Setting Up an Unschooling Room

Not.

No you're not. If you are, you're not unschooling. So... no.

Unschooling Supplies? Also no.

Because of the way so many of us were raised, with the notion that learning happens at school, and school happens at a school (or in some other designated time and place, like a class field trip or the dining room table), we parents often still long to provide such a wonderful nurturing space for our kids to grow. Remember supply-lists? And new clothes shopping for September? I do!!!! Because of the scripted and often gorgeously new and shiny way our school year begun, we want to offer such delights to our children. We want the shopping sprees! The shiny packages of all matching pencils and erasers and pretty binders and pencil cases!! And new shoes. I want these things.

So we find ourselves drawn away by the ads in our mailboxes, the back-to-school manic glee; the big eyes of our little ones (and not-so-little-ones) as they pass displays of 'supplies' they actually don't need. We see our homeschool friends posting smooth bright photos of their homeschool rooms, all sparkly and colour-coordinated, with books full of information lined up on the tidy shelves, above little woven cubbies with their children's names, and we long for such orderly wholesomeness.

I am here to remind you that this is what we are escaping!

Remember why we unschooled in the first place? Unschooling means unscripted learning. It means unfettered learning in every place, all the time, without boundaries of any kind. Unschooling means learning happens everywhere, and with every thing. In fact... that's not really unique to unschooling; that's just the way people learn: always. The difference with unschooling is that we encourage and trust that process instead of trying to corral or direct it. We break down the walls of traditional schools. Which means, both figuratively and literally, no walls. No boundaries.

Boundaries defining the space for learning? Nope! Boundaries defining the tools used for learning? Of course not. Boundaries defining age-appropriateness? Nope! Subject areas? No way!

Your children will learn like you do: by finding some interest and following it - be it sewing or horticulture or minecraft or script-writing or peanut butter sandwich making. They will explore and discover and learn, and they may even benefit from some of the traditional "school" supplies... but you won't know ahead of time how those things will most helpfully be arranged on a shelf, and you won't be able to predict what to bring home until the things are needed, anyway. Unschooling means a lot of jumping around and learning from what happens to be in front of you, as well as learning to navigate the big wide exciting world of resources that is everywhere. This is what will give our children the skills to navigate the rest of their lives, anyway.

This is not my children's, but my own book shelf. These things matter to me because I have gathered them along the way as I needed them. And I'm willing to share... but mostly nobody uses them except me.

So next time you walk past the school supplies display and stretch your neck out to take a whiff of that binder-plastic, or run your fingers along the spiral-binding on the notebooks, just keep on going. When and if your kid needs that stuff, they'll have it. When they need a quiet corner for reading, they'll find or create that space, too. There is nothing in human physiology that requires these things for learning, and nothing in the Earth's rotation that requires such purchases to usher in September.

Back in the days when there were more unschoolers in our community, we used to have not-back-to-school parties. That was a pretty awesome way to sidestep the back-to-school frenzy and celebrate our choice to unschool. I guess I'm recommending some good old rebellious partying to soothe the tingly longing caused by those pretty social media postings of our schooling friends.

No Limits

Or no boundaries.
No rules.

Nobody telling you your beard is too long. OK, so sometimes people you love tell you your beard is too long, but you love them and you love yourself anyway - and your beard. Because it's just the way it is. And you quietly tell your wife you might always have had a beard except in the beginning you just felt you *had* to cut it. Then you grew up and discovered such rules were not for you.

No limits is nobody saying you can't take your kids out of school to help you at work. Or your kids never had the obligation to go to school in the first place. In fact you've become increasingly uncertain where the line is between work and play and school and projects and love and rest. And that's OK because you've also become increasingly likely to find similar-minded people whose boundaries have gotten so fuzzy there may be no boundaries at all.

No limits on life and love. Like when you think you might play accordion out on the boardwalk and earn a few dollars, and you just play whatever the hell comes out of your growing fingertips (yes seriously - at 15 his fingertips are growing!) and behold there's nobody stopping to suggest you stop making stuff up and play a song everybody knows. Anyway even though you're improvising, some people seem to sing along... with no hesitation. More people with no boundaries. They're everywhere!

