This episode brings youth rights advocates, Flying Squad facilitators, and unschooling parents Bria Bloom, Alex Khost, and Annie Friday together in conversation about what a self-directed lifestyle can look like in a child’s earliest stages of life. Bria was raised in a life without school and is currently unschooling in partnership with a teenager and toddler at home. Alex has been unschooling with four kids for the last 18+ years, currently covering ages spanning from teenagers to toddler. The conversation explores how as adults guiding the lives of young people, we can intentionally include them in our family life, safeguard their rights, and support their curiosities. They discuss the work of the adult which includes bringing awareness to your own inner monologue, anxieties, and pace of life in order to communicate vales and culture to your children. Alex and Bria share personal stories of real life struggles that come up and how they navigate those moments while honoring the personhood and humanity of their child.

Find more on Alex Khost and Bria Bloom through the FlyingSquads.org website and the Alliance for Self-Directed Education at self-directed.org

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Annie Friday is joined this week by Megg Thompson, Behavior Consultant, Coach, Speaker, and Youth Advocate. Megg shares the importance of behavioral support that is centered on caring, playful, and respectful relationships in order to affirm all neurotypes. Megg has seen firsthand Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS) fail many young people leaving them to feel like they are a problem. PBIS is a program used by thousands of schools across the US. While employing reward-based intervention strategies can show positive results for some kids, many others are left out of the “fun.” Even those who may be considered successful in PBIS, long-term damage of pressure, anxiety, and perfectionism can build over time. Seeing young people repeatedly broken down by school behavior plans, Megg centers her own work on supporting and empowering young people and families through education, information, and hands-on support.  

Find more about Megg with 2 Gs at MeggThompson.com where she has more information and resources for young people, their families, and educators in both convention and unconventional learning environments.

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Cassidy Younghans runs Wild Roots Learning Community in North Texas and shares with Annie Friday more about her experiences in self-directed education and building learning communities. Through some moments of failure, overwhelm, and leaving the school system, Cassidy realized that building a strong network of supportive community must come first when building a new school. Authentic community takes time creating trust, aligning values, appreciating differences. Cassidy talks about the realities and challenges that inherently come with opening a learning center.

Cassidy has offerings for parents, facilitators, and young people on her website CassidyYounghans.com

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Adrienne Miller joins Annie Friday this week to discuss her unschooling family life. Adrienne shares on the logistics of the choices, privileges and sacrifices that shape her family’s path. By leading with relationships, opting for a slower lifestyle, and centering community, Adrienne lives out her values with intention. Adrienne explains more on how she sees unschooling as a pathway to collective liberation by reimagining what learning and life can look like for all families.

Find homeschooling and unschooling resources and coaching options by Adrienne on her website, Instagram account, and through her new podcast all at TheseReveries.com or @these_reveries.

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Author, mother, healthcare aid, and former SDE facilitator Meaza Love joins Annie Friday to discuss how the American Dream has come to affect US schooling. Meaza talks about the limits to creativity, originality, and divergent thinking as schools push young people to one right answer, one career pathway, one specific end point that maybe doesn’t even exist. This conversations touches on the original intent of the term American Dream which was first coined during the Great Depression in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, historian and author. Adams thought believed in a dream that would allow every American to achieve their fullest capabilities “regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position,” according to Wikipedia. Meaza shares recent discoveries for her regarding unschooling and the lifestyle of self-directed education (SDE). She sees SDE as a pathway alternative to school that would potentially help preserve her own child’s unique and creative ways of being in the world. While the world has been shifting greatly since the model of schooling was put in place, schools themselves have not changed much. Together, Annie and Meaza dream aloud about how the system of schooling could shift to adapt to the lifestyles of today by centering relationship skills, critical thinking, and creative processes. These days, with AI and robots, we no longer need to train students to be good factory line workers. By adapting schools to honor individuality and personhood, could we shift back to that original intent of the American dream?

