An Atmosphere of Learning

I'm an unschooler. Lessons are never over. On the other hand, lessons never really begin. Children's questions are answered and an atmosphere of learning is created so that questions are constant and answers are never far away.

SandraDodd.com/unschool/allkinds
photo by Sandra Dodd

Wholeness and health

Someone asked:

Why does it have to be so hard to let go and just let our kids make their own decisions and be who and how they want to be!!

I responded:

It doesn't have to be hard.
SandraDodd.com/haveto

If your priority is to keep the peace with friends or relatives who are harsh with and about kids, then it will be difficult.

If your priority becomes the relationship with your child, it will become easier to choose toward the wholeness and health of your child.

Sandra Dodd, 2012

original, on Always Learning
photo by Christine Milne

Simply beautiful moments

Karen James, on Always Learning, March 2018, about attaching her attention to things that have the potential to bring her joy:

When things were a bit more difficult (we had moved, my dad died, Doug's new job wasn't going well, my mom's health was deteriorating, I was having some minor health issues myself) I would make sure to notice the moments in each day that were easier and simply beautiful even if there were only a few. In those easier moments I would say "thank you," sometimes aloud. In the simply beautiful moments I would say something to acknowledge the beauty. "This feels so good," was something I said (still say) a lot, again, sometimes aloud as both Doug and Ethan would confirm. 😉

For example, if I was driving to the grocery store and I happened to notice how beautiful the clouds looked, I'd linger a moment longer to notice the relief I felt from simply observing that beautiful sky, and the feeling of joy that I could draw from that humble observation. It sounds kinda corny as I type this, but it was/is a really powerful tool for me. Noticing ease, noticing beauty and spending a moment to reflect on how good that can feel when I acknowledge it was/is a bit like remembering to breathe.

—Karen James
and there's more!

SandraDodd.com/happiness
photo by Theresa Larson

Reading and watermelons

When learning to read happens naturally, it doesn't look like school's reading lessons. It doesn't take years. It might take only days, but the tricky part is when those days will come. If you plant watermelons, picking at the leaves and threatening the vine will not get you a watermelon before one was going to naturally grow and mature. It's the same with children.

The quote is from page 86 (page 95, in 2019 edition)
of The Big Book of Unschooling
photo by Amber Stippy

Thoughtful and compassionate

Be careful what you write about your child, and your beliefs, in public. Be careful about what you believe and then act on.

Learning. If learning is more important to you than control, unschooling has a chance of working.

Be clear, thoughtful, compassionate, and live lightly with your children as much as you can!

SandraDodd.com/ifilet
photo by Kirby Dodd

Learning by leaps and bounds

From a learning standpoint, when babies are carried they see more, they hear and smell more. If they are given things to touch and taste besides just a few baby toys left in the corner of a crib or playpen, they will learn by leaps and bounds. They will spend less time crying and more time being in the real world.

The parents will know the child better, and the child will know the parents better. They will be building a partnership based on trust.

SandraDodd.com/attachment
photo by Sandra Dodd, at a fabric store

A big if/then thought

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

Some people, such as those who are naturally drawn to rules, who live under limitations accept the rules and stick to them. They live in fear and the rules are like talismans that will keep the boogeyman away. What happens when they are faced with new situations that they don't have rules in place for? People often extrapolate from the nonsense and extend the rules. But rational thought would reveal shoddy foundations for decision making.

If the reasons behind rules make sense, then there isn't a reason to make a rule. But people who follow rules aren't learning how to make decisions. They are only learning to follow someone else's rules.

If the reasons behind rules are nonsense, then people memorize nonsense and use that as a foundation for decision making.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/logic
photo by Theresa Larson

Canada... dude!

I'm happy to know I'm not the sole source of information for my kids.

Last night I came to use my computer and there was a dialog on the desktop, a leftover instant message between my thirteen-year-old son Marty and an older homeschooler. This was the entirety of that dialog:

Marty: You coming down?
Other kid: yeah.
Marty: Did you know Canada has Prime Ministers?
Other kid: yeah
Marty: dude

Now I will never have to explain to Marty that Canada has a prime minister. I don't know why he cared, on a Friday night in New Mexico, but it doesn't matter.

