Michelle Conaway

If you’ve never seen Sir Ken Robinson speak, well here’s your opportunity. I love this man and his ideas around education.

His words say it all, so without further ado, here’s the video. Please leave let me know what you think about his presentation.
[ted id=66]

Caleb working on his Blog.

Caleb, my 10 year old talkative, full of life, totally huggable youngest boy has started blogging!

I never would have guessed that blogging would bring him so much joy. He’s never liked to read or write much. He loves computer games so he’s familiar with the computer, but I’ve never seen him want to create so badly in his life! He shot out like a rocket yesterday wanting to take pictures and write about everything in sight.

THIS is unschooling in action. It’s so rewarding to watch the sparks that ignite in our children and watch them run with it like nobody’s business. No history of prodding from me about writing. No writing assignments. No forced reading. No forced grammar. No worksheets. He has never written a paper in his life, so I was surprised when he was able to get his thoughts down in such a comprehensable way. I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is how unschooling works.

We let our KIDS lead US. We allow them to follow what they love. We help them find avenues that will lead them to MORE. They trust in themselves. They trust us as their guides. They learn. With whatever it is that interests them at the moment.

Caleb was asking me about puncuation yesterday. I was telling him about periods, commas and question marks. He loved that and wanted to implement it into his writing!

I told him that in traditional grammar, we capitalize the first letter of a sentence and we capitalize proper nouns. He DIDN’T like this. He thought every word DESERVED to start with a capitol. So that’s what he did and I loved that he felt comfortable in making that decision. After all,  E.E. Cummings didn’t always follow traditional grammar rules. Jim Davis who wrote Garfield doesn’t use periods. So who am I, to force Caleb into changing it? I love that Caleb feels comfortable in making these kinds of decisions without regard to how it should be done. He knows how it’s most commonly done and for now has chosen to disregard it.

Caleb’s first blog post

Caleb has seen me working on my blog. He’s seen his dad work on his blog as well. Add to that we have a family photo website that he has always loved to visit. He’s watched us work on these things for years, but we’ve never told him he had to do it too. We’ve offered in the past, but he never showed an interest so we left it alone. My genious husband however, decided to buy web domains for everyone in the family years ago, just in case. So it was super easy to get Caleb up and running.

Where did all this inspiration come from? Well, he has another unschooling friend that lives in Michigan that writes a blog. When Caleb discovered this, he visited his friend’s blog and was enamored. I could see the wheels turning in his head, connecting dots and realizing that he too could start one of his own.

He has also recently been experimenting with photography. When he realized he could combine photography with blogging, he was thrilled. So with camera in hand he set out to take photos of his dogs which led him to write a blog post about them.

I posted his first blog post on Facebook and some of my awesome friends visited and commented. You would have thought it was Christmas morning when he saw those comments. He approved them right away and instinctively wanted to reply. “I want everyone to know I care about their comments,” he said.

He’s learned more about writing and grammar in the last two days of blogging than he could in a classroom for a year. Why? Because he sees the value in it. Because he is INTERESTED in what he is doing. The motivation comes from a place within him that wants to create and share with the world. He values expressing himself and wants to do it better each time. That, my friends, is where we want our kids to be. Happy, enjoying themselves, engaged with the world and yes…learning.

I have a quote that is posted at the bottom of my email by Ghandi which reads, “Be the Change you want to See in the World.” I recently saw someone say, “Be the change you want to see in your children.” I loved that. And that’s what we do when we choose the unschooling lifestyle.

So many people are looking to others for answers on HOW to unschool. Unschooling is not something that we figure out or get the rules to and follow. It’s a very intimate and gradual change in the way that you view the world and choose to live in it. Unschooling is not just about the kids. It’s about the entire family and how the entire family navigates life. So to be honest, no one can really tell you HOW to unschool. You figure it out, bit by bit, experience by experience as a family.

I’ve heard of people that think that Unschooling is giving free reign to the kids. Letting them do whatever they want, whenever they want, without regard for anyone else.

There is a smidgen of truth to that. We do gradually begin to trust our kids more. We do say Yes more. We begin to be unafraid of making mistakes and we experiment with this new lifestyle. But to think that we can wake up one day and tell our kids we have no expectations of them and that they can rule the roost is sure to bring about a lot of chaos and dishevel not only in the family but outside of family activities as well. Kids don’t want to be put on pedestals. They want to understand the world around them and have experienced partners that can help them navigate their feelings, mistakes, questions, passions and roadblocks in a safe and peaceful environment.

