Pam Laricchia's Blog, page 13
August 11, 2021
EU290: An Unschooling Journey with Jae Williams
Jae Williams recently decided to leave his teaching job and stay home to dive into unschooling with his two young children. Leading up to this choice, he spent the last year immersed in podcasts and books, exploring natural learning and questioning many mainstream paradigms about children, schooling, and success. We talk about his experience as a sixth-grade teacher and the frustrations he felt within the school system. He describes his excitement and the big aha moments that have come from exploring unschooling, and how it has impacted his parenting and relationships with his children.
Jae also shares his thoughts about the accessibility of unschooling and his vision for a better school system, as well as the challenge he’s feeling right now around finding a balance between pursuing his interests and being present with his children.
Jae’s excitement and passion about learning and life made for such a fun and engaging conversation! It will be fascinating to see where his journey leads as he approaches unschooling with an open and curious mindset.
Questions for Jae
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
You recently decided to quit teaching and move to unschooling. I’d love to hear that story! What inspired you to make this change?
What has been your biggest a-ha moment so far?
What unschooling-related question is most on your mind right now? How are you playing with it?
When we connected, you mentioned you’d love to talk about whether unschooling is a viable option for single parent families and/or poor working-class families. What are your thoughts?
You also mentioned society’s shifting views on schooling and careers as a path to happiness and whether that may be reaching a tipping point. I’d love to hear your perspective! Are you seeing these conversations bubbling up more often?
As you settle into unschooling, what has surprised you most so far?
Things mentioned in the episode
Jae’s YouTube channel, BlackDad
Most Likely to Succeed documentary
Free to Learn by Peter Gray
The Self-Driven Child by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Unschooling on a Budget podcast episode
Pam’s book, The Unschooling Journey
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
August 4, 2021
EU289: Unschooling Dads with Izaak Sibley
Izaak Sibley joins me this week to share his experience as an unschooling dad. He shares about his own school education, how he saw his love of learning disappear over time, and how unschooling with Q has reignited it. We talk about trusting human curiosity and how he has seen Q’s learning naturally lead in such interesting directions. Izaak and his partner Holly have been creative with their living and working situations in order to meet the needs of everyone in the family, and he shares some insights into how they’ve made things work.
Izaak’s excitement about learning and unschooling shines through in our conversation!
Questions for Izaak
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
How did your family discover unschooling and what did your move to unschooling look like?
What has been your biggest paradigm shift or a-ha moment so far? How did it come about?
I’d love to hear about how you and Holly have set up your lives around your choices to embrace unschooling, spend lots of time together, and do things you all find interesting and fun.
What is your favourite thing about your unschooling days right now?
As an unschooling dad, what piece of advice would you like to share with dads who are considering or just starting out on this journey?
Things mentioned in the episode
Check out the Living Joyfully Network
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
July 28, 2021
EU288: Sitting with Fear and Discomfort with Anna Brown
Anna Brown joins me this week to talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Sitting with Fear and Discomfort. This is something that comes up on our unschooling journey pretty regularly because, not only are we challenging lots of cultural norms around learning and parenting, we’re also giving our children space to make meaningful choices in their days, from what they want to do to how they want to explore the world. Sometimes their exploration has us bumping against our comfort zones!
Anna and I walk through the process of noticing our fear or discomfort, validating the emotions we’re feeling, asking questions about our internal experience as well as what’s happening in front of us, and coming to a greater understanding of the situation. And then, from this place of deeper clarity, we can have more meaningful conversations with those involved and make choices moving forward that both make sense and feel good. Fear and discomfort will bubble up again and again, that’s just part of life. But having tools to tease apart the various aspects at play—like cultural messages we’ve absorbed, baggage we carry from past experiences, and thoughts we’re projecting into the future—helps us process the overwhelm, improves our communication, and strengthens our relationships with our kids.
We walk through the process of noticing our fear or discomfort, validating the emotions we feel, asking questions about our internal experience as well as what’s happening in front of us, and coming to a greater understanding of the situation. From this place of deeper clarity, we can have conversations and make choices that feel good. Fear and discomfort will bubble up again and again, that’s just part of life. But having tools to work through outside messages and baggage from the past in order to get present with our children improves our communication and strengthens our relationships.
Discussion areas
Why sit with discomfort and fear?Why it’s important to first be kind to ourselves.The transition from external “fixing” to internal processing.Turning our curiosity inward: asking ourselves questions.Turning our curiosity outward: what does it look like now?Things mentioned in the episode
Check out and join the Living Joyfully Network here
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
July 21, 2021
EU287: Why Joy?
This week, I have a solo episode for you! The idea to share why I focus on joy and the unschooling journey bubbled up a couple of weeks ago and it’s been fun to put this together. And for listeners who may be newer to the podcast, I share a bit about me before diving into exploring the idea of joy and how it became a very helpful compass for me as I navigate, not just unschooling, but life.