Because you're so obviously that open-minded kind of soul who accepts people in all their stripes and colours, because you've been brought up to believe that everyone deserves freedom. And there are no limits on freedom.

That is unschooling, to me.

No limits means that even little kids, like the youngest I'm currently teaching in the Wild Art program, have to learn to set their own limits, because I don't do it for them. This can be a very challenging prospect, both for me as a teacher to kids who aren't all unschooled, and to those kids who find themselves lost without imposed limits. But it's going to have to happen sooner or later, so why not now?

No limits means more danger, more risks, more problems, and... more solving problems. It means more discovery, more tears, and more compassion. It means feral children doing mysterious things in the woods with no recorded outcome, and no expectations. It means freedom. It means these kids aren't going to have to wait until they're in their thirties to discover that shaving was optional; that what they do with their own minds and bodies always was theirs to decide. And the responsibility for creating this beautiful world individually and with their peers is also theirs.

I am always overjoyed to discover how quickly people of all ages step up to the plate, given the simple and terrifying gift of no limits.

Wild Clay Harvesting and Separating

Recently one of my teen groups took an interest in harvesting wild clay, and decided to try refining it.

When we dig up the clay, it's not only quite crumbly, but also full of rocks, dirt, forest detritus and sand.

So over a period of a few weeks, these teens processed some of our local clay into a lovely smooth sculpting medium, and I thought I'd share the simple method they used.

We have easily-accessible clay all over our island, appearing in creeks and gullies, and dumped in shiny blue mountains when we excavate for wells and the like. This clay came from a very small creek. The group found mostly green clay, with a few pockets of a gorgeous pale blue-grey clay that was quite pure already. They used spoons, stones, a trowel and shovels to scrape their harvest from just above the water level, and found various benefits to each. It seems that the best way to collect the clay is to scrape it gently, dragging the side of a spoon, rock, or shovel along as you might drag your hand across bed linens to smooth them. The reason for this is that any digging into the clay removes chunks of crumbly clay that are quite difficult to grind or squish into a smooth lump. Scraping not only pushes water into the top layer, but pulls off such a small wet layer at a time that the resulting clay is much softer and doesn't require grinding or squishing to render it moldable.

Much of what the group collected was in fact crumbling and needed grinding, so once they had nearly half a bucket full, they used hands, a potato masher, and a shovel to grind it up until it was a nice heavy sludge. Some rocks and twigs were already coming out of it, and they removed those right away.

Then they left the clay slop in the bucket, undisturbed, where it settled out. After a week, we returned to find the rocks settled to the bottom, the sandiest clay above that, the smoother clay slip above that, and the water on top. At this point the group poured the water off the top, and the cleanest slip (about forty or fifty pounds worth) they poured into an old pillow case and hung up over the creek to settle again, and dry.

When we returned after another week, the clay hadn't dried as much as we hoped it would in the pillow case, but had settled nicely again, a layer of heavy sandy clay on the bottom, smooth sloppy clay in the middle, and slip on top. We easily scooped the best quality clay from the top of that in the bag and divided it among us.

Most of the group chose to use their sloppy clay to paint with, but some of us brought some home, where it will dry a little more (on a cloth-covered board) until it's a good working consistency.

Although this activity was, as usual, conceived by the group, I delighted in facilitating, and in seeing so many positive learning outcomes of the process. Most obviously, group working skills were developed, but so too were skills of problem-solving, improvisation, and process development. Working hands-on promotes a deeper understanding of the nature of this ecosystem, its constituents, and its changeability. When you separate out the layers of the forest floor you become familiar with it in a way that is deeper than mere description and images can convey. History, ecology, and engineering are integrated. And of course, when you're doing this exploratively, you are engaged through the process of genuine discovery. This activity was also a great opportunity to change a material that we regularly walk over without concern through a process of very simple refinement into a material that many people purchase in plastic bags. I think this not only strengthens our connection to wilderness, but also to our own ingenuity. Together these are part of what makes us human.

Tools for Improvisational Play

Sometimes I bring tools into the wilderness for play. Sometimes the tools are conventional, like a shovel and buckets for harvesting clay, but sometimes they're strange. And invariably, it seems that the strangest tools bring out the most creativity!

