or a farmer although I still hope to be the latter someday. But I am writing, one of my favorite things to do.

I try to help my kids to see that no matter what you strive for you can do it. It may be hard, stressful, take a long time, or less time than you thought. But if it's something you really want then you try your hardest to get it. Don't let anyone or anything stand in your way.

Since we have been unschooling my kids' imaginations have run wild and free. Some days my daughter wants to be an astronaut, other days a veterinarian. My son wants to be a builder sometimes it's to build Harley Davidsons like the ones he rides on with his grandpa and papa. Other times he wants to be a Jedi Knight. Whatever my children want to do I will do whatever I can to help them fulfill their dreams so that one day they can tell their children or their children's children: Follow your dreams - I did and so can you.

Rana Kacir is an Unschooling mama of 7 year old twins. She is married to her best friend of 13 years, trying to live more simply, and enjoys learning through life. She writes at her blog Free to learn an lovin it!

What should I teach my kids?

2010-05-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Homeschooling in a world full of resources (like homeschooling blogs and websites) makes my head spin! I know me, and if I was homeschooling little ones today, I'd be driving myself crazy with ideas!

So, I feel somewhat compelled to put the brakes on. Stop. Take a deep breath. As a homeschooling mom of elementary kids, all you need to do is make sure they know how to read and take them to the library once a week.

(For photo credit, click here.)

Let them bring home anything they want from the children's section, and you get to bring things home too. Everything else is gravy.

Since 1994, Jena has been homeschooling three very different learners. Her oldest is now at the University of Chicago on a full ride scholarship, the next will start college in the fall, and the third chose public high school for the sports. Her blog, Yarns of the Heart, gives a glimpse into her passion for parenting and her firm belief that homeschooling can be as simple as following your heart.

Do You Say "Yes" Enough?

2010-05-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

One of the hardest words to stop saying in my vocabulary since our family has started unschooling is "NO". Instead of saying no all the time I have been trying to say "YES" a whole lot more. Do you know how hard that is? When you have been raised on "no" being the first thing to come out of your parents mouths? It was kind of an automatic, whenever you would ask for something. Or if you were going to touch something or want to go somewhere.

With my own kids I have been trying not to say no, but yes more. I have to really stop and think before I just let that No slip out of my mouth. It's almost an unconscious thing. It has been so ingrained in my mind. So when the kids want to do something I ask myself: "Before you say NO is there really any good reason why they shouldn't or can't do something?" If it's something that could seriously harm them, well of course they are going to get a no and a reason why.

A lot of the reason why I would say no or why my mom would say no is that she just didn't want to be bothered. I unfortunately do the same thing. I know that is not the way to feel, but sometimes they will ask me for things when I have just sat down or I'm just really tired and don't want to move. Because of that I have been looking for alternatives to saying No because it's really not fair to them.

If the kids want to do something with me I will say "Yes we can do this, I just need a few minutes to get my thoughts together. Or Yes mama needs to catch her breath she just got done working on a project and needs to rest as soon as I do we can do ..." Sometimes I would say no to something because I didn't want to deal with the clean up or mess. Now I think, really it will only take a few minutes if we all pitch in and clean up our mess. Then I think look at how much fun they are having and I'm enjoying watching them or participating in whatever it is they are doing.

One thing that worried me was that the kids would get this feeling of entitlement or that they deserved everything they saw. Not the case. They are learning we don't always get what we want, but if it's in our power to help them get it we will try or we will help them achieve what they want. I'm also trying to get them to understand the difference between wants and needs. For 7 year old's this can be hard. Shoot it's hard for me and I'm in my 30's. But like everything we do it is a work in progress and everyday is a learning experience.

Do you say "Yes" enough?

Rana Kacir is an Unschooling mama of 7 year old twins. She is married to her best friend of 13 years, trying to live more simply, and enjoys learning through life. She writes at her blog Free to learn an lovin it!

