So, Optimus Prime has seen enough and has decided to see a little bit of California with a new Geocaching friend.  He seems happy in his soul searching travels as he left this poem in his log:

“And how we dance
when the carefree
blows winds
of possibility
through unkept hair

when the only
overwhelming kiss
shudders skin
laughs between
parting lips

just yesterday
we spun ourselves
dizzy
collapsing under
sunny skies
smiles

piles and piles.
piles.
of smiles.”

I love his poem, and it makes me smile to know that Optimus is smiling.  I think he has met someone inspiring and maybe someone special. *wink*  Happy Trails Optimus!

To follow the friends from the beginning:

Click Here

I wrote a short post for Darcel, over at The Mahogany Way.  I’ve never been a guest blogger before!  It was a lot of fun.  In the beginning we couldn’t really decide on a topic.  Then after I came back from the conference it sort of hit me.  There has been so much talk about Relaxed Homeschooling vs. Unschooling vs. Radical Unschooling that I thought a short post giving my case for Radical Unschooling would be appropriate.

I haven’t been feeling great, it isn’t my best work, but it’s clear and concise.  Just the way I like to write.

I hope you enjoy it!

Guest Post: My Case For Radical Unschooling

Last summer our family took up Geocaching. Geocaching is basically global treasure hunting. We use our GPS to find “caches” hidden in parks, cities, forests and well, almost anywhere. Before we left Vermont we placed 5 Travel Bugs into one cache. Travel Bugs are items that are given a tracking number and travel from cache to cache via Geocachers (people). Our group is Optimus Prime, Darth Vader, WD-4D (The First Autodidactic Droid), Liberty (formerly known as Belle), and Jaques Le Sock. (Clicking on the links will take you to their bio page).  We named our group, “The 5 Unlikely Friends”. Each Travel Bug has a beginning story attached and we are hoping that as they are each picked up and brought to a new cache, the traveler will add a little to their journal (log entry) on the Geocaching.com website. Eventually, we are hoping we can direct our Travel Bugs to a park that happens to be right next door to us. Those are future plans though. First, we’ll be tracking them all on a giant map we are planning to make and hang on our wall.

I figured we wouldn’t hear anything until *at least* April. After all, it IS February and we left the Travel Bugs in a cache in Vermont! When I woke up this morning I was definitely surprised to get this note:

“With the help of [name omitted] we are dropping off Optimus Prime (GC1Y9Q3), here in San Diego, to start his serious soul searching. Whether it be active, reflective or just plain laid back! What better place than the west coast for this autonomous robot. Set yourself free.”

Optimus Prime has traveled about as far as we have!  We put some serious time and effort into this project, gathering the objects, ordering the tags, and writing their stories.  I am SO excited that our project has finally begun!  Woo-hoo! We’re going geocaching tomorrow now that we’ve all been inspired. I hope the weather is as nice as it has been all week.

Enjoy San Diego Optimus!!!  (Yeah…  we’re on a first name basis)

I’m going to be very careful with my words.  I know someone who works for the TSA.  I need to make the disclaimer that I am in no way trying to offend or hassle this person.

With that said.  The TSA does absolutely nothing that makes me feel safer.  They make me feel violated and less than an American citizen.  When we check our bags in Cleveland on the way home from speaking at an Unschooling conference, they had us leave our bags and verified that we left them unlocked.  Dude!  That’s my stuff!  Airport screeners are allowed to go through your dirty laundry.  Literally!

Then off to airport security you go.  Leave your shoes, your jacket, all your liquids, and all metal in a bucket to they can x-ray it.  Baby has a bottle of milk?  Too bad, they need to screen it.  Little kids?  Too bad.  Make ‘em lose the sweatshirt and there Nintendo Ds’s.  Baby is sleeping in a sling with metal rings?  Too bad take him out and walk through the metal detector again or risk having an agent search you and your baby.  Actually, that wasn’t even presented to me as an option. They said, “we’ll get a female agent” and I said, “Can’t I just take it off and walk through again?” Fuck that man.  I HATE flying.  I don’t feel ANY safer than I did before 9/11.  In fact, I feel more violated, more untrusted, and less safe than EVER.

Someone please tell me, while I was waking the baby, or tending to my confused kids, or watching them take away the baby bottle…  how my husband was able to walk through the metal detector with this:

Make no mistake.  This is the sharpest friggin’ knife we own.  And we own a few.  This one will cut flesh and bone if needs to.  A quick google search for “TSA missed my knife” pulled up an awful lot of results like the three below.  How do you feel now?

TSA misses Swiss Army Knife but confiscates dangerous pudding.

TSA checks keyboard but misses large Swiss Army Knife

The TSA is a complete joke and not a funny one.

(BTW – I did not make up the titles)

In the end we were thankful they did not find it. First of all, it was a mistake. TJ always has the knife in his pocket along with some change and guitar picks. He’s had it since before we got together. He’d be awfully upset if it was taken from him. Not to mention the hassle that may have been brought about if further suspicions were put on him.