Yesterday, during a free-range exploration that ended up in a creek with a wonderful sandbar, I offered the following:

• a whisk
• a pillowcase
• a tin can (opened in such a way that it had no sharp edges)
• a steak knife
• string

The whisk, knife and string, despite being initially the most enticing tools, were actually abandoned in the first few minutes. Using mostly the pillowcase and tin can, along with whatever they found in the wild, the group of six pre-teens worked collaboratively to conceive and create a very functional bridge over moving water, and to separate the sandbar into two islands.

The sandbar cleft was hard work, and they improvised fantastically, using the pillowcase (with various combinations of sand, mud and water) as a bucket, battering ram, and scraper-shovel. The can was useful for digging, prying, scooping, and throwing water.

The bridge-building was very challenging, since the flow of the creek washed out most of the sand, mud, and wood they threw in. But after much experimentation, the group succeeded in securing a large rotten log with sticks, so that the water could easily flow underneath while not disturbing the positioning of the log. They stabilized both ends of the log using bark, mud, sticks, and pillowcase-fulls of sand. After many crossings, the bridge became increasingly stable, and the kids were mightily proud of their work.

The Mystery By the Creek--Solved!

On a nearly-sunny January afternoon, I and a group of Wild Art kids stumbled upon something we'd never seen before: About twenty little round calciferous half-spheres, deposited a few meters away from a creek. Not exactly uniform but almost, the little things were approximately 8mm diameter, and seemed similar to sand dollar skeletons. They looked a little like covered buttons. However, when we broke one open, the inside appeared to be solid, comprised of pinkish calcium carbonate. As for other clues in the area, the half-spheres were found on a bit of pristine forest floor, surrounded by needles and cones, about a meter or so above the flood-level of the creek. The only other item of note in the area was the claw of a signal crayfish. We puzzled about it for quite a while, and took a few home to research.

The most obvious thing to do was to consult Sue Ellen Fast and Will Husby of Ecoleaders, who are extremely knowledgeable about freshwater ecosystems. In addition to being some of the kindest people I know, they are also my neighbours, so I took some of the little half-spheres by their house and Will had a good look. Will has easily cleared up some previous Wild Art mysteries, such as the identification of our local signal crayfish, freshwater sponges and freshwater fingernail clams. However, on examining these little half-spheres, he was stumped.

So off to our local facebook forum, where I could easily post a photo of our mysterious find, and get some responses. I also personally emailed the photo to a few other knowledgeable locals and the curator of marine invertebrates at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Understandably, most people looking at the photo thought they looked like mushrooms or seeds, however Sue Ellen had done a vinegar test and confirmed they were indeed calcium carbonate, so mushrooms or seeds seemed out of the question. Other suggestions ranged from urchins to discarded candies or drugs, fossilized berries, concretions from garbage left in the park, or tiny geodes. We all see through the lens of our own experience!

And then, unexpectedly, the answer appeared in my email. Will had come through, after all, having followed a hunch, based on my finding of a crayfish claw, nearby. What we have found are gastroliths! Will says “they are found in freshwater crayfish (and) are part of a system for conserving calcium used in making their exoskeletons.” He speculates that they were part of an otter's poop, which was left on the creek bank before being eroded by rain and leaving only the gastroliths behind.

Andrew Hosie of the Western Australian Museum explains on his blog that “the calcium provides strength to the exoskeleton so that it can support the animal’s body, give the claws their pinching power and to protect it from predators. As crayfish (indeed all crustaceans) grow bigger, they must periodically shed the exoskeleton and form a new one. To start a new exoskeleton from scratch would require large amounts of new calcium. The hormones that drive moulting (referred to as ecdysis) trigger calcium carbonate to be removed from the exoskeleton and starts forming a pair of these gastroliths in the stomach. After the crayfish has moulted, the gastroliths are reabsorbed and used in the strengthening of the new exoskeleton. Only freshwater crustaceans form gastroliths because unlike seawater, freshwater has very little dissolved calcium salts, so in an effort to retain calcium, crayfish form these little gastroliths, or even eat the old exoskeleton.” He also tells us that “pharmaceutical companies are actively researching the use of gastroliths to treat osteoporosis related conditions.”

Isn't it wonderful how one mysterious discovery can bring people together and open our minds?