The Myth of the Frankenstudent

2010-04-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

I recently read this article, The Myth of the Frankenstudent, in the Opinion section of the Boston Globe. It's one of several articles I read that makes me sad about the "intense drive to succeed" our culture forces upon children these days. With so much scheduling, activities, tests, and the competition to get into good colleges - kids are hard pressed to find the unstructured down time which is critical to their emerging self-awareness. Perhaps this article can help others , like me, take a moment to reflect on what really matters in one's childhood.

Angela Gregory is a Corporate Attorney who lives in Bellingham, MA. She and her husband, Gary, homeschool their two children ages 11 and 9.

Collecting Knowledge

2010-04-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

In the ten years I've been a homeschooled parent---with a natural progression toward unschooling in the past five years---I've spent a great deal of time thinking about knowledge: what it is, how we acquire it, and what we do with it. My ideas about all three of those aspects have evolved over the years.

What is knowledge? If you had asked me when I was in college, I might have said it was the product of disciplined study, since that was what my beloved English professor believed. Therefore, I assumed, any knowledge I had must be due to the time I spent studying. I still believe that knowledge comes from studying, but I no longer believe that studying requires a truly conscious effort. When I became a parent, I watched my baby daughter experience the world. She was studying all the time. She taught me that knowledge is a by-product of being alive.

So, that takes care of what knowledge is (anything we integrate into our being) and how we acquire it (through our senses, by experiencing it.) To clarify, in college I acquired a great deal of knowledge about seventeenth and eighteenth century English poetry, as the result of hours and hours (and hours!) spent happily, blissfully, dreamily reading my Norton anthology. Lord Byron's poems are integrated into my being. Now on to the next question: What do we do with our knowledge?

I've decided that, mostly, we collect it, just the way people collect frog statues and stamps and Pokemon cards. I have a big collection of English poetry knowledge. I don't use it often, but it's always there. I have watched my daughter amass many collections of knowledge over the years---her American Girl historical knowledge, her visual and spatial knowledge acquired from days and days of doing nothing but painting and sculpting with clay, her knowledge of story structure and symmetry acquired from watching TV sitcoms---to name a few. All of her collections are there, in her brain memory and her muscle memory, forever.

We can do lots of things with our knowledge collections: add to them, review them, share them, compare them with other people's collections. You can look at a college course as a club meeting for a group of people who have or want to "collect" engineering knowledge or art history knowledge. You can look at a night at the movies or out with friends as knowledge collection, too. YouTube videos, concerts, lectures, joke books---all collector's items for somebody somewhere.

So, what is knowledge? Anything and everything. How do we acquire it? Any way and every way. What do we do with it? Anything we want to.

Wanna see my collection?

Susan Gaissert is an unschooling parent, writer, and editor, who lives and learns in the northeast US.

Whose Pride is it Anyway?

2010-04-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

I guess more than a week ago I was reading this article that a friend had posted on Facebook. The article is nothing special and for a number of parents, homeschooling or not, the message is nothing new: homework is practically useless. But, there was one little piece that stuck with me; ate away at my very being. It seems a silly thing, but the piece I focused on was her line: “Once, she came to my office and, without prompting, drew an x- and y-axis on a white board. Her class had been charting the weather every day. I welled with maternal pride.”

Really?

“Welled with maternal pride”???

I think my issues with this have many facets. On the surface, I was thinking “why does the drawing of two lines fill anyone with pride?” Then I moved on to “why does the example the author offers, need to be one of academics? Why isn’t she filled with maternal pride that her daughter is simply who she is?”

Finally, I think I have come to my real problem: Why is this woman taking pride in her daughter? Her daughter is not a piece of clay she has modeled, she is not a book she has written, her daughter is not her accomplishment.
I can feed my own anger so fast!!

So I did a little research and I found this definition of pride on Wikipedia—yes, I was an English major and I taught high school English—I know Wikipedia is not considered a real resource, but I’m using it just the same: “Pride is, depending on the interactional and cultural context, either a high sense of one's personal status (i.e., leading to judgments of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection.”