Tales of Late-Night Learning
For the record, "last night" was in late 2002, and the other kid was Brett Henry, also unschooled, who is now a firefighter in the Los Alamos Fire Department. They've both become husbands and fathers, still learning for fun.

photo by Sandra Dodd

P.S. Since writing this, since taking that photo, I went to France and discovered that their stop signs say "Stop." Why, I asked my French host-mom, do they say "Arrêt" in Quebec? She said Quebec wants to be more French than France. One more bit of information that won't be on the test. Trivia.

What really matters

Meredith wrote:

I always wonder what people expect when they ask unschoolers what materials they use, since it's a question that does come up now and then, generally by academic homeschoolers but sometimes in a daycare context.... The flattering reason, I guess, is that they think we're all geniuses at "making learning fun" but it's ultimately the wrong question. There aren't any special materials. Our homes are full of normal things, commercial toys, cartoon pajamas and pokemon sippy cups, tvs and video games, with piles of things that need to be sorted and put away slumped in corners, or cluttering up the couch and stairs. Many families unschool on slim material resources. The magic of unschooling is in the relationships.

—Meredith Novak

SandraDodd.com/partners
photo by Rachel Singer

"The magic of unschooling is in the relationships." —Meredith
(I repeated the last line because it's good.)

Relationships, living and learning

Coming to unschooling from a rules-based point of view -- as most parents do -- it's natural to try to shape what's being written into rules.

But unschooling is:

Great relationships
Joyful living and learning

Some of the principles that support that are:

Trust
Respect
Kindness
Compassion
Helpfulness

Having someone help you get what you want is joyful. Even for adults. 🙂

—Joyce Fetteroll
2010 original topic
(Joyce wrote more, halfway down.)

Five Steps to Unschooling
photo by Alex Polikowsky

The value of joy

Parents and teachers Don't KNOW, when they look at a six-year-old, what fields of expertise will develop and be needed in the next twelve or twenty years.

The world is changing fast, and one of the best things kids can have is curiosity, openness to newness, and calm confidence that they can pursue their own interests.

If parents are looking at children's interests as school checklists, unschooling is escaping them. Often unschoolers look at children instead of looking more at their own beliefs, and their awareness of what learning looks like in the wild, and how valuable JOY is in a family.

The text was new in a discussion yesterday, but this is a better link:
How to Be a Good Unschooler
by Pam Sorooshian
photo by Christine Milne

Sometimes yes

Sometimes saying yes is being patient a little longer than the schedule says you should. Sometimes being kind is not rushing toward or away from something. Sometimes magic, and learning, and memories, come from a patient, gentle, unspoken "yes."

SandraDodd.com/yesagain
photo by Sandra Dodd

Integration

Joyce Fetteroll, from "Why You Can’t Let Go":

As kids fit pieces in one area of the puzzle, those pieces are also unconsciously fitting into other areas. And even better, the areas the piece fits into can provide feedback. So one area can set off an alarm if a child is about to add a piece to another area that doesn't make sense.

As an example, learning about hawks will add pieces to the carnivore area along with lots of other areas too. The carnivore area will also get pieces from cats and dogs and T. Rexes and sharks. That will build up images of carnivore behavior. So if a child hears "Hawks eat rice," that piece won't make sense in the carnivore area. The child's brain will scramble around looking for words that are in both the sounds-like-rice area and the carnivore area. They'll probably say, "Oh, mice!" Or, if they come up blank, "That can't be right!" Whatever they do, they won't just mindlessly accept some fact. They want the areas to work and want the areas to meet their needs.

Yes, there's double-checking with curriculum too. Kids won't just accept some obvious error like 2+2=5. But with natural learning they're motivated to question and understand. They're trying to meet their needs, after all. Not someone else's needs. Not some future needs they might have.

If you think about how your kids are learning English, you can see a working image of this puzzle building. English is an area of the real world puzzle. The more kids use English, the more pieces they add to the English puzzle area. But English is also a tool kids use to build other areas of the real world puzzle.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/joyce/talk
photo by Karen James

The Discovery Moment

Carol Brown (Cally) once wrote:

We have been homeschooling for almost 18 years, and one of my favourite memories is of a day shortly after I removed my 5yo from school, where he had spent a very long seven weeks. We were going home from a friend's, accompanied by her daughter, also five, who was going to stay the night. We passed a school, where arborists were trimming some very large trees, hanging from ropes and chainsawing branches. We stopped and watched for about 3/4 hour.