Wild Art Exploration: One Clear Day

Such a rich and wonderful day with two groups of Wild Art kids today, that I thought I'd share it as a photo montage.

The teen group went to check out the old dump site along the Dump Road, and we saw a shimmering orange puddle where rust and oil leaches out from the dump pile.

From there we headed up to Everhard Creek, where we used spoons to harvest some clay. That was about all we had time for today, but we've hatched a plan to return next week with a bucket, and try filtering the clay.

The younger group returned to the forest village they'd begun making the week before, and carried on creating things to sell at their shops and restaurants. One group led a tour to a beaver lodge, and later became petty criminals, robbing the shops and calling the 'police' on each other. We discovered some as-yet-unidentified little calciferous things (photo included), and returned very wet and muddy - the perfect ending to a great adventure!

That's the robber escaping on the left, and his 'boss' sitting carving a stick in the shop the two of them created.

These are the unidentified little calciferous semi-spheres we found on the forest floor.

A 'fire pit'.

An abandoned cedar crown.

Cedar crowns for sale at one of the shops.

Unidentified (maybe heron?) prints.

The beaver lodge! Entrances are barely visible on the left and centre-right, behind a few large sticks.

Risk-Taking Is Essential for Learning to Be Safe

Looking at bubbles in the ice and a watery landscape underneath.

For as long as I can remember, I've been hearing mumblings of concern over the increased safety-restrictions placed on our children. We like to talk about "when we were kids" and how our lives were so much freer; so much more dangerous. "And we turned out just fine." But when it comes to our own kids we're still terrified, placing ever more layers of armour on them and keeping them ever closer, ever more restricted in their movements. We read great articles about how necessary it is for our kids to explore and take risks. And then we see them heading out without a helment, freak out, chase them down, apply helmet, and tell them not to go out of our sight. Or something like that.

I'm not immune to those struggles, as a parent. But because I teach, and am thinking every day about how to engage people I work with in healthy, dangerous play, I have the opportunity to keep reminding myself why it matters to let my children take risks.

Frozen ditches!

Last week I took a couple of groups of kids out exploring ice. We talked a lot about ice safety, how to recognize dangerous areas, and how to deal with cracking ice, to avoid falling through. We looked down and estimated the thickness of the ice based on bubbles and twigs that were frozen into and floating under the ice. We also cautiously went out on all fours and bellies, exploring the ice, knowing that it wasn't likely strong enough to stand on, but learning to gauge the danger (how deep was the water under the ice? how thick was the ice? how concentrated was our weight? was it cracking?). In some places the ice did crack, and the kids had to safely navigate away from the more dangerous areas as they discovered them. They also stomped around on some shallow areas and stomped right through some of the ice, into the mud.

I feel that this dangerous play is essential learning - it enables the kids to take risks in relative safety and to learn from them. This is not only essential for wilderness activities, but also for life in general, since so much of what we learn requires risk, and it's nice to be able to mitigate the severity of the risks from a place of personal understanding. I feel this leads to greater safety, and in my experience with teaching I have definitely seen that the more cautious risks children take, the more confident they become, and the less severe their stumbles are, when they make them.

PS: Ever hear of belly hockey? The correct rink for this is a 2-inch thick layer of ice over a couple of feet of murky creek water. Grab yourself some nice sticks and a chunk of wood for a puck... and have at it!

Community Building In a Forest Village

A Forest Village is something that happens often in Wild Art. After a certain amount of exploring, kids usually between about seven and twelve years old get industrious. Some begin converting whatever materials they find around themselves into decor, clothing, 'food', weapons, or other commodities, and selling them in pop-up shops. Some spend minutes or hours building all manner of lodgings, theatres, town-halls, shops, and other useful structures. Some offer classes, sharing skills they've brought with them or just discovered, while others offer tours of the local mushrooms or 'fancy places'. When necessity dictates, they build bridges and ramps, doors, 'fire pits', and ladders, and often go into business procuring the supplies for these projects and selling them to each other for various combinations of stone, stick, and leaf currencies. Safes, stashes and banks happen. Even robbers happen. And often we end up having police, mayors, town criers and all sorts of other interesting positions. Today I was instructed to be the person who tells everybody else "when it's night time - and do it at least twice!!" But I forgot the second time, because by then I was a detective, wearing a mustache of a moss we call 'old man's beard'. I was on the trail of some robbers, but when their exploits made the rest of the villagers too angry, I called a town meeting and became a spectator as the group of young villagers sorted out what was actually a genuine conflict quite ably. The robbers became spies.