So, to go a little Alfie Kohn on your rear-ends, why is this mother not writing about how she allowed her daughter to bask in her own accomplishments or better yet, why doesn’t the whole article discuss that homework or the examples given as alternatives to homework are all allowing worth to be placed on the activities that children are embarking upon. What if an example given was not a note that said “making a home movie” but one that said, “My child didn’t do homework last night, because watching TV was more important to him.” Or God forbid video game playing or zoning out to loud music.

I am thinking the Boston Globe wouldn’t have published it, if Joanna Weiss’ message of homework is useless and potentially negates creativity was extended to parents and teachers placing value on the activities and work of children is doing the same.

So, I ask you: Why aren’t we as individuals taking pride in ourselves and giving our children the space to do the same?

Adele Miller is the wife of a very lucky man and the homeschooling mom of three dynamic children in suburban Boston. She is a freelance writer for her local newspaper, The Milford Town Crier, as well as an aspiring novelist. Adele’s journey includes a constant search for the beauty in everything, semi-successful long distance running, and the fortune to have wonderful friends and family.

The Unspoken Issue

2010-04-07T08:54:00.000-07:00

Hello Cafe Readers! I posted this column last week at my blog, The Stone Age Techie, and I wanted to share it here too - even though it isn't exactly relaxed. It's hard for me to stay calm when I think about public school, but I invite you to read on and share your thoughts.

Our education system is broken. Newsweek's recent article, Why We Can't Get Rid of Failing Teachers, is the latest indication of just how bad it's gotten.

The article makes a persuasive argument in favor of wresting power from unions and giving it to administrators to fire teachers when the need arises. As a teacher, I feel conflicted about this; teachers get such a bad rap that the idea of firing them at will just appears to load on the disrespect. Need somebody to blame? Here, have a bad teacher!

But what really concerns me about the article are the assumptions that underlie it.

It's a foregone conclusion, for example, that current teaching methods and curriculum are fine. The emphasis on standardized tests as a reliable measure of children's learning, as well as the idea that all kids should learn the same things, at about the same age, are assumed to be okay too. A student's imagination and interest - the theory that a child should have a say in what he or she learns - has been totally sidelined. Are these ideas really so embedded in the national consciousness that they can be dismissed without mention, in an article about how to fix education?

Also, if teachers are failing, how is that measured? There is not a word about how to determine this in the whole article. Who decides that a teacher is failing? Aside from the obvious, like those who sexually assault students, or overtly abuse them, the criterion I've read most about is... the height of students' test scores.

As this system slides down the rabbit-hole, it's taking kids and adults with it. The system nearly took my oldest son, and we only realized how broken public education is after we started homeschooling.

So, bully for us, right? What about the kids who can't homeschool, or can't afford private school? How do we make it right for them?

Laying a Foundation for Life Long Learning

2010-04-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

My son Peter is now 20 years old and in his second year of college. He was raised on my interest-led learning philosophy and lived to tell about it. While home on Spring Break, he took questions from my blog readers. Here's one I'd like to share:

Have you found that your fellow college students take learning seriously? Has anything about the university surprised you, either pleasantly or not?

The one thing that occasionally surprises me is how I have a very different perspective on learning, even among such brilliant and motivated people. I'm constantly seeking out graduate workshops and conferences to attend, and finding time to read books on weird subjects that come up tangentially in my classes. I get the impression that a lot of my peers still think of their classes as the main way they get an education, which seems obviously wrong to me.

I love it! He isn't a passive learner. He isn't waiting for someone to spoonfeed him an education. He actually goes to the library and checks out books that he doesn't HAVE to read. And what's more, he actually uses his spare time to learn things unrelated to his classes! Now that's the kind of adult I hoped to raise.

Since 1994, Jena has been homeschooling three very different learners. Her oldest is now at the University of Chicago on a full ride scholarship, the next will start college in the fall, and the third chose public high school for the sports. Her blog, Yarns of the Heart, gives a glimpse into her passion for parenting and her firm belief that homeschooling can be as simple as following your heart.

The Educational Value of Comics

2010-03-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

Because the comics continue to be so important in the learning process around here, I'm reposting one of the first posts from my blog, The Stone Age Techie. We were visiting my folks in the Colorado Rockies when I wrote it, and the comics are every bit as important for learning today as they were when I first posted about them.