This was when I truly started to realise what homeschooling was all about.

It was about learning all the time; it wasn't about learning being restricted to certain hours (all the school kids had missed out as they were long gone!)

It was about living with my kids and enabling them to learn - by stopping and watching, rather than going home to get dinner which was already going to be late.

It wasn't about curriculum or age-appropriate learning objectives, it was about observing and living life.

I was interested, they were interested, and when we went home, and had our very late dinner, it was wonderful to hear them excitedly telling dh all about it.

It's about living and learning joyfully.

—Cally

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Cally Brown
(different trees)

Part of being human

Schuyler Waynforth wrote:

Unschooling is at its core an understanding that learning is a part of being human. It is a recognition that school undermines that by saying that learning needs to be organised, structured and handed down. School argues that certain things are so hard to learn that they must be taught. If you unschool partway you are mixing up your messages. If you unschool math and science and reading but structure nutrition and media studies you are arguing that while a rich and engaging life may make the three "r"s obvious they won't help you to deal with the difficult studies of food and televisions and video games and computers.

—Schuyler Waynforth

SandraDodd.com/unschool/marginal
photo by Sarah S.

Generous generosity

I think the ideas in The 5 Love Languages are powerful to consider when figuring out what generosity might mean.
5lovelanguages.com

And just as with "learning styles," it doesn't mean you should figure out that a child is kinesthetic and so never, ever provide or share anything that isn't exclusively kinesthetic. It doesn't mean that if my primary love language is not receiving gifts that I never want to receive another gift as long as I live!

SandraDodd.com/50/50
photo by Janine Davies

One tiny step

Until you drop the idea of teaching, you won't see the learning all around you.

One tiny step opens up a new world of learning.

SandraDodd.com/teaching
photo by Eva Witsel
(Okay, maybe it's not a tiny step, but even if it's a series of awkward steps, get over there!)

Children are people already

Question:
How do you plan to prepare her for a future career?

Sandra:
Too much of school and of traditional parenting pretends (and fails) to be preparing children for future careers. Too little of school and of traditional parenting is even attempting to acknowledge that children are people already. They have been whole, thinking, seeing beings since the day they were born. Assisting them to learn and to find their strengths and to explore the world and its possibilities is preparing them for their unseen futures.

from "...Questions on Learning without School and Living Joyfully"
part of an interview by Rashmie, of Mommy Labs
photo by a waiter at Garduño's,
years ago

Understanding

Joyce Fetteroll wrote, twelve years ago:

Natural learning is easy to understand. It's not so easy to feel confident that natural learning is as good as (let alone better) than institutional learning. Natural learning *shouldn't* test as well as school learning. It isn't geared to passing tests. It's geared to understanding. And understanding is hard to test for!

If natural learning were easy to trust Sandra could have put up on her website:

Create a rich environment. Support and feed their interests. Connect with them.

And none of us would still be sitting here nearly 20 years later, still explaining that it does work. 😉

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/simple
photo by Christine Milne

Who needs to know what?

In a discussion about things unschooling parents have learned from their kids, I told a story involving my Uncle Billy Jack, a fun guy I didn't see much:

When I was a kid, 10 or so, my mom's youngest brother (who was probably 24, 25 at the time) asked me "What's the capital of South Dakota?"

I said "I don't know, what is it?"

He said "I don't have to know—I'm not in school."

That moment is branded in my brain.

I went and learned it [Pierre, SD] when I got home, and haven't forgotten, though it will NEVER matter to me in any way whatsoever. It's trivia disguised as "knowledge." But the idea that there were things kids needed to know and adults didn't care anything about stayed with me.

---

Unschoolers see their kids learning all kinds of things joyfully, for fun. I'm definitely NOT opposed to trivia. Trivia means "it won't be on the test." Without tests, everything can be entertaining trivia.

SandraDodd.com/trivia
photo by Alex Polikowsky