I hope you find it interesting!
Discussion areas
Joy is a beacon for learning.Joy is a beacon for building strong relationships.Joy is a beacon for finding community.Sometimes joy takes a little practice.Things mentioned in the episode
NPR article, Sometimes Joy Takes a Little Practice
Check out the Living Joyfully Network here
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
July 14, 2021
EU286: Connect with Courage with Roya Dedeaux
Roya Dedeaux joins me on the podcast this week to talk about her new book Connect with Courage. Roya is a grown unschooler, a marriage and family therapist, and an unschooling mom of three, so she has lots of experience to draw from as she considers how children learn and thrive.
In her book, Roya describes the many benefits of supporting our children’s interests and the strong connections between parent and child that those positive interactions cultivate. She also details nineteen different barriers that can arise and walks readers through ways to find solutions. In our conversation, we talk about two of these barriers and how so much of it is our inner, emotional work to do to move past our fears and to a place of connection with our kids. Our conversation was energizing and I’m really excited for more parents to read Connect with Courage. These are powerful, life-changing ideas!
Questions for Roya
As a quick refresher, can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
I’m thrilled to have recently published your book, Connect with Courage: Practical Ways to Release Fear and Find Joy in the Places Your Children Take You. I really love the book, and I think it may well be life-changing for many parents. Let’s start off with this: why is the connection between parent and child so important?
When it comes to connecting with our kids through supporting their interests and passions, lots of things can get in our way! And that’s where our work as parents comes in, which is why the many exercises you’ve included to walk parents through these challenges are so helpful. In the book you work through nineteen common barriers, and I thought we could touch on a couple of them here. First, let’s dive into “I don’t understand why they enjoy it.” How can a parent work through that challenge?
Another barrier I hear parents complaining about pretty regularly, especially with younger kids, is that the thing their child likes to do is messy. There are a couple of aspects to that, aren’t there?
What do you love most about your unschooling lives right now?
Things mentioned in the episode
Roya’s book, Connect with Courage
Roya’s earlier podcast episode, Growing Up Unschooling with Roya Dedeaux
Downloadable journal, Look for Good
Roya’s jewelry and crafts website
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
July 7, 2021
EU285: Unschooling Stories with Erin Rosemond
Erin Rosemond, an unschooling mom of four, joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey. Erin shares her earliest reflections on her own schooling experience and how they prepared her for embracing the idea of home educating her children. We dive deep into the ideas of interdependence, collaboration, and kindness, and how unschooling has created family relationships that really incorporate those values.
Erin also shares her thoughts on the accessibility and affordability of unschooling to the wider community and her belief that all families should have community support to make educational choices that work for them. And we talk about how she and her husband have navigated their work schedules while still unschooling. Erin has years of unschooling experience and has so many great insights to share!
Questions for Erin
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?
As I embraced unschooling, I found that so much of my work was internal, focused on connecting, supporting, and engaging with my kids rather than teaching them. But, certainly at first, it can be hard to understand what that actually looks like in action. What has that looked like for you? How do you approach your unschooling days?
Over the years, you’ve woven together unschooling and paid work. Can you share what that looked like and how you navigated it?
I’ve really enjoyed reading around your blog, Ever Learning. So much goodness! One post that really spoke to me was, ‘Shining Our Light: Kindness as Mindset.’ It’s not about grand gestures, but small moments of everyday kindness that can make a big difference, right?
When we connected, you mentioned that you’re often thinking through ways for unschooling to be accessible and affordable to more people. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
What has surprised you most about how unschooling has unfolded for your family?
Things mentioned in the episode
Check out the Living Joyfully Network
Erin’s website Ever Learning and her blog post, Shining our Light: Kindness as Mindset
Erin mentioned the blog, Taking a Kinder Path
Erin’s Instagram is @ever.learning
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
Filed Under: Unschooling Tagged With: deschooling
June 30, 2021
EU284: Deschooling with Lane Clark
Lane Clark joins me this week to talk about her unschooling journey and to dive into what she’s learned through deschooling. Lane’s journey began when her family was living abroad and felt their best option was homeschooling. When their carefully chosen curriculum didn’t feel like a good fit, she discovered unschooling and has been questioning all of the boxes we’re put in by mainstream society ever since.
We talked about how deschooling felt like opening Pandora’s box, how Lane has found that her unschooling community helps her navigate her tendency to overthink things, and how her new ways of thinking inspire her to plant seeds of change in her community. It’s such a rich conversation!
Questions for Lane
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
How did you discover unschooling and what did your family’s move to unschooling look like?
When I think about deschooling in the context of learning, I see two distinct phases. First, we widen our definition of learning beyond “academics” to recognize all the learning that’s happening as our kids pursue their interests. And then, we find that our need to look for the learning and to ponder where it might lead starts to fade away. We see that we can just focus on the living, on the moment in front of us. It’s a fascinating journey, isn’t it?
