New tools

Kristin Burton wrote:

I have for sure felt like unschooling has been like recovery. It hasn't come easy to me. Recovery from using guilt as a tool, using control as a tool. Letting go of expectations of what it means to be a parent and how children should be.

It's ongoing for me, it take lots of thoughtful pauses to remain on the path of unschooling life. But it's seeped in everywhere now, how I treat my husband, how I even treat myself. How I see relationships, food, world issues.

Recovery is about emptying your toolbox of the broken, ineffective tools that have helped you scrape by in life. For me to feel joy in my own self and want joy for others I had to empty that tool box and find new tools. It's been scary and I ve had to take lots of leaps of faith.

The other day my daughter said she needed a hug, and in that embrace she said, "Mom you are like my compass."

That is what recovery feels like for me.

—Kristin Burton

SandraDodd.com/recovery
photo by Sandra Dodd (of someone else's painting)

A tool, a toy, a game

My kids think math is a tool and a toy and a game. Why would they want to be saved from it?

"We don't have to know that" isn't anything I have ever heard my children say. Because there is nothing they do "have to learn," there is nothing that is off their learning list either. In artistic terms, without the object there is no field. In math-lingo, they have the infinite universal set. In a philosophical light, they avoid the dualism of learning and not-learning.

SandraDodd.com/timestables
Photo by Sam Baykus

More efficient tools

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The basic idea of unschooling is that we learn what we need by using it. And that's exactly how kids learn to speak English. Toddlers aren't trying to learn English. They're using a tool (English) to get what they want: which might be juice or a hug or picked up to see better. The English tool is more efficient than other tools they've been using: pointing or crying or wishing. And because English is more efficient, they use it more. And because they use it more, the get better at it. Kids learn English (and everything else) as a *side effect* of living and pursuing what they enjoy.

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/english
photo by Sandra Dodd

A Joyful Attitude

A joyful attitude is your best tool.

It seems lately that more and more people want to know exactly HOW to unschool, but the answer is not what they expect. Looking back at these stories, in light of others like them, the best recommendation I can make is to open up to the expectation of learning. It helps if the parent is willing for a conversation to last only fifteen seconds, or to go on for an hour.

Remember that if your “unit study” is the universe, everything will tie in to everything else, so you don’t need to categorize or be methodical to increase your understanding of the world. Each bit is added wherever it sticks, and the more you’ve seen and wondered and discussed, the more places you have inside for new ideas to stick.

A joyful attitude is your best tool. We’ve found that living busy lives with the expectation that everything is educational has made each morning, afternoon and evening prime learning time.



Late-Night Learning
photo by Holly Dodd, downtown Albuquerque

Sharper tools

Joyce Fetteroll wrote:

The basic idea of unschooling is that we learn what we need by using it. And that's exactly how kids learn to speak English. Toddlers aren't trying to learn English. They're using a tool (English) to get what they want: which might be juice or a hug or picked up to see better. The English tool is more efficient than other tools they've been using: pointing or crying or wishing. And because English is more efficient, they use it more. And because they use it more, the get better at it. Kids learn English (and everything else) as a *side effect* of living and pursuing what they enjoy.

—JoyceFetteroll

SandraDodd.com/english
photo by Sandra Dodd

Universal connections

Remember that if your “unit study” is the universe, everything will tie in to everything else, so you don’t need to categorize or be methodical to increase your understanding of the world. Each bit is added wherever it sticks, and the more you’ve seen and wondered and discussed, the more places you have inside for new ideas to stick. A joyful attitude is your best tool.

SandraDodd.com/latenightlearning
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Practical positivity

From a half-secret page on mental health (my writing, Marta's collection):

If a person with marked highs and lows gets too involved with depressing politics or scary or sad this'n'that, or doesn't gather a tool box of self-soothing thoughts and behaviors (breathing, walking, sending birthday cards and thank you cards to other people, singing, playing sports—different sets for different people, but some positive, uplifting habits), the low can turn to a depression that isn't easy to rise out of, and can be nearly impossible to function from.

SandraDodd.com/mentalhealth2
photo by Linda Wyatt

Favorite tools

People who use tools find some more useful and comfortable than others. Even three spatulas that might seem the same to strangers can have subtle differences in weight, flex, ease of washability, and heat transfer.