A Forest Village is a wonderful place to work out real-world problems, and to make real-world discoveries. With a lack of imposed structure, kids' imaginations are the source for everything. It's amazing to me what deep issues a group of primary kids can discover, confront, and solve with the innate compassion, dignity, and reason that has not yet been trained out of them. The forest is a dynamic yet safe vessel for these explorations, and eventually the skills developed here will become a strong foundation for those who will inherit our communities.

There Are No Theoretical Children

Photo by my son, as published on his photography blog.

Recently I attended a wonderful training session with Arthur Brock and Eric "Bear" Ludwig, founders of New York's Agile Learning Centers. During this session, Arthur explained that "there is no such thing as theoretical children".

You know those 'theoretical children' parents and teachers sometimes ask about in terms of  'what if a child is afraid to ...'? Those kids don't exist. Either they are in fact real children, in which case they're not theoretical, and need to be discussed in terms of their actual individual situations, their relationships and history and needs... or they're irrelevant, because they don't exist. As a teacher, parent, director of a program, etc. you can't worry for (or even worse, design a program for) children who don't exist, because their individual nature and needs are totally unknown quantities, and you can't prepare for something undefined.

I thought this was a wonderful direction of thought.

We in the education world design programs with theoretical children in mind. We consider the children we know and have known who might benefit from our plans, and we expect to modify them as we get to know the real children who participate. As parents we also consider theoretical children. We read articles, gather parenting advice, follow programs and regimens we hope will help us parent well. We adjust when we see things going awry, and we seek new advice.

But it's easy to lose sight of the needs of our real children. You know how if you've grown up being warned that dogs bite, you may not recognize a gentle dog when you see one? Well maybe when I believed that all children need a hug when they get home, I didn't recognize that my son really needs some space first. For example.

And about my son. Let's say there's this theoretical child. He's made friends with some people in the grade above him, and really wants to participate with those kids in the activity they're doing. But we assume, as educators or parents with all the theoretical children in mind, that the group as a whole will likely be served best if we put him in the group with kids his own age. This is because, first of all, he needs to learn the things they're learning before progressing onto the subject matter the older kids are learning, and secondly, he'll make friends there anyway. Right? Except he's not a theoretical child. He's my son. We've tried that experiment, based on the values ascribed to the theoretical child, and it bombed.

Yesterday we tried again. My son is now attending a new program, with all new kids. And guess what? He's made friends with some kids who are older than he is! And guess what? Once again he wanted to join them in their science and social studies program, instead of the one for the kids his own age. But here's the big news: they let him do it! 

Cut to yesterday afternoon: I was waiting to pick up my daughter when I saw my beaming son, confidence shooting out his head like steam from a steam engine, come striding down an East Vancouver street alone for the first time ever in his life. He was smiling with that kind of vague powerful smile that says 'I am happy to be me in the world, today'. He discovered me waiting there in the car, hopped in energetically, and proceeded to tell me about his day. He said he spent all morning talking about science with a bunch of people who also wanted to talk about science. He spent all of a delightfully long lunch time chatting and playing drawing games with his new friends. He spent all afternoon doing a native studies program that he says was "really interesting". He doesn't even know what grades those kids are in. He's just with them, being himself. And that was what he needed to find his confidence again.

This week my real child was given a voice. He had his own real needs acknowledged and met. His needs trumped the needs of theoretical children, and everybody won. After all, there are no theoretical children.

Kids, Unsupervised

Once upon a time, when both of my kids were under ten years old, they went exploring around our local municipal hall while their father attended a meeting there. They explored all the way over to one of the local shops, where the shopkeeper asked them where their parents were. They told her their Pappa was in the chapel (not accurate - they knew where he was, but had used the wrong name for the building), and she asked them to wait while she called the police. She only meant to protect them - I know that. But they were terrified! They recounted a harrowing tale of running away from her, being chased by her and trying desperately to hide as they made their way back to the municipal hall. Once there, the police arrived and spoke to their father about (as my son tells it) "not letting his children run wild". The point was, they were never in danger. Terrified - yes. But only because of being "helped" by someone who genuinely was worried about them.