Kids, and adults for that matter, learn by watching. They mimic us. Their sense of what is right and wrong, appropriate and not appropriate comes from the way we treat them. The way we treat others. The way that we move in the world.

When people say that they can’t unschool or that it isn’t working for them, perhaps there is something that the parent has not come to terms with within themselves. If we’ve allowed our kids to run rampit and not set any boundries or we’ve felt as though we are no longer in partnership with our children, we must first look at ourselves and figure out what is going on within us.

Unschooling in my mind is not about allowing the children to rule our lives. It’s about being super involved in their lives and being there to notice the subtle nuances that arise in our children as they meet challenges, try new things and move around in the world. It’s about strewing things around that they MIGHT enjoy, but not being attached to whether they ever actually give it a look. Helping them to solved conflict and to see their part in conflict with siblings. It’s about meeting them right where they are IN this MOMENT and not trying to change that but to work through it for the best of everyone involved. Its about being at peace ourselves so that our children might also find that peace that always resides inside of them.

When I hear that unschooling is not working for someone I wonder: Is the parent really at peace with what IS right now?

Children are natural unschoolers. They want connection with their parents and they want to learn about the world around them. If we as parents are not at peace in the fact that say, they are in a t.v. watching phase, we miss the opportunity to be with our child, to talk to our child about what they are watching and find out what it is that they are liking about t.v. Are they needing a period of rest? Are they interested in animation?

If we are not at peace with their t.v. watching we are in judgment of their behavior and we go into “fixing” mode. We see a PROBLEM instead of approaching our child in an open and nonjudgmental way. If we’re approaching it from this place of fear, our kids don’t feel safe talking to us about it.

If we can sink into what our child is doing or playing or working on without judgment, even if it is taking up ALL of their time, day in and day out, and we can be open to it and TRUST that they are learning something either about themselves or about the world, we build strong relationships with them. We can trust that their interest in t.v. for example is an opening – an avenue that will lead to more talking and more discovering. When we approach it this way, our kids don’t feel threatened or like they are doing something wrong or that we don’t approve. They feel safe and cared for and loved when we accept what they are doing in the MOMENT and remember that things always change. Next year they may never want to watch t.v. again.

Approaching unschooling in this way ALWAYS works. We must see the roadblocks that we as parents have. If we are harboring judgment about what our kids are doing they sense it. We don’t even have to speak it. They know. If Unschooling seems to be “not working” take a look at your paradigms about how learning happens. Be open to seeing that life and learning are synonomous. Even a temper tantrum holds a gift within it. When we are at peace, those gifts reveal themselves easily, because we are not making them into a “problem”. We are only dealing with life as it comes up. Period.

One of the things I have learned is this:

If I am not at peace with the way things are, I must look at my own internal workings to find out why I am not at peace. Things are as they are. My judgment about it is a story that is creating the “problem”. As I practice this in regards to my children I always come back to the same thing. There is never a problem with my child. The problem lies with the way that I am LOOKING at my child and his behavior.

When I see that, I am able to relax, make the changes I need to make, talk to my kids and LISTEN to them. Building that relationship with my kids helps me to Trust that they will always share with me what is going on with them, if they are feeling a void in their life and needing more or if they are content just where they are on their journey. I have learned to TRUST that about them. They have learned to trust that I am here if they need me, a peaceful, willing partner in their lives. This is where we get to Be the Change we want to See In our Child.

Sometimes this takes work on my part. Instead of reacting to the “story” in my head, I have learned to stop and breath. To get present in this moment and see that ALL is WELL right now. Most times, there really isn’t a problem. Just a situation that I’m not at peace about. Something I may need to talk to my kids about after I hash it out in my mind. There may be some action that needs to take place, but RIGHT action spawns from a PEACEFUL place within myself. Not a worried fretful place that not only stresses me out but also teaches my kids to be stressed as well.

When you feel as though Unschooling isn’t working – just stop. Relax. Know that All I Well in the world. You’re child is not knocking on the University door right NOW. And if they are, help them find a way to do it, if they WANT to do it. Trust them to know for themselves what they are yearning for NOW and help them with it. Unschooling is not about reaching some destination but about enjoying the journey. Find a way to make peace with this moment just as it is. What a gift to give to your kids. What a gift to yourself.