Cooks, artists, woodworkers, workers in tile, plaster, painting, brickwork or concrete—think of any field of work or art—know their tools, and maybe yearn for better. Gardeners and farmers know which shovel is best for their own height, strength and intentions.

Maybe ask for stories, from tool-using friends. Perhaps consider gifts of tools, but don't feel bad if the old one is still the favorite.

in another post, Karen Lundy's kitchen utensils, laid out nicely
photo by Karen James (and the container is her art and artistry)

Easier to jump

Humor is a great warm-up for any thinking. If one's mind can jump to get a joke, it will be easier for it to jump to synthesize any ideas, to make a complex plan, to use a tool in an unexpected way, to understand history and the complexities of politics. If a child can connect something about a food with a place name or an article of clothing, parents shouldn't worry that he hasn't memorized political boundaries or the multiplication table.

SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Janine Davies
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Words and thoughts

Words and thoughts are what you will use to change your beliefs and behaviors.

SandraDodd.com/words
Tool used to create the image is gone now. Sorry.
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Grace and joy

People who resist or reject joy will be rejecting the best tool they could have used to unschool well, to have longterm relationships with others, and to age gracefully.



Joy
photo by Amy Childs
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Something old, something new...

Something old, something new; Something borrowed, something blue. That's traditional advice for a bride, to create good luck by what she wears to the wedding. For those in places where that little verse is foreign, then it's history, and cultural trivia. As an unschooling tool it could be a checklist of things to look for, when you go for a walk, or see a video, or a painting, or while folding the laundry.

Disposable Checklists for Unschoolers
photo by Sandra Dodd, in Corrales, New Mexico;
Sandia Mountains in the distance, with clouds

Flexible uses

Creativity and intelligence are seen in the ability to use a tool or an object for something other than its intended purpose. If you see your child (or your cat) doing something "wrong," set rules aside long enough to consider principles.

Sleep is important. Curiosity leads to discovery and to new connections. Shade can come from things other than trees or roofs.

Let your mind leap and frolic.

CONNECTIONS: How Learning Works
photo by Belinda Dutch

The expectation of learning

It seems lately that more and more people want to know exactly HOW to unschool, but the answer is not what they expect.

Looking back at these stories, in light of others like them, the best recommendation I can make is to open up to the expectation of learning. It helps if the parent is willing for a conversation to last only fifteen seconds, or to go on for an hour.

Remember that if your “unit study” is the universe, everything will tie in to everything else, so you don’t need to categorize or be methodical to increase your understanding of the world. Each bit is added wherever it sticks, and the more you’ve seen and wondered and discussed, the more places you have inside for new ideas to stick.

A joyful attitude is your best tool. We’ve found that living busy lives with the expectation that everything is educational has made each morning, afternoon and evening prime learning time.

SandraDodd.com/nest
The "lately" in that quote was in 2002.
The photo is Holly's hand, in August 2017.
photo by Sandra Dodd

"Sculpture" and other words

This photo is from a Chinese Lantern Festival event.


What is a Chinese lantern? What is "a lantern"? These have wire frames with cloth, and electric light inside. There are many other kinds of lanterns, both more traditional and modern.

In Albuquerque, balloonists sometimes get together to inflate their balloons at night. They stay on the ground, and the fire from the hot-air-creating burner will light the huge balloon up from the inside beautifully.

Back to the photo, though. It'a a monkey. It's a Chinese zodiac symbol. Geometry and technology were involved, with some traditional ideas about connecting pieces of cloth to create three-dimensional forms. It is a tool of cultural exchange, of good will, from a country at odds with our own. It is a propaganda monkey, and an art monkey. It was a happy light in darkness.

One thing is many things.

The flow of words
photo by Sandra Dodd, of other people's art
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Humor as a warm-up

Humor is a great warm-up for any thinking. If one's mind can jump to get a joke, it will be easier for it to jump to synthesize any ideas, to make a complex plan, to use a tool in an unexpected way, to understand history and the complexities of politics. If a child can connect something about a food with a place name or an article of clothing, parents shouldn't worry that he hasn't memorized political boundaries or the multiplication table.

SandraDodd.com/connections/jokes
photo by Holly Dodd
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Models and miniatures

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, there is a chapel. It once belonged to a Catholic girls' school. It was built as a half model of another chapel in France, but after it was being built, they realized a half-sized stairway wouldn't work. Mystery and adventure ensued.

