From Schoolish to Self-directed

From Schoolish to Self-Directed:
5 Beliefs to Practice + 7 Traps to Avoid
for Confident Self-Directed Education at Home

What are the must-have conditions to ignite and sustain self-directed children?

What does it mean to transition from homeschooling to unschooling? Or from conventional school to unschooling?

Should we adults just back off, leave young people alone, and just watch as they figure out how to (finally) be free to explore whatever they’re into?

How long do we deschool? What about kids; do they deschool too?

A couple years ago, 45 episodes into my unschooling and deschooling podcast, Fare of the Free Child, a woman who participated in a workshop I gave, asked me those same questions.

I said back then that I would do some sort of workshop or course about transitioning from homeschooling to unschooling, but that was before I realized that my podcast was about to change my entire life (and my production schedule)!

Fast-forward to today, nearly 200 episodes in, and plenty more experience with the various aspects of a transition from forced schooling to self-direction. I’ve had the time, space, and production support to share what I know good about shifting from coercive parenting in education to nurturing confident autonomy in children.

I’ve seen it in my own home, but I’ve also had literally hundreds of conversations with parents who range from totally confident unschooling to unsure but committed to the practice.

I want that for you, too! Confidence in your unschooling process, no matter where you are in that process.

In that episode, my friend, longtime unschooler, Itiel McVay, shared her response with the woman in the workshop, and it started with a simple answer: If you use a curriculum, putting it away is a great place to start; I fully support Itiel's answer!

Itiel’s answer is one I fully support because leaving the curriculum alone gives you a major opportunity to observe; observation, my friend, is a powerful relationship tool, main reason being this:

We start to see patterns, which shows us how we might become partners.

Partnership with children, not power over them, is what this is about, and I want to help you shift your mindset and secure a practice that will allow your inner liberation-minded mama, papa, or any name you call yourself, to emerge.

In one short sentence, this course is my way of offering you permission to let yourself deschool, and to let your children do that too!

PRO TIP: Don’t go filling the new free-time with other things you define as educational, interesting, or somehow learn-y. Instead to see the natural curiosities and the things connected to them, and leave room for your children to lead and to help you see when to lead.

Parents and children will lead at varying points, but you’ll get so good at seeing the opportunities to lead and to follow as actual opportunities, which you can’t do if you’re busy filling voids that aren’t there.

Let me help you avoid filling the voids (say that out loud, it feels good!).

Join me here by enrolling in this audio course for parents who desire to raise free people, but just aren’t clear on what the hell that means in practice; how to get to that through daily actions and tiny, mighty, consistent shifting toward liberation when it comes to learning!

Plenty love, Akilah