Unschooling Conversations

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Rachel Evans joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about How our Children Learn without Curriculums

We discuss:

· Snapshot of our households 3:00

· What does learning look like? 8:10

· Move from discovery to mastery learning, unconscious and conscious learning

· Web of learning and individual learning journeys 12:40

· Creating a rich and supportive environment 14:50

· Knowing our children well 15:30

· A reflective activity when it looks like our children have been only interested in one thing, forever 17:30

· How do our children learn new things without a curriculum to plan content? 18:00

· Supporting children’s learning, linear learning, and the web of learning connections 22:20

· Gaming as a gateway to learning 25:00

· How will children learn everything they need to know?

· And, the four things that drive children’s learning 32:00

· Setting the tone for life learning and loving learning beyond the age of 18 46:00

· Intrinsic motivation and removing the judgement, and fear connected with continuously grading, measuring, and evaluating creative work and instead producing it for the passion of doing it 48:00

· Foundational beliefs about how children learn organically 52:00

· Real deep learning that stays for years and leads to further skills, knowledge, and understanding 55:00

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Connectandrespect.co.uk

Facebook: Connect and Respect

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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Angela Harders joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about Gentle Parenting, our journeys into unschooling, and the importance of community.

Angela is a bilingual special education teacher near Washington DC, she has been teaching for over twelve years. She is a single mum to two children, Sophia aged 7, and Benjamin aged 3.

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We discuss:

· What a typical unschooling day looks like in Angela’s household 4:00

· UK Guidelines for HE parents and the Local Authority 5:00

· Further info on responding to the LA for UK listeners 12:00

· How gentle parenting led Angela to unschooling 16:00

· How graphing quadratic equations led to Angela to question the education system.

· Realising that the decisions that we make today don’t have to be forever 22:00

· The power of observing our children.

· The joy of unschooling, sharing life together with our children, and having fun 23:20

· Angela’s top recommendations for those new to unschooling 26:20

· It’s okay to simply do more of the things that you love 30:30

· What caring for ourselves might look like 32:40

· How community support contributes to our self care especially as a single parent 35:00

· The myth of school socialisation 40:00

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Tales of a Toxic Teacher: Exposing the Cycles of Abuse within Our Schools

Books

Peaceful World Schoolers Podcast

RESOURCE LINKS:

John Taylor Gatto : Dumbing us down

John Holt: How Children Learn

Pam Laricchea’s Podcast: Exploring Unschooling

The local Authority and Home Education

Elective Home Education: Guidance for Parents

EHE: Departmental Guidance for Local Authorities

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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Jyoti Imix joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about recording evidence, observing children, and research on Self-Directed Education in light of the Portsmouth Judicial Review.

We discuss:

· Children’s Rights and advocating for children as a minority group 2:30

· Heidi gives a detail outline of her background 7:30

· PCC Judicial Review 12:00

· What documenting learning could look like 12:50

· Paragraph 94: “As can readily be seen, in the present case the defendant did not reject the claimant's reports because they were not in a particular form. The defendant's concerns were substantive ones. Despite the length of the claimant's reports, they were wholly assertive in nature. They contained nothing by way of actual work produced by the children. To take the example of work on To Kill a Mockingbird, which featured in submissions at the hearing, there was no material showing the degree of comprehension of the appellant's daughter concerning the novel; merely a series of statements from the claimant.” 19:00

· Adulteration and observation change the behaviour of the observed 22:00

· Involving our young people in problem solving and being part of the solution 26:00

· Research and evidence base for self directed education 28:30

· Deschooling 38:50

· Feminist Theory 44:00

· What happens when we remove structure and direction from people’s lives? 48:30

· Anarchist theory and collaboration 52:20

· Fear responses and connecting with our own selves first instead of (over) reacting 57:00

· Focusing on our children and this moment before us in this space 1:00:30

LINKS:

PCC Judicial Review

Portsmouth Judicial Review decision explained by Fiona Nicholson from edyourself

Portsmouth JR summary and read through

Summerhill After Summerhill

Ivan Illich Deschooling Society

Sugata Mitra The hole in the wall

Peter Gray Free to Learn 36:30

Gina Riley Unschooling: Exploring learning beyond the classroom 42:00

Suitable-Education website

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Jyotiofferings.com

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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Tiersa McQueen joins Heidi Steel, in the first of a double bill, this month, to talk about Partnering Our Children

Tiersa is a parent to four unschooled children, living in Florida, and an active unschooling advocate on Twitter.

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We discuss:

· Respectfully and consciously parenting our children 1:00

· Partnering our children and over coming our inadequacy at not knowing everything 5:30

· What knowledge do we need to be able to support our children? 10:00

· The benefits of tuning into ourselves 17:30

· The importance of respecting our children’s decisions especially when they say ‘no’ 30:00

· Unschooling goals and personal goals 39:30

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Twitter: tiersaj

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

Facebook Live. Play. Learn

YouTube Live Play Learn

Tiersa McQueen joins Heidi Steel, in the first of a double bill, this month, to talk about Unschooling Ourselves.

Tiersa is a parent to four unschooled children, living in Florida, and an active unschooling advocate on Twitter.

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We discuss:

· How Tiersa came to unschooling 3:40

· How our teens transition to further education 6:50

· The challenging process of changing our mindset 8:00

· How children learn when they are free from school and imposed methods 10:00

· How children naturally utilise the tools of their generation 16:00

· An epic discussion on the laziness of unschoolers and their parents 17:10

· The invalid part that our relationship with our children has to play in unschooling 24:50

· Being open to going with the flow, trusting and respecting one another 25:50

· What the young people in the McQueen family are interested in and learning about 27:00

· How unschooling ourselves has impacted our own lives as well as our families 33:00

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Twitter: tiersaj

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

Facebook Live. Play. Learn

YouTube Live Play Learn

Krish Khimasia joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about Unschooling Maths.

