Back to School! Just Kidding. We’re Unschooling.

We went to the Oakland A’s game last night. My baby brother got us tickets, and we all went as a family. We were out til after 10PM. My kids didn’t get to sleep until 10:30. They slept in until 8:30 this morning. I am unschooling my oldest, and I will do the same with my youngest, and any children that come along later. These are the luxuries of our carefree life.

I wondered if I would be nostalgic for my own school days as Celaya neared kindergarten.

Nope.

I wondered if I would maybe get an itch or two as first grade began.

Nope.

I thought maybe I would find some trouble with her not wanting to study, not wanting to work, not learning enough.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Nostalgia

“I get a little jealous listening to my cousin talk about sending Anthony off to school with his little backpack.” My husband said to me wistfully during the first week of school.

“Really?” I asked. “I don’t get wistful at all.”

Seriously.

Not one bit.

Not only do I enjoy having my kid at home (mostly), but I also do not want her in school.

That’s right.

I adamantly do not want her in school.

I have been studying metaphysics and the power of the mind, spirituality and self love, female empowerment and mindfulness, and with everything I feel inside me, combined with everything I am learning, I know that 8 hours a day of institutionalized socialization and learning run counter to pretty much every single part of what it takes to be a mindful, empowered, self loving individual.

For 8 hours a day, for 12 years of life, children are taught to conform, to obey, to focus in short burst segments on adult directed subjects.

Top down.

Value is placed entirely on their performance, and their worth is directly related to their grades, just as their worth will be entirely placed on the college they get into, the job they get, the paycheck they make, and so on.

The tradeoff, that someone else will teach her to read and write and do math, is not worth the hit to her self esteem and the way she views herself in the world.

Passive and Self Critical

My oldest daughter is passive. She just wants to have fun and love and be loved. She was born that way. She has never thrown a temper tantrum. She does not like to fight. She avoids conflict to the point where she found herself alternately being bullied, ignored, and even led down a hurtful path.

She has spent the last two years learning to stand up for herself, trust her voice, and value her own feelings.

We work on these elements every single day.

“The most important thing you can be, Celaya, is kind and loving, first to yourself, then to others. Always.” I teach her, regularly.

“You cannot be a part, however passively, in someone else’s pain. You have to stop and ask yourself, ‘is this kind? Does this make me feel good?'”

It is just who she is. She does not want to hurt anyone, would never do it on her own, but she gets swept up in experiences and relationship complexities.

She bends and twists and flows and adapts to her surroundings.

All of these things are good. Adaptation is key to evolution, but in a highly restrictive school environment, this could be detrimental to Celaya’s growth and to her heart.

She could end up bullied, depressed, self harming, and any number of other horrific effects we see in kids today.

Nope.

“Unschooling? What Do You Learn?”

We sat and colored in the play area at the baseball game last night, and Celaya made friends with a little girl her age.

“Are you in first grade?” The girl asked after they discovered they were both 6.

“No. I’m homeschooled.” Celaya responded, by now familiar with this conversation.

“Homeschooled? You don’t go to school? How do you learn?” The little girl was instantly curious.

I said, “Well, she’s actually more like unschooled. We really don’t ‘school’ at all.”

“What do you do?” She just had to know.

“We play.” I shrugged.

The girl looked at her mother.

…

Wait for it.

…

“That’s not fair!” She burst out.

The mom and I looked at each other and laughed a big laugh.

“We get that a lot.” I said, smiling.

“Unschooling?” She was back to Celaya now. “What do you learn?”

Celaya thought about it, “Well, I learn to write, and read, and do science, and build with Legos, and do math.”

The girl was amazed.

“But who teaches you? You don’t have a teacher.”

Her mother jumped in, “Her mama is her teacher.”

And I added, “Actually, Celaya mostly teaches herself. She decides what she wants to learn, how she wants to learn, and when she’ll learn it. I’m just watching and answering questions, providing guidance when she needs it.”

It’s All True

Celaya directs all of her own learning.

We are reading a set of graphic novels, The Bone Series, meant for 10 year old kids. She found it in a book store. She liked it. We bought it.

She reads her Elephant and Piggie books by herself, and she can get through her early reader chapter books pretty much on her own.

She journals in the morning, sounding out words and working on improving her letters.

She learns math to calculate how much allowance she has and can spend.

She learns science through experiments she finds on YouTube.

She learns engineering, spacial concepts, and following instructions with her Legos.

And we spend a lot of time outside, wandering, wondering, exploring, and playing.

The Trick to Unschooling?

It’s all fun and it’s all up to her. I never force or fight anything.

Sure, I’ll have to remind her: “Didn’t you say you wanted to learn to write, so you can journal like me?”

“Yes.” She’ll roll her eyes at me.

“Well, then, you probably want to practice. If you don’t care about it. Don’t do it. You don’t have to write if you don’t want to. I’m sure there will be plenty of technology that will make up for it by the time it matters in your life. Never learn to write, Celaya. You’ll be just fine.”

“No! No! I want to!”

Yes. I’m a bit of a manipulator. (Picture me shrugging.)

About 1 to 2 hours each day are spent in actual driven, dedicated learning, reading and writing, and always with a purpose.

We don’t do worksheets. We don’t read books we are “supposed to” read. No busy work. We follow zero curriculum and we are connected with zero schooling.

We just have fun.

Learning, Like Life, Should Be Fun

This is the primary message I want to send to my child about learning, and life in general: learning should be fun. Work should be fun. Life should be fun. If it isn’t fun. Don’t do it.

I work all day every day and night.

Well, almost.

I’m building an empire from the ground up, I’m out in my community making a difference where I can, I’m raising two small children, I’m running a household, and I tutor part time.

My life is full.

Full.

But, in all honestly, 90% of the time I am having a blast. (10% of the time I’m PMSing.)

I love all of my clients. I love my community. I love being with my kids. I love running my house.

I love it all.

I chose this life. It did not choose me.

It took me more than three decades to finally come into the full reality of who I have always been and where I want to go.

And yes, I do attribute much of that time spent “lost” to institutions and a society that insisted I follow rules and live in “reality.” I was either trying to fit in (barely) or working hard to fight against the rules (mostly).

I finally figured out that I get to make up my own rules. I don’t have to fight anything.

I look at my kids, and I wonder: “what if it could be different?”

“What if, from the very beginning, they never get filled up with all the lies in all of our heads.

We’re not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, big enough, good enough, whatever enough.

It must be done this way, that way, how he did, how she did it, or (worst of all) how everyone else is doing it.

“What if?”

So that is my gift to my children. It is the greatest gift I could ever imagine giving them: freedom to figure it all out on their own, following their own voices, their own truths, their own hearts.

Every single morning, from my rooftop patio, I can hear the morning mantra over the loudspeaker from the middle school across the street from my apartment building.

A woman with a militant voice says, and I’m assuming all the kids in the classroom repeat, something along the lines of:

“I will work hard. I will be punctual. I will respect myself and my community. I will pay attention. I will focus. I will do well in school because it will lead to me doing well in life.”

All those kids, marching to school with their too heavy backpacks, marching home with too much homework, exhausted from not enough sleep, stressed out about fitting in, owning up, performing well enough.

And I look over at my six year old, still running around in panties and socks (don’t ask), and I think:

“Nope.”