Another conventional idea that we often need to untangle is the idea that if children get to choose what they do, they’ll never do hard things, or even just things that they don’t find particularly enjoyable. On the surface, that seems to make sense, but as we deschool and dig deeper, the story is very different. Can you share your experience with untangling this idea?
What has been one of the more challenging aspects of deschooling for you? Can you share a bit about how you worked through it?
What is your favourite thing about the flow of your unschooling days right now?
Things mentioned in the episode
Check out the Living Joyfully Network
Pam mentioned the podcast How to Save a Planet
Lane’s Instagram is @liz.lemonade
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
June 23, 2021
EU283: The Value of Play with Anna Brown
This week, Anna Brown and I talk about our theme in the Living Joyfully Network this month, Play! We dive into how integral play is for learning both about the world and about ourselves. We can carry a lot of preconceived notions about play, its value, its place in our lives, even the definition of what it actually is. Broadening our definitions and seeing the many ways play contributes to our growth and the growth of our children is profound.
It was so much fun to explore and reflect upon this important aspect to our unschooling lives!
Discussion areas
How play and learning weave together.Ways to support—and engage with—our children’s play.Play is a wonderful way to develop self-awareness and process emotions.How do you define play—is it bigger than toys and games?The dichotomy of work and play.Things mentioned in the episode
Check out and join the Living Joyfully Network here
The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner
Transcript
Video
Watch the YouTube video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
June 16, 2021
EU282: Teachers Turned Unschoolers
This week, I want to dive into another question that I get pretty regularly, and that’s whether I have podcast episodes with unschooling parents that used to be teachers.
It’s fun to ponder the why behind the question. Does it seem like a strange leap to make? To me, choosing teaching indicates an interest in children and in learning, so to dive into that even more deeply with their own children through unschooling does seem like a rather natural next step to take.
But whatever the reason behind this pretty common question, the answer is a resounding yes! On the podcast to this point, there have been 22 guests who were, or are, teachers or university professors, who study education at the post-secondary level, or even teach education courses.
In this episode, I’ve gathered a few snippets from teachers turned unschoolers sharing about their experience and how that journey came about for them. It’s so interesting!
Audio clips taken from these episodes …
EU106: Unschooling Connections with Kelly Callahan
EU054: From Teaching to Unschooling with Grace Koelma
EU243: Parenting Shifts with Sarah Peshek
EU213: Unschooling and Math with Marcella O’Brien
EU193: Unschooling Younger Kids with Martha Delmore
EU254: Finding Unschooling with Daniela Bramwell
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
June 9, 2021
EU281: Going Deep with Unschooling with Talia Bartoe
Talia Bartoe joins me again on the podcast to update us about her family’s unschooling journey. We didn’t know it going in, but it quickly became obvious that the theme of our conversation was “going deep”! Talia generously shares so much about her inner work and the shifts she’s made as part of deschooling and living an unschooling lifestyle with her family.
We talk about the layers of messages around parenting, food, learning, and self-care that we internalized growing up, and how Talia has intentionally changed her thinking and chosen to do things differently. She also shares her experience with having four young children and the ways she meets their various needs, as well as her own.
It’s such a rich and inspiring conversation and I’m excited to share it with you!
Questions for Talia
Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?
Last time we talked, almost two years ago now, we focused on the deschooling aspect of the journey. And while deschooling isn’t ever “done,” do you feel like you’re actively unschooling now?
So much of deschooling is our personal work to do: excavating our curiosity and creativity, exploring the roots of our fears, growing our ability to sit with discomfort etc. Do you feel like you’ve grown and changed as a person since you chose to begin unschooling? In what ways?
I know that food is a big interest that weaves through your family’s days, and sometimes relaxing around food can be a big paradigm shift for people. I’d love to hear a story or two about your experience!
With four active children between the ages of two and ten, I imagine many of your days are action-packed! I recall those days as being an interesting, and often tiring, dance of choosing to say yes to their fun and exploration while also trying to stay cognizant of my own energy and self-care needs. Sound familiar? What does that look like for you right now?
What has surprised you most about how unschooling has unfolded for your family so far?
Things mentioned in the episode
Check out the Living Joyfully Network
Talia’s first podcast episode, EU185: Deschooling with Talia Bartoe
Eating the Food Facebook group
Talia’s Joyfully Wild Life Facebook page and Instagram
Talia’s blog website, Joyfully Wild Life
Transcript
Video
Consider becoming a patron
I deeply appreciate all my patrons! Your generous support helps pay for the hosting and transcription, as well as my time spent creating new episodes each week. It’s instrumental in keeping the growing podcast archive freely available to anyone who’s curious and wants to explore the fascinating world of unschooling. If you’d like to join my community of patrons and scoop up some great rewards along the way, check out the Exploring Unschooling page on Patreon.
