Normal for unschoolers

"I tell people that I'm amazed every day by what my kids know and learn. It seems miraculous. It's not, really. It's normal. I see it as miraculous because I was indoctrinated to believe that none of this could happen outside of school and without teachers."

—Alysia Berman

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A bubbly, interesting swirl

Ren Allen wrote:

You can attend a thousand Zen classes at a University and still not understand it because it is something that is internal. You can have a bunch of nice meditation products and still be angry. You can make a big deal out of living simply and still miss all the beauty around you.

It's not about the accoutrements but the "seeing with new eyes."

Sorta like unschooling.

You can read all the books, you can talk to unschoolers, attend a conference and join some lists. But until you GET IT at the internal level, until there is trust and a willingness to extend that trust to your children, unschooling is just a nice idea or philosophy to discuss...nothing more. For those that decide to learn to trust themselves and their children, they soon find their lives a bubbly, interesting swirl of natural learning.

—Ren Allen

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd; cool things
in Ericka Mahowald's room in Northborough, Massachusetts
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You can't test out.

Part of deschooling is to stop expecting anything of him. You can't bypass that. You can't test out. Lots of unschoolers think they can test out, or take an accelerated track to unschooling. It's not that way at all. It's something that has to be discovered, understood, created and maintained.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choosing and power

Deb Lewis wrote:

Once you’re really listening to your kids and not your sense of injustice, you’ll find that answering them and interacting with them is intellectually rewarding and stimulating and fun. It’s not something you *have* to do. It’s something you *get* to do for a very little while. You can’t change this need your kids have right now. You can only change how you see it, how you think about it and meet it. And that’s good because that’s entirely in your power to do.

—Deb Lewis

Deb was writing in a discussion,
but it was a good lead-in to this page:
SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a railyard we visited
because my son Marty wanted to go there
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Calmer than I used to be

Wednesday, July 13 (2011) was my day to return home after two months in the UK (with a side trip to France). I expected one long day with Albuquerque at the end of it, but I'm in Atlanta. Tomorrow I'll be in Albuquerque.

I was grateful, through the confusion and delays, that I wasn't missing something like a wedding rehearsal or a graduation or a speaking engagement. This is a good night for me to be in a hotel in Atlanta, I guess, as unexpected outcomes go.

During the announcements and confusion, I was calm and sometimes amused. Some other people were taking it in happy stride, too, and that kept the mood of dozens and hundreds of others happier.

Fear and anger can be contagious, but happy acceptance seemed to be contagious tonight.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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What can Be

If you hold on to all your old ideas and fears and images of learning, every bit of that builds a curtain of "what should be" and you can't relax, see and appreciate what is.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd,
and not a good photo,
of an elephant on the base of a cross
outside of Edinburgh castle
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Epiphanies

Ah-HA!

I recently saw how far I've come.

I knew that. Now I *know* that.

I am pretty sure I understand now!

Those quotes are from a collection of just a few of the unschooling epiphanies reported over the years. Not one of them is anything akin to "Yeah, I read that, but..." They're not about reading at all. They're about seeing, about realizing, about having acted in a new way after months or years of the percolation of ideas through a mind and heart open to learning.

SandraDodd.com/gettingit
photo by Sandra Dodd
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