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Krish has been a secondary maths teacher for over twenty years, and with his wife, Alice, an unschooling parent to his four sons now aged 19, 18, 15 and 9. He now teaches at the Secret Garden, an alternative educational provision in the West Midlands.

We discuss:

· How children will learn the maths that they need for adulthood without explicitly being taught 6:45

· The essential role of play beyond the early years in building strong foundations for complex mathematical concepts 8:30

· What maths actually is, as opposed to what we have been taught that it is 9:30

· How maths is approached in unschooling families 12:20

· How and why play is vital to developing mathematical skills 15:00

· The role of board games, and other regular pastimes, in contributing to our children’s understanding of mathematics. 25:20

· Maths and computer games 32:00

· The concept of slow maths and the work of Jo Boaler 35:20

· How children make the transfer to studying for a GCSE in maths without previous tuition 37:25

· The concept of real life maths problems 42:50

· How useful really is trigonometry? 48:20

· The beauty of maths in nature 52:40

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

You can tune on to more unschooling thoughts from Krish and Alice at Organic Education

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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Esther Jones from the podcast Unschool Space joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about Unschooling Ourselves and our own Self Care.

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We discuss:

· The return to authenticity and natural living 2.10

· The importance of community 5.00

· Enabling our children to thrive6.20

· Unschooling being the best fit for our neurodivergent children 8.40

· Unschooling being the best way for children to learn about themselves 9.40

· The benefits for autistic PDA individuals 10.30

· What learning looks like, and how intrinsic motivation and discipline are innate tools 20.00

· How unschooling has impacted our lives as adults 23.36

· Trusting our children and cultivating an unschooling attitude 32.30

· Understanding our role 37.45

· The beauty and gift of parenting an autistic PDA individual 38.40

· Meeting everyone’s needs and living together 44.16

· The importance of our own self care 48.40

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

You can listen to Esther talk with a range of guests about unschooling on Unschool Space and read her blog at A Place on a Hill

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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“There is no perfect option but unschooling is as close to perfect as you’re going to get”

Gina Riley joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about her academic book on Exploring Unschooling Beyond the Classroom.

Gina Riley is an unschooling parent, educational psychologist, and Clinical Professor. She has worked alongside Peter Gray, and is known internationally for her research into Self Directed Learning and unschooling. Her unique perspective on learning as both academic and unschooling parent is invaluable to both communities as she truly understands the choices and the process of alternative education.

This is a really exciting episode as Gina has a wealth of experience through her research and own unschooling lifestyle, that she shares with us so generously.

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We discuss:

· An unschooler’s first day at school: the adjustment and transition 1:50

· Unschooling as a single mum, working and studying herself 3:50

· Gina’s personal path to unschooling 6:50

· Gina’s research into intrinsic motivation and how it relates to unschooling 8:50

· Defining unschooling 13:30

· What learning looks like outside of the classroom 14:35

· Talking about her grown unschooled son and reflecting on the elements of learning that were present in former years, now in adulthood 18:50

· The challenges, benefits, and negative experiences of grown unschoolers 30:30

· What are the best parts of unschooling? 35:40

· Recommended books and resources 39:40

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Unschooling: Exploring Learning Beyond the Classroom, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in July 2020.

Grown unschoolers’: Evaluations of their unschooling experiences Peter Gray and Gina Riley

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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Jenna Reich from Rogue Learner joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about our own path to unschooling.

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We discuss:

· What drives teachers to unschool their own children 2:15

· Evaluating our life goals and values 5:30

· Taking back control over our own lives, freedom, flexibility and following our intuition 6:30

· The Path to unschool; where do we find out more? 8:15

· Tears and pain in home ed, finding an alternative, and consistently choosing joy 10:55

· One size does not fit all; The flexibility of unschooling and responding to our children’s individuality 11:35

· Jenna shares her globe trotting story 12:30

· What inspired us to unschool? 14:10

· Removing hierarchical thinking from our lives 19:40

· Meritocracy and defining “better” 23:30

· Enabling decision making skills in young people 31:40

· Where we started when beginning our journey into unschooling 39:45

· Changes we noticed in family dynamics and our individual children 51:44

· Unschooling ourselves and the impact on adult relationships 54:00

· The unschooling journey 1:04:45

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

Facebook Rogue Learner 

Podcast

RESOURCES

Peter Gray Free To Learn (book)

Pam Laricchia Free To learn (book)

John Holt How Children Learn (book)

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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SUPPORT THE PODCAST ON PATREON:

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Sarah Beale joins Heidi Steel this month, to talk about Ditching the Rules

We discuss:

· Making connections, friends and building community 0:50

· Ditching the rules and defining a pancake 4:10

· Fear based decision making and childism 10:15

· Introducing ourselves and the podcast 15:30

· Parenting success 17:30

· At what point do we need a rule? 21:30

· Drawing on the wall and unpacking our programming 26:00

· What it means to partner our children 31:00

· Taking ‘no’ of the table and saying ‘yes’ instead 37:05

· How our children respond to non-arbitary rules and real-life situations aka going to grandma’s house 38:35

· Growing in our own freedom, questioning the rules and becoming ourselves 50:00

GUEST MEDIA LINKS:

https://www.renegademum.com/

LIVEPLAYLEARN LINKS:

Website Liveplaylearn.org

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