How To Unschool (Five Steps To Unschooling)

In 2005 I created An Unschooling Life, a blog detailing our unschooling experience after adopting our three children. Over time, An Unschooling Life became a hub for unschooling support and advice and was also featured in print and digital media. I’m in the process of updating and moving all the posts to this blog where they will be housed under the An Unschooling Life section. This post was originally published in 2009.

This article by Joyce Fetteroll was a big help to me when I initially removed my children from school (in 2004, when they were in the 1st, 4th, and repeating the 5th grade) and began unschooling.

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 sure about something that seems counterintuitive to everything we’ve been taught about how kids need to learn.

Step One: To unschool, you begin with your child’s interests. If she’s interested in birds, you read – or browse, toss aside, 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 interests set the pace. If it takes years, let it take years. If it lasts an hour, let it last an hour.

Step Two: Second, ensure 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 look at the cool stuff that interests either of you. (And resist the urge to force an interest in what you think would suit 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 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 curiosity. Or 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 keep absorbing answers until she has them all.

Step Four: Start noticing the learning available all around you. There are fractions in time, cooking, and relationships between objects. (There are one-third as many blue M&M’s as brown.) Tax is a percentage of the total; some items offer 20% more for 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 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, then move on to the following 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. It is 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, the nickel, and then 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 many questions by other newbies who were equally confused) for me to finally “get” unschooling. Hopefully, these five steps will make your unschooling transition easier than mine!