Rethinking Self-Directed Education

Ben and Genevieve are crowdfunding and starting their project to create a documentary miniseries. As unschoolers and young people themselves, this documentary will ask questions from a lens of connection with youth, who they plan to center in their documentary. We are so excited to hear more about their project in this short special release podcast episode. If you want to know more about what they are doing and why, give it a listen.Please also check out their crowdfunding campaign if you haven’t already. They need to reach their goal by April 2nd and they are getting close! If they don’t make their goal they won’t get the funding, so support them if you’re able. Learning and LiberationCrowdfunding page: https://seedandspark.com/fund/learning-and-liberation#story Instagram account: https://instagram.com/learningandlib?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=Website: https://learningandlib.com

We talk with Anthony Galloway about “requiring” social Justice work in an SDE center, what that actually looks like in practice, how to start to integrate this work into your own SDE center, and being willing to mess up.

It’s our second season! It’s been a year since we started doing THIS thing and we are excited to celebrate the start of our second season. It’s also a season of life where we needed a bit of a pause, so it’s been a minute since we shared an episode. That’s always  OK, but also we missed this! Listen in to our conversation with Kathy Crisp, who has worked at the Village Free School since 2010. We are talking about why people join SDE centers, the real work that is needed from young people AND their families when choosing to join a community like this, and the necessity (and reality) of conflict.

Bria and Daveed share their perspectives on your questions, and musings on the underlying anxiety that affects our roles as caregivers and facilitators. Join us as we chat about what doing nothing means, the biggest misconceptions about SDE, the limits of using SDE as a way of making the world better for everyone, and more.

Join us as we talk with Meghan from The Unschool Files about cancel culture and its relevance to the SDE movement, ways we each approach differences in opinions and values, especially with other other unschooling and SDE folks, and when we do feel it’s important to call someone in and invite a conversation. We also chat about redefining what “public education” means, and ways we can envision increased SDE accessibility. As always, let us know what you think. This was a hard one to tease out, so expanding or conflicting idea on this one are absolutely invited and we would love to hear from you.

In this episode we chatted with Rocco, and his mom, Chestnut, about his decision to try out public conventional school, how they approached the decision, and how they have navigated conventional school as a family. Rocco also shared what drew him to this decision in the first place, and compares his experiences at conventional school with his experience at Village Free School, and SDE center in Portland, OR. If you’re looking to learn more about how to navigate the conversation about conventional public school with your own kid(s), or you’re curious to hear an always-SDE family’s experience at a conventional school, this is the episode.

This month we were joined by our friend and co-conspirator Domari Dickinson (if you aren’t already following Domari on Instagram you’re missing out @domaridickinson) This was a fun episode as the three of us shared what’s present for us and laughed a LOT. We talked about moving and community, trauma of conventional schooling, surviving the system(s), building a sense of self, cheetos, and what motivates us (hint: it’s JOY). And Daveed sang a little.

The biggest part of SDE facilitation, and parenting, is knowing when and how to support the young people. But the lines between supportive nudging and coercing can be blurry, and is especially dependent on our relationship with the young person. In this episode, we explore what nudging can look like, when we would and wouldn’t nudge, and the complexities involved in figuring this out as adults in relationship with young people. We also share a “spicy” situation and talk about the ways in which other adults often treat young people in the world, and how we stand up to them in defense of young people. This shit is hard and complicated, and we are here just sharing how we do things and why. Please feel free to share with us how this looks for you — we are always up for feedback, ideas, expansions, or even (especially?) disagreements.

Flying Squads: Existing Without Expectations Silly. Fun. Thoughtful. Reflective. Just like Flying Squads themselves this podcast was filled with all of it, along with plenty of space for loud laughter. In our latest episode we are joined by three Flying Squad facilitators (in addition to Daveed and Bria) from different locations, and we talk about all things Flying Squads, including: resting and healing together, being stuck with one another (or, community elevated), the impact on our deschooling, jokes and humor as processing, and the different (and similar) ways Flying Squads show up in the world. So much gratitude to our awesome and hilarious Flying Squad guests Annie Friday of Blue Bridge ALC (https://bluebridgeschool.com) & Flying Squad, Jean Finlay of Philly ALC (https://www.phillyalc.org ) and Flying Squad, and Susan Milton of Seattle Flying Squad (https://instagram.com/seattleflyingsquads?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=). You all made this sooo joyful and thought provoking! Find out more about Flying Squads on our website. (https://www.flyingsquads.org)

In this episode we talk through and process a definition of boundaries that pushes on the ways we are used to thinking about our boundaries. We then go deep on various aspects of boundaries within SDE and ourselves, such as how this shows up in community and the complexities of upholding boundaries within an SDE space (especially when values or needs differ). Note: credit goes to KC Davis (@domesticblisters on Tik Tok) for the short audio clip about boundaries that we shared in this podcast. You can view her video here: https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdAxF7SP/

To deschool ourselves is to truly decolonize ourselves, schools are the first places where we learn untruths about ourselves. Where we question our abilities because we are being constantly graded and compared. Where we let someone else dictate our worth, where we learn untruths about our histories under the colonizer's lens. In this first episode, we explore questions and ideas related to this statement.