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Iris Chen joins Annie Friday this week to share more about how choosing to unschool opened her up in surprising and radical ways to begin imagining the world without punitive, oppressive systems. Through her work as a parent educator, coach, and collaborator,  Iris helps others find connection and community as they bring more consciousness into their family life. While Iris’ coaching is available to all, she has tailored some of her programming to meet the specific needs of Asian femmes who are working out a unique type of generational healing. These are humans who may have grown up with the stereotypical tiger parenting style first brought to public attention by Amy Chua in her book back in 2011. Iris, along with Yunzhe Zhou, will be presenting a new offering called Untiger Your Self so that others may find strength and connection as they un-tiger their self-knowledge, self-compassion, and self-advocacy in order to re-pattern ways of being in relationship with family.

Learn more about Iris Chen and her work as an author, coach, and visionary on Instagram @Untigering or head to her website by the same name where you can find her books and more on her coaching services and workshops.

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Annie Friday is joined this week by Kristen Peterson (soon to be Kristen Day), play advocate, educator, trainer, speaker, author, and a true play queen! Kristen shares how discovering play changed her trajectory forever. Play was also the catalyst for her family’s decision to re-prioritize how they were spending their time. By living in attunement with her kids’ needs and her own passions, Kristen has developed a lifestyle of lifelong learning in her family. This has included homeschooling, unschooling, and conventional schooling. Kristen shares how this type of interest-based learning breaks the school mold and allows for critical thinking and deep engagement. Kristen aims to reach parents, educators, and caregivers with the message that school should not juts be something to survive. By creating access to true, authentic play, kids and adults can shine in their own individual strengths.

Keep your eye out for Kristen’s content-rich resources, workshops, classes, and new book coming out soon called I’m Not Getting Them Ready for Kindergarten: Breaking tradition in early childhood education 

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Author, educator, and activist Eloise Rickman joins Annie Friday this week to discuss her new book It’s Not Fair!: Why it’s time for a grown-up conversation about how adults treat children. Eloise’s work and writings center on the rights of childhood and the discrimination and oppression that is created by adultism. While there are many who question whether children are truly oppressed and needing liberation, Eloise believes children arrive capable and ready… even to vote. Eloise challenges the notions of mainstream adult-child relations that are typically found in schools, homes, and modern day parenting. Not all doom and gloom, Eloise also shares her hope and optimism for a future end to childhood oppression. You can find more from Eloise and her newsletter on Substack under Small Places and on Instagram under MightyMother_

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Annie Friday is joined this week by Samuel Broaden of Honoring Childhood and Kisa Marx of The Play Lab Foundation to discuss their newly released book titled Rethinking Weapon Play in Early Childhood: How to Encourage Imagination, Kindness, and Consent in Your Classroom. Right away, Kisa and Samuel dive into the reality that many adults feel activated, challenged, or triggered by this type of power play. They offer strategies for reflection and growth for the adults in play spaces while also explaining the benefits of this category of play. In a world filled with violence and a country full gun violence, the fears are valid, and yet as adults it is our moral imperative to face those fears. In that process, we need to decide how we can share our concerns and shift those into boundaries that honor consent and safety. This episode does include references to violence and real life examples of when gun play has turned to tragedy. The Tamir Rice Foundation led by Samaria Rice and Rebuild Foundation led by Theaster Gates are two important organizations preserving the memory of Tamir Rice and uplifting the power and potential of community through ensuring the existence of  safe and culturally-rich spaces specifically for Black children and families. Here 4 The Kids is another organization focused on ending gun violence in the US and hosts weekly community chats every Thursday at 12:00 pm ET.

Curious how we can hold space for both the fears around violence and the need for kids to engage in power play? Listen in as Kisa and Samuel share how our feelings toward gun violence are tied to and also separate from the benefits of weapon play. 

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Latoya Nelson is back with Annie Friday after her first year of stepping out of line and opening a learning center for self-directed young people looking for an alternative to school. Latoya shares some of the challenges that come with her personal work of detoxing the school system within her as an educator – the pay, the hours, the workplace norms. We also discuss the authenticity that comes for participants at any age in a self-directed community. We talk about public schools, how they work and don’t work for some. We talk about social emotional learning and how it can be weaponized and steeped in whiteness assuming that the cultural norms for white America can be broadly applied to all students. Latoya shares that photos, community observations, and intentional reflection have helped her see how much they really did accomplish this year. Listen in as we celebrate Latoya and The Attuned Community learning community for finishing their first year out of the system and raising resilience!

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