Use Your Outside Voice Unschool

The context of these times seems to be the observing and navigating of trauma response, personally and collectively. We’re in agreement that our unschooling lives are impacted by skyrocketing pandemic rates locally, the American election unfolding, and ongoing surfacing of white supremacy. We decide to record our conversation as it emerges and postpone tidier themes, validating being in relationship with authentic response to what-is (ie, unschooling) as a part of healing work. There’s not much neat or tidy about this moment; and, let’s get on with it.

Episode recorded November 11, 2020

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

We circle around what it means to be unschooling through unprecedented times, when the arrival of a covid vaccine will not mean an end-date to the failing of systems. The context of these times is not just covid, when on a daily basis we can’t shut our eyes to all the things being surfaced and amplified. Like many homeschool parents right now, we have little patience for questions about forcing kids to perform empty academic tricks. It is the job of school to let us perseverate on things that don’t matter so that everything else remains irrelevant. Unchanged. Should it really take apocalypse to permit us to commit fully to relationships and health for our healing and thriving?

Episode recorded October 4, 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

A question posed by a listener and school teacher sparks a conversation about what can be changed within the institution of school, the capability of families to meet the needs of their own children, and whether school can provide equality. Months into disease and racial pandemics, the moment may have arrived for everyone (even unschoolers without kids enrolled in a school) to come to the table with new ideas for how the needs of children and a community are decided and met. Consideration at this table must see school for what it is, how it was created to function, and the impact it has on ALL peoples. Showing up at the table requires acknowledging the disproportionate damage inflicted on Black, Brown, and Indigenous children within schooling and a willingness to place resources into the hands of their families. Stick around with us to embrace change and hope, and permit ideas for community models that can reallocate supports currently placed within the school system back to local communities.

Episode recorded August 15, 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

What if school is an ex-boyfriend who keeps showing back up, promising he’s changed and better than ever, but is really the same old dysfunctional dynamic as before? Yikes. This episode weaves from the personal to the systemic as we discuss our disinterest with any reform to school and rather the possibility of engaging a new paradigm altogether. We reiterate the generational reality of school trauma and the disproportionate impact of overt and discreet school weaponization on marginalized populations. We share personal experiences of regular hope and care for our own unschooling-impacted communities (our own families) and drill down to what’s perhaps most essential and inspiring: centering humanity.

Episode recorded July 6, 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

Quick invitation to send your unschooling (and deschooling) questions or topics you’d like to hear cracked open a bit further. In this moment, with so many things going on in the world, we want to open up the conversation and include the things you are personally growing and moving through.

Send us an email or voice memo at [email protected] or get us on Facebook (Use Your Outside Voice Unschooling Podcast).

We value and intentionally engage in dialogue about where we stand and are being as Black and white people and unschooling families as racism and white supremacy/violence are surfaced and brought forefront in national focus and pandemic remains the global context.

Links to references from the podcast:

Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown, How to Survive the End of the World podcast

America is the Fire Nation

Tada Hozumi, What it means to heal white supremacy: restoring the cultural nervous system, cultivating Hara

Questions? [email protected], or Facebook.

Episode recorded June 21, 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

We raise questions about how we are doing, question how we as a country got here, and how we become so desensitized that any kind of heinousness is just another news cycle to move through. We acknowledge the ongoing and historical presence of people creating pathways for survival and notice that even in a path that steps outside of mainstream systems, there seems to be a desire to fit what is currently happening in this country into some sort of curriculum or checklist to guarantee not-being-racist. It comes back to grappling with your own shit, including not having all the answers (and being transparent with kids about that fact as supportive to their understanding of what is happening).

Questions? [email protected], or Facebook.

Episode recorded May 31, 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

In the midst of COVID19 pandemic, we headed into a conversation from our quarantines about what’s arising for us as the country finds itself out-of-school in unprecedented circumstances. We discuss recently published articles characterizing homeschooling families as stereotypes of privilege and abuse, and the timeliness of such fear-mongering from supporters who want a quick and unexamined return to institutional schooling. We offer encouragement for families who do not look like the stereotype of homeschooling and recognize the role of disruption in change.

Questions? [email protected], or Facebook.

Episode recorded late April 2020.

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

As coronavirus shut down schools, we discuss the implied expectation that mom accept the added role of substitute teacher—and the impulse to say hell, no. We discuss rejecting a school-model of relationship at home; surviving within trauma response; and point out illusions shored up by school that may get revealed in its absence. We answer listener questions and, as usual, offer an alternative to the narrative that school is the best or only valid path.

Questions? [email protected], or Facebook.

Episode recorded early April 2020.

Original music credits: Saoirse, Mae, and Juniper

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas

Note: This discussion was recorded before coronavirus impacted the US—including before massive school closures became a reality.

The pervasiveness of classes, workshops, consultants, conferences, and books marketed at home- and unschoolers can make it feel like there is a price of admission in order to live your life with your kids. Not so. We talk about the common “I couldn’t afford to unschool” comment; intersecting marginalization that impacts unschoolers’ ability to access spaces; and taking full responsibility for living with a focus on relationships of value rather than curated experiences that are up for sale.

Questions? [email protected], or Facebook. Episode recorded early March 2020.

Original music credits: Saoirse, Mae, and Juniper

Producer: Brian Lane-Karnas