This has been a favorite activity around here lately. Today was pretty abstract, but last week Skylar and Milo drew an entire war, complete with separate battles. It’s so cool I wish I could say I invented Trampoline Art. But I didn’t. They did.

Living in Seattle guarantees a fresh canvas at least a few times a week. Otherwise I’m sure a hose would do just fine.

We returned from the UWWG (Unschooler’s Winter Waterpark Gathering) yesterday.  A fabulous time was had by all and many, many thanks to all the organizers!  While, most unschooling conferences are smaller, and are geared toward unschoolers and the unschooling interested, the UWWG is a bit different since it’s open for homeschoolers to unschoolers and everything in between, so long as you take a child-led non-schooly approach or are interested in leaning that way.

TJ and I had a lot of fun speaking together.  I can’t think of anyone else I would rather share the stage with! I felt that our talk went well.  It was well attended too.  I remember looking around the room thinking to myself…  “Wow…  there’s a lot of people here, I hope we say something good!”  I felt so at ease speaking this time, of course I always feel at ease with TJ at my side.  I think the last time I spoke I really built up the fear and drove myself nuts.  I won’t do that again!  When we finished, I glanced down at my phone to check the time.  Only 30 minutes had passed!  Tj and I had microphones, were talking together, and about unschooling and we had only used up 30 minutes.  How on earth did that even happen???  I swear our talk was much longer.  As inexperienced speakers, we didn’t quite understand the importance of making sure we filled up the time slot.

Tj opened up the floor to questions.  Someone wanted advice on how to be a better mom when it feels like your energy has run out.  Someone else wanted assurance that her children would grow to be functional adults.  It seems to me that when people are in the beginning of unschooling they get hung up on things likes college, household chores or bedtime.  Every unschooling talk ends up with one of these types of questions.  It’s not what our presentation was about, but are hot button issues.  As an inexperienced speaker I had a little trouble keeping the discussion on topic and away from becoming an argument.  Things got a little tense and some became defensive over their lifestyle choices.  I was a little disappointed about this.  I really enjoyed sharing our story and loved talking about unschooling and I was so hoping that everyone would leave inspired, not defensive.  In the end I received some really good feedback at the conference or through email about our talk and people really did enjoy it.  Dayna Martin wrote a nice email reminding me, “Ya, the talk got intense, but it is through those moments of intensity that new ideas are embraced.  It was through the seemingly negative responses that others were able to really elaborate on Unschooling philosophy!  People learned so much from your talk!  Frustration and and anger is sometimes part of the process for many people learning alternatives.” Ahh…  just what I needed to hear.

This bit of discussion has had me thinking about the difference between Unschooling and Radical Unschooling.  I think many people view Unschooling as a lack of curriculum and Radical Unschooling as applying the philosophy to their whole lives.  While I love the term Radical Unschooling, I personally do not view it any differently than just Unschooling.  There is NO difference.  It doesn’t happen all at once for everyone, some take longer than others to get there, and that is OK.  I think the general rule of thumb is take one month for every year you spent in school to truly deschool yourself.  Someone accused me of being judgmental for pointing out what wasn’t unschooling, when I felt I was simply being informative.

First of all, it’s perfectly OK to not be an Unschooler.  Some people seem to view Unschooling as a secret little, elitist club and get awfully defensive.  There is nothing wrong with being an eclectic homeschooler or a relaxed homeschooler.  Unschooling is still extremely controversial, when we start having all these different levels of Uschooling it sort of muddies up the label and becomes extremely unclear to those who would like to learn or observe.

In my opinion, it is not going to be successful to compartmentalize Unschooling.  It’s a lifestyle.  Unschoolers live in freedom, they learn everyday, from everything.  Their world is limitless, and there are no subjects or rules.  The world is full of connections, not separations.  Yet when we as parents, impose rules on the lives of our “Unschooled” children we are disengaging life from learning.  We are telling them that even though we believe they can learn what they need to know, that ultimately they cannot decide when they are tired, or hungry, or ready to help pick up the house.  Unschooling isn’t going to work if the illusion of control is maintained over our children.

I truly believe that Unschooling will not work if not used as a whole life philosophy.  So, what do you think?  Am I too late to the party?  Has the labels Unschooling and Radical Unschooling already become separate?  Or should we maintain that they are one in the same?  Pass this on, I want to hear your thoughts.

I was interviewed here by Heather Sedlock, who writes a column entitled Special Needs kids 101.  Recently she was asked:

“Dear Heather,

I am considering homeschooling my daughter and came across a concept called “unschooling.” Is this the same as homeschooling? What is it about? It seems it’s about just living life and the kids aren’t actually taught anything. What do the kids do all day? Do you know anything about this?

