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67: Learning From Unschooling During Isolation w/ Tiersa McQueen
13 Plays5 years ago
Our podcast today features Tiersa McQueen, an avid homeschooler who raises her four children in an unschooling philosophy. Tiersa and her husband both work opposing shifts to allow this to occur. Tiersa frequently posts on her Twitter and Instagram handles as MotherBae, critiquing traditional education, offering support as an unschooler, and demonstrating how we can adopt unschooling among our children. I invited Tiersa to talk about this pedagogy and offer advice for educators who are now supporting their students in their home environments, as well as many who are raising their own children alongside this.
GUESTS
Tiersa McQueen, avid homeschooler and unschooler who posts under the handle @MotherBae to critique traditional education and represent Black married moms who unschool
RESOURCES
- HRP COVID-19 Resources and Charities
- Tiersa McQueen on Twitter (@tiersaj)
- Tiersa McQueen on Instagram (mother_bae_i)
- Tiersa McQueen on YouTube
FURTHER LISTENING
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Gratitude
00:00:04
Speaker
We want to let everyone know that we see you in the work that you're doing during COVID-19.
00:00:09
Speaker
Although we sincerely appreciate all the continued support that we receive on Patreon, we recognize that in these uneasy times that both Nick and I are privileged to work in salaried, stable positions.
00:00:19
Speaker
On our website at humanrestorationproject.org slash COVID-19, you will find a list of helpful resources and if possible, a list of organizations that need our support during these troubled yet hopeful times.
Meet Tiersa McQueen - Unschooling Advocate
00:00:49
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Season 3, Episode 25 of Things Fall Apart, our podcast of the Human Restoration Project.
00:00:55
Speaker
My name is Chris McNutt, and I'm a 9th grade digital design and media instructor from Ohio.
00:01:01
Speaker
Our podcast today features Tiersa McQueen, an avid homeschooler who raises her four children in an unschooling philosophy.
00:01:07
Speaker
Tiersa and her husband both work opposing shifts to allow this to occur.
00:01:11
Speaker
Tiersa frequently posts on her Twitter and Instagram handles as Mother Bay,
00:01:15
Speaker
critiquing traditional education, offering support as an unschooler, and demonstrating how we can adopt unschooling among our children.
Understanding Unschooling Philosophy
00:01:22
Speaker
I invited Tirsa to talk about this pedagogy and offer advice for educators who are now supporting their students and their home environments, as well as many who are raising their own children alongside this.
00:01:34
Speaker
And I don't want my kids to be on Twitter.
00:01:36
Speaker
That's the reason why I started like
00:01:39
Speaker
speaking for them.
00:01:40
Speaker
Whenever I have an opportunity to like just get their voice across, I try to make it as authentic as possible because I don't want people to think, well, she could just be saying that, you know, I don't think unschooling works because, you know, she's just saying what the best possible outcomes are.
00:01:55
Speaker
So that's why I ask them all the time, like, okay, what do you think about that?
00:01:58
Speaker
And then I post it on Twitter because I think it's important for the actual unschooler voice to be the one that comes across.
00:02:07
Speaker
Not so much me as a parent, I already have my education.
00:02:10
Speaker
I was telling my kids that all the time.
00:02:11
Speaker
I already have my education, still learning, but I'm, you know, I'm out in the working world and people need to hear from you.
00:02:17
Speaker
The reason why we started this in the first place was because I just had this idea of my children as actual people.
00:02:26
Speaker
I know that sounds like a very benign, it sounds very benign to me.
00:02:30
Speaker
It sounds like very, a child is a person, but that's not how we are conditioned.
00:02:36
Speaker
in society as parents or as educators to think of children.
00:02:41
Speaker
We don't think of children as actual human beings.
00:02:43
Speaker
We don't think of them as, as people.
00:02:45
Speaker
We don't respect them.
00:02:47
Speaker
We don't give them the same respect that we give adults.
00:02:50
Speaker
So from the time that my kids were really small and just by talking with them and observing them, I started to realize like, Oh, this is an actual person with an actual point of view.
00:03:03
Speaker
even though they're little, even though they're small, they're just trying to figure out the world.
00:03:08
Speaker
And I started to think of them as just new humans.
00:03:12
Speaker
So I was just thinking of them as like, if I went somewhere that I was foreign to, I was foreign to a country and I didn't know anything, I want someone to treat me with respect.
00:03:24
Speaker
I just don't know.
00:03:25
Speaker
It's not that I'm stupid.
00:03:27
Speaker
It's not that I, you know, that I'm trying to mess this up.
