When I first began unschooling my kids (and myself), I found a lot of food for thought at the message boards at unschooling.com (the message boards are no longer there). I saved several topics that were useful to me and have shared them here from time to time. I recently found one while cleaning out some old folders and thought some of you may find this helpful.
An Unschooling Life
I took my three kids out of school in 2004, a year after adopting them. In 2005 I created An Unschooling Life, a blog detailing our unschooling experience.
Over time, An Unschooling Life became a hub for unschooling support and advice. It has been featured in print and digital media and was home to the popular Unschooling Carnival (later known as Unschooling Voices). I’m in the process of updating and moving all the posts to this blog where they will be housed in this section. In 2020, I began unschooling my two younger children, so you'll also see updated posts under this topic.
What Is Unschooling? | What Does Unschooling Mean?
On one of the unschooling email lists that I subscribe to someone asked, “Exactly what is unschooling? I thought it was another name for homeschooling”. Kelly Lovejoy’s answer helped a lot of people who were confused as to what the difference was.
Letting Go – Deschooling For Parents
Most of the unschooling parents today have had to learn to trust and let go of our own “old school” conditioned beliefs on learning. It is very natural for a parent to have some uncertain feelings when allowing their child the freedom to learn and grow in an environment that they themselves never experienced. If we can achieve a level of trust, we as parents can relearn our own love of learning and enjoy this natural process with our children.
Being Interviewed About Unschooling | Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism
A few months ago, a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism contacted me and asked if they could interview me about unschooling for research they were doing. Here are her questions followed by my answers.
Anne Ohman: Making Connections
“In our unschooling family, learning is nothing that’s separated, categorized, planned, judged, graded, or forced. It’s just a natural, joyful part of all of our lives. Because real, natural learning is in the living. It’s in the observing, the questioning, the examining, the pondering, the analyzing, the watching, the reading, the DO-ing, the living, the breathing, the loving, the joy”.
What Unschooling Is Not
Quite a few years ago on the unschooling.com forums, someone looking for unschooling ideas asked this question – “What things have you found yourself explaining to others that unschooling is NOT? What commonly accepted notions does unschooling preclude or expose as nonsense?”