There is much history, physics, artistry and varied purposes in such things.

Toy soldiers were quite the rage in England at one time. That led to kids who knew military tactics as well as some kids know their favorite video games now. That led to lead, though—lead based paints on lead figurines, and there's some biochemistry involved that they didn't know about yet in those days. (Some were tin, and now they're other metals, or plastic.)

Follow those trails, and things you didn't know were even out there will connect to things that are already in your own knowledge and experience. Connections
photo by Sandra Dodd, of a detailed miniature carousel

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If you click the image above, you can see my other photos from my visit to Hollycombe Steam Collection, on their music box day, in 2013. There were collectors of mechanical music devices, and of miniature fair rides.

This is a first run of a trick Vlad Gurdiga has arranged for my site to do—a tool for using folders as slide shows. Vlad's pretty great. For me, the photos loaded quickly on my MacBook, semi-quickly on an iPad, and a subset of them loaded, after a while, on my iPhone.

The first photos are pub lunch in Liphook, animals on the property near the car park, some of Hollycombe's collection of wagons that travelling-fair workers used to live in, and of various things inside the park.

Intelligence

When I was 19 and "studying learning," by taking psychology and education classes, one of my more interesting professors said that intelligence involved the ability to use tools in ways other than those for which they were intended. I liked that.

The image stayed in my mind for decades as I watched some people inflexibly say "don't do that" or "that's not what that's for" while others smiled, and laughed, and said "Oh, cool idea!" or "That will work!"

Whether it's about intelligence or it's creativity and joy, it's a good combination of thought, action and acceptance.

SandraDodd.com/intelligences
The tool-using theory isn't one of those listed.
It might be an engineering talent, so spatial and logical?
Or it might be art. Fun to think about.

photo by Roya Dedeaux
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"Serious learning"

I still see "subject areas" everywhere, but I haven't taught those categories and prejudices to my children. Science has much more to do with history than geology has to do with microbiology, but in school geology, biology, astronomy and physics are all "the same thing," and history is different altogether. Yet the best parts of history involve the knowledge cultures had and how they put it to use, whether in shipbuilding or iron tool use, medicine or communications.

Holly asked yesterday about when people discovered the world wasn't flat. I told her there was no one date or century because people discovered different things at different times, and some were shushed up when they said the world was round, or that the sun didn't orbit around the earth. I also told her, "Ask your dad, because he's really interested in the history of science."

I noticed when I said it that I had "named subject areas," but I didn't feel too bad. She's twelve, and reading, and after all "the history of science" was never part of my schooling. A science teacher wasn't certified to teach me history, and vice versa. Only outside of school did I figure out that scientific discoveries were history, and that music was science, and that art was history.

School served to prevent connections for me, but I overcame that, with difficulty. It is a problem my children never had. If Animaniacs completed a circuit for them between Magellan and WWII, well it's a circuit school would never have completed for me under any circumstances. If learning for fun creates more connections than "serious learning" did, I can no longer look at "serious learning" seriously.

The School in my Head, 2004
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Blue Suede Shoes

1993:

Some time back there was a request for songs to be sung which would be educational. As music itself is a discipline, I think any music can be used as an educational tool. It can tie in with physical activity, mathematics, physics, history, geography, art, language, and it can be used to get kids excited and awake, or calm and asleep, or anything in between. I don't mean singing about math or history, either, but discussing the form of the music, the rhythm, the moods, the origins, the instruments on which it is traditionally played, the length and pattern of the verses (or phrases, or whatever), what its purpose is (a march, background music for a movie or for an 18th century fireworks show, a lullaby, a love song), etc.

Don't miss this fun and easy opportunity to tie different "subjects" together by using a song as a jumping off place to many different discussions. If you need ideas, name a song here and see how many suggestions you can get for it!

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2012:

What's above was written in 1993. Someone named "Blue Suede Shoes," thinking it wouldn't net much. I just wrote and wrote that day, and luckily I printed it out and saved it. The link below leads to my response, commentary and a video of Elvis doing another song, that leads to another song, and... you know.

SandraDodd.com/dot/elvis
photo by Sandra Dodd (of some art right behind my house)
2017:

The tromp l'oeil art of full-sized cars on storage containers is still behind my house. The Elvis page has two added videos—not of Elvis, but things that one reminded me of, and then the other (added recently). I hope you have fun with all of this!