00:03:31
Speaker
I just don't know.
00:03:31
Speaker
I need someone to show me
00:03:34
Speaker
How, what the customs are, what's the culture, how do I do things?
00:03:37
Speaker
And I just started to think of them as that, as new humans in the world.
00:03:41
Speaker
They're not stupid.
00:03:43
Speaker
They're not dumb.
00:03:43
Speaker
They just don't know.
00:03:45
Speaker
So when I, once I got that idea in my head, everything just like kind of spiraled from
Transition from Traditional Schooling to Homeschooling
00:03:50
Speaker
there.
00:03:50
Speaker
I started looking for more information that was like in that same train of thought.
00:03:56
Speaker
And that was like a direct line to unschooling and just living our lives that way.
00:04:03
Speaker
my son, when he was about in third grade, he's 14 now, he said, I don't want to go to school anymore.
00:04:10
Speaker
And it was like a shock to me because he really was good at school.
00:04:15
Speaker
Like he got straight A's and teachers loved him.
00:04:17
Speaker
But the reason why he didn't go to school anymore was because he felt like he didn't have any say.
00:04:23
Speaker
He didn't have any control.
00:04:25
Speaker
And he was really like screaming out for that.
00:04:28
Speaker
He wanted to
00:04:30
Speaker
have some autonomy and the straw that broke the camel camel's back for him was once one kid did something in the class and the whole class got in trouble and he thought that was just the biggest injustice in the whole entire world.
00:04:44
Speaker
Like he could not get over it.
00:04:46
Speaker
Um, so then when the next school year started after, so when they school year ended,
00:04:51
Speaker
I said, well, you don't have to go to school.
00:04:53
Speaker
We can try homeschooling.
00:04:54
Speaker
And he was like, fine, great.
00:04:55
Speaker
So then for the whole summer, he was happy.
00:04:58
Speaker
And, but I thought he was going to get over it.
00:05:00
Speaker
I thought, okay, when the school year comes up again, you know, he'll forget about that.
00:05:04
Speaker
And then he'll just go back to school.
00:05:06
Speaker
Well, the school year came up and I said, okay, well, let's get ready for school.
00:05:09
Speaker
And he said, what are you talking about?
00:05:11
Speaker
We are decided that we were homeschooling.
00:05:14
Speaker
And I said, oh, okay.
00:05:15
Speaker
So we're really doing this.
Homeschooling with Working Parents
00:05:17
Speaker
And then that was like the first, like,
00:05:20
Speaker
year that we said, okay, well, I guess we're doing it then.
00:05:23
Speaker
And it was just that simple.
00:05:25
Speaker
It was just like, let me just follow these kids' leads and see where it takes us.
00:05:31
Speaker
And the more I got into homeschooling, the more I got into unschooling, the less I heard my voice within that community.
00:05:40
Speaker
So I really started to talk about it more on Twitter because I just wanted to have people see that
00:05:50
Speaker
there are people like me out here doing it.
00:05:53
Speaker
Like I'm a black woman.
00:05:54
Speaker
I have four children, me and my husband both work.
00:05:57
Speaker
That's, that's something that I didn't see in homeschooling community a lot, which was two working parents.
00:06:04
Speaker
And a lot of times people say, well, I don't know how I would ever make this work.
00:06:07
Speaker
I want to be a homeschooler, but you know, I have to work.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:11
Speaker
I work too.
00:06:12
Speaker
And my husband works too.
00:06:13
Speaker
And I don't work from home and he doesn't work from home.
00:06:16
Speaker
We work separate shifts so that we could homeschool our kids.
00:06:20
Speaker
But I just wanted to show people that that was an option, especially black people like me, who I feel like are usually the most disenfranchised within the schooling community.
00:06:32
Speaker
They are the ones that feel like they have the least amount of options.
00:06:36
Speaker
And I just wanted them to know that's not true because I'm doing it.
Unschooling as a Learning Approach
00:06:40
Speaker
That's what started me on the whole journey.
00:06:43
Speaker
That's what started me talking about it and inserting my voice into this space just because I didn't hear it.
00:06:49
Speaker
Your message highly resonates with me.
00:06:51
Speaker
I mean, the organization is literally called the Human Restoration Project.
00:06:55
Speaker
But that idea of taking away all those labels and barriers to learning that we typically find within the education system, in your case, it is probably the most obvious path to get there, which is just doing it yourself and avoiding the institution altogether.
00:07:10
Speaker
Whereas educators who are listening in, for the most part, I think, are attempting to do...
00:07:16
Speaker
at least some of what you're doing inside of the education system, kind of