March 2, 2008: At the library here the other day, young Owen pulled a Garfield comic book out of the "to be shelved" stack, plunked himself down on the floor, and read that book cover-to-cover. He hadn't even taken his coat off yet; needless to say, we checked it out and brought it back to the grandparents'.

Fortunately, the grandparents own quite a few comic books already, including a beautiful, hardbound, annotated edition of the Peanuts, with strips from the 50s on into the 90s. Pretty much nonstop, the boys read from the Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Peanuts books available; enter the room in which Luke is reading and he'll corner you to read "a few of my favorites from this book."

We're on vacation, so I decided that 24/7 comics were okay with me; originally, I thought they'd be fluff, with strips to make him laugh but not much else. Now that this has been Luke's habit for the last few days, I feel differently - the concepts and lessons that come up while reading the funnies are surprising!

Several times it has happened that Luke reads a strip, laughs uproariously, pauses and says, "I don't get that one..." And one of us will explain why it's funny, usually because a word has two meanings, or the strip refers to some cultural touchstone that, at seven, Luke doesn't know about yet. Also, a few strips have been downright educational.

In one Calvin and Hobbes, for instance, Calvin finds some cigarettes and is amazed that his mom gives him permission to try one; later, as he's coughing his head off, he tries to figure out how something so awful could be habit-forming. This strip left Luke puzzling for days, asking questions about not just cigarettes, but other addictions too (the grandparents have an extensive shot glass collection, and Luke's trying to figure out the line between a glass of wine with dinner and alcoholism.)

In what has become my favorite Peanuts strip, Snoopy imagines himself a soldier at the infamous Revolutionary War winter camp for soldiers, Valley Forge. In the strip, Snoopy, dressed in rags and wearing no shoes, asks General Washington for an indoor hockey rink. To boost morale for the soldiers, he suggests weekly hockey and figure skating clubs, and thinks to himself as the General has him thrown out of the tent, "I didn't even get to ask him about the Zamboni!" This strip sparked so many questions: starting with why it's funny and moving onto history about Valley Forge and the awful conditions everyone lived under there, and coming back to the absurdity of a hockey rink in such a time/place.

It turns out that reading the funnies has been a boon, not just because we all like to curl up with them (especially on a snowy, wintry day like this one) but because they convey important information - to readers of all ages.

Homespun Juggling Comic #460

2010-03-25T07:51:00.000-07:00

Cristina, an artist, former circus performing instructor, street performer and now homeschooling mom, blogs at Homespun Juggling. The tag line at the top of her blog reads: '...Life is not black and white. I only draw it that way. This is the story of our homeschooling life in comic strips and my thoughts, which often wax philosophical.'

I Could Never Do That

2010-03-22T16:26:00.000-07:00

The reaction I get most often when people find out we homeschool is a bit of an eye roll and a sound most closely resembling "ugh". Not expressing their disapproval of my choice (necessarily), but instead having their own little internal moment. In their mind's eye they are seeing what it would be like to homeschool at their house. This is almost immediately followed by, "I could never do that".

Fellow homeschoolers have told me they also get a lot of "I could never do that" reactions. I often wonder what people are picturing at that moment they see themselves homeschooling. Are they in front of a chalk board, voice raised, desperate for their kids to "get it", to learn? Do they envision exasperation?
Children running amok and math workbooks abandoned on the kitchen table? Perhaps they are standing amidst a house in disarray with a screaming baby on the hip, a world map in one hand, a thesaurus in the other.

Whatever they are picturing about homeschooling life to cause automatic recoil, it most certainly doesn't have to be that way - and isn't (at least for any families that I've met). It makes me sad that people seem to imagine the worst of themselves and their children. I'm too impatient, too lazy, too busy. My kids are too undisciplined, too unfocused...