What good is it doing us to harbour such deep fears for our children? And more importantly, what harm is it doing them?

I work with many kids who come laden with fears about the woods. It can take a few brief wilderness adventures to develop the skills and knowledge they need to overcome those fears. Gross motor skills like clambering over logs, climbing up and down trees and bluffs safely, and hiking long distances help them to feel confident about the terrain. Cognitive skills like assessing the safety of their environment and activities can take a little more time, but allow them to feel confident in their own well-being. Observational skills like noticing changes in the weather, hearing wind or animals, noticing the stability of limbs or rocks they climb on... these things give them confidence too. And they need this confidence not just to feel safe, but to be safe. If you don't hear the bear coming, are afraid to navigate the terrain around you, have no understanding of common bear-encounter protocol, is it any wonder that you might be afraid of the bear? And if you are afraid of the bear, the bear will be afraid of you... and we know how well that scenario goes.

The city is different, but also similar. Recently I took three pre-teens to a movie in town. I thought: surely they've been here often enough that they are gaining some confidence and can do it alone. One bus, one corner to walk around, six blocks and into the theatre. Same route back home again. But I went with them anyway. I noticed that they kept an eye on me. They didn't watch where the bus was taking them, nor when they should get off - they just followed me. All the way into the theatre. So on the way home I asked them to lead the way back to the bus: six blocks, cross the road, get back on a bus. They were bewildered! It took them about five minutes to figure out which direction to go back (eventually with the help of a city map that I pointed them towards). They became confused multiple times on the way back to the bus, had difficulty figuring out where to take the bus, and it took us over half an hour to walk those six blocks. I don't want to deride them. It was their first time, and I thought they all dealt with the situation I handed them quite gracefully. But this experience taught me that my kids need more independence.

No problem! I thought. They're unschooling in the city now! While my kids used to be the ones confident in the wilderness, now they're going to get confident in the city! And off we went. I am still accompanying them to various locations for this first week, to help them gain the confidence they need to navigate without me. After all, they are attending in various locations near some questionable drug and prostitution hotspots. Not that I have a problem with my kids being there - it's just part of our city that they need to learn to be safe in. They need skills like staying in populated areas, walking together, assessing strangers who might approach them to determine risk level, and how to maintain a strong sense of morale and dignity in a place where so many have been robbed of it.

So yesterday I received an email in red letters from my fourteen-year-old son that pleaded, "pick up time is 2:45!!!!!!!! Not 3!!!! Otherwise i'll be abandined on the street with no place to go." It was a mixture of humourous hyperbole and some genuine concern.

I'm not terribly worried about my son standing alone on a city sidewalk - but he is. And that is the problem. At the root of all our fears is the unlikely idea that they may be abducted or harmed by another person (or in the woods, an animal). Think about this for a moment. A person trying to recruit or abduct a child for nefarious purposes is going to look for a vulnerable child. I don't want my child to be that vulnerable child. That doesn't mean I need to hover over him and shadow him everywhere he goes until he's too dependent on me to look after himself. That means I need to let go of him and let him become independent.

And in the much more likely event that my children will be harmed by their own error, either of physical skill (as in falling off a cliff or crashing their bike) or of judgement (as in drugs, traffic accidents, or food poisoning) I would like them to have the opportunity to develop the skills they need. I saw many ambulances in town yesterday. Most were for presumed drug-related tragedies. One was for a traffic accident, and another I believe was domestic. These are the things I need to protect my children from. And for this they need to go out in the world without me and develop some wisdom.

Being unsupervised may unsettle kids, but it also gives them the opportunity and the need to develop some skills and look after themselves. And further, that unsettled feeling might kick-start their own determination to take stock of their situation and responsibility for their own safety.

I will always be here waiting with my arms open wide when they need my love or advice - or even just a non-judgmental ride home from an unfamiliar street or a bad trip. My dear friend said that having children is like having your heart walking around in the world separate from you. So as parents we can't just hold on and stifle those hearts until they wither; we have to be willing to pick up the pieces again and again and again.