Thanks, Tina”

I hope we answered Tina’s questions.  Like I wrote in my post, Defining Unschooling, it can be a fairly tricky lifestyle to describe.

I hope we did a pretty good job.  Enjoy!

The War on Kids is a documentary directed by Cevin Soling and presented by Spectacle Films.  It is a film that focuses on the injustices to children that are happening everyday in school.  It dives deep into the problems that exists concerning zero tolerance policies, security systems, the war on drugs, administrators and teachers, pharmaceuticals, public education, homework, and socialization.

Early on in the documentary we are told that children are assumed to do bad things unless they are absolutely controlled.  Or are we reminded?  Not so much when I was a child, but present day schools have adopted zero tolerance policies on weapons, drugs and alcohol. The War on Kids gives a multitude of examples of children being arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted, and dragged out of school for seemingly minor infractions.  Children are being suspended for spit wads, pointing their fingers like guns, for having magic markers and Midol because administrators think they should “err on the side of caution.”

In the lesson on Zero-tolerance we see appalling, yet real comparisons drawn between a school and a low security prison.  Both are a policed institution, complete with metal detectors and security cameras.  For those who may not see it, it brings to light the destructive effects that controlling a child’s waking moments, thoughts, actions, appetite and body functions can have on a young person.

Especially important and insightful is the segment on pharmaceuticals.  It brings to light a lot of interesting and abhorrent facts concerning the drugging of our children.  The parents, the doctors and the teachers who drug children in order to force them to be someone other than who they are should be ashamed of themselves.  Drugs like Ritalin, and Adderall (and anti-depressants) destroy a child’s brain and immune system.  It causes depression, anxiety, stunted growth, obsessive compulsive disorder, psychosis, permanent ticks and in the worst cases suicide and death.  All in the name of  behaving, sitting still, and paying attention?  Really?

While I feel that knowing about atrocities like the ones shown in the film is important, I do not believe that school can be reformed.  The way the institutions run require these failures.  It’s fuel for more funding, more studies, more testing, and more control.  It keeps the school reformers focused on school reform and not the actual problem, the institution itself.  Children, human beings, should not be controlled any more than you or I.  While the film shows many extreme examples, like the shooting in Columbine or the SWAT team raid in Goose Creek, SC, it’s not wrong in making these assumptions about all public schools.  It’s worth noting that at my small high school in Vermont (which incidentally has a VERY LOW crime rate) my father was allowed to smoke cigarettes on the steps in his youth.   The next decade saw the school system stopping kids from leaving during the day, in the following decade stopped them from hanging out in certain areas, and a few years later built a fence to keep students on the grounds.  After I graduated, the students saw new security cameras  installed that even point at the bathrooms.  They already have a “resource officer” (policeman) so what’s next?

It also includes interview footage with John Taylor Gatto, and some other familiar names in the anti-school crowd.  I definitely recommend it. However, please know that it’s a strong film with extreme views and heart-wrenching footage.  It’s a warning for the future.  If schools continue on this path they will be freeing prisoners rather than graduating students.   Many already are.

Starring:

• Skylar
• Mia
• Layla
• Otto

In 1 week’s time we’re all getting on a plane and flying to Sandusky, OH for the Unschooler’s Winter Waterpark Gathering. We’ve been every year since 2008, the very first year. This year TJ and I are speaking in addition to some volunteering.

Here is a partial description from the program.

Modeling is For Clay: Real Kids Need Real Life, Right Now

TJ has been helping other dads by facilitating SSUD’s meetings. Heather recently spoke about their experiences at the Enjoy Life Unschooling conference in Frederick, MD. Heather also blogs about their experiences at: www.swissarmywife.net.

They will be leading a presentation: “Modeling is For Clay: Real Kids Need Real Life, Right Now”. When speaking of the word modeling, it is often misconstrued as a way to shape our children’s behavior. Let’s talk about modeling yourself for a change! Do you act in a way that you expect your children not to? Or, do you model good behavior in hopes that your children will mimic your actions? Let’s talk about you and how your children see you. Let’s lower our expectations, discuss why we shouldn’t be modeling and why we should be living authentically and in the moment.

This year the keynote speaker is John Taylor Gatto, author of several books, including Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Public Schooling. I’m honored to be speaking at the same conference as him and some other Unschooling gurus I have always admired. A couple of my favorite families, Ben and Kelly Lovejoy and Broc and Gail Higgins! Other speakers include: Laura Buoni, Debra Bures, Zoa Conner, Julie Cook, Dayna Martin, Laura Flynn Endres, Cindy Murphree, Cindy Gaddis, Jessie Voigts, and Demi Wirtz

I’m super excited for this, and feel so honored and so blessed to be sharing with conference attendees. TJ will also be facilitating the SSUD’s (Secret Society of Unschooling Dads) meeting. Who’s going? Leave me a comment! Don’t forget to say hi if you see us!!!

http://www.ugo.unschoolgathering.com