Picture instead hiking on a Tuesday evening and watching the sunset without a care as to homework or bedtimes. Imagine sleeping late on a rainy day, then wandering around a museum. Picture time spent exploring passions and hours at the park with friends. Picture a family life that is unhurried, less scheduled. Imagine jumping off the treadmill and the amazing, wonderful gift of Free Time.

You could do that, I want to say. You could definitely do that.

Shannon unschools her three boys. She shares her photography and whatnot at noislessly forth.

The Book Triangle

2010-03-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

It started with Harry Potter. My nine-year-old and I have been obsessed with HP since, well, before he was born. When he begged me to start reading the series at five, I gave in; at seven, he took over the reading for himself.

It was at that point that we needed to share one copy of, say, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire between two of us.

And then hubby got into the act. For the first time since he commuted by train, before we were married, a book inspired so much passion in him that he couldn't put it down. He took Harry with him on business trips, stayed up way too late reading on weeknights - and became the third leg of a triangle fighting for one book.

Over the last few years, the book triangle has become a recurring phenomenon. It happened with the Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and it's happening now, with the amazing Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas. This time, though, it has a new twist: I am the last to read them. It's strange, asking Luke and Ben to hush up their conversation until I can catch up.

Strange, and wonderful, because you hear so much about the act of reading for pleasure being a relic of days past. For my husband, as well as my son, the enthusiasm brought by a good, absorbing book is a present reality. It's always been that way for me, and I hoped that it would be that way for Luke. But for Ben? Watching the joy my husband gets out of a good book is a marvelous surprise.

Let’s Talk Labels

2010-03-15T17:33:00.000-07:00

There are some labels that I have fallen into pretty happily: sister, friend, wife, mother, and homeschooler. Yet it is the definitions inside of the labels that have always caused me problems. I’m the big sister, but not the most responsible of the siblings. To some I am the responsible, dependable friend and to others I am the crazy, what-is-she-going-to-do-next friend. I am the stay-at-home-wife, but I do neither laundry nor dishes.

You get the point. Labels are fine as long as they aren’t being used to define me! I have never felt this to be truer then when parenting and homeschooling are the topics at hand. Are we unschooling? Do we school at home? Are we interest-led homeschoolers? Do we practice attachment parenting? Am I a helicopter mom? Am I a free-ranger?

Seriously, you could Google all of these and not one of them would be able to really define me as a person, a parent, or a homeschooling mom.

So I am doing the only rational thing—starting my own movement. I have often thought Delism sounded like a cultish religion and I may still use it, but in the mean time I think I will stick with “comprehensive living.”

Here comes the fun parts!!

Definition: Comprehensive living is just what it should be; living in a way that is everything. It is a form of parenting, of educating, of homeschooling, of being. It is parenting your child in a way that maintains both of you as complete people. It is educating about intrinsic desires, social expectations, practical world skills, responsibility, and joy. It is living for ourselves and for the world.

Goal: My goal is for my children, my husband, and myself to continue to grow as organic learners. I want us to flourish from natural symbiotic relationships. I want us to plant roots and stretch to reach the resources that are abundant in the world. I want us to learn the rhythms of our own growth cycles; knowing when to rest, when to flourish, and when to spread out into the world. I want us to thrive when it is our season.

Call to action: Define yourself! Or you can always join me!!

Adele Miller is the wife of a very lucky man and the homeschooling mom of three dynamic children in suburban Boston. She is a freelance writer for her local newspaper, The Milford Town Crier, as well as an aspiring novelist. Adele’s journey includes a constant search for the beauty in everything, semi-successful long distance running, and the fortune to have wonderful friends and family.

Under Construction

2010-03-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

Soon, the posts of this blog will be filled by people interested in discussing education, creativity, and how and why people learn. My vision for The Cafe is that many will contribute, as authors and as commenters, and that together we will create a forum that crosses the divide between school and home, parents and teachers, and whatever other usses and thems you can think of pertinent to the education of our children.

Here are the rules:

We write with passion, and without malice.

We write about learning: our own learning, that of our children, our hopes for the future, our thoughts on the past.

Education is a pretty big subject. By sharing our experiences, our plans, and our dreams, I hope that we can help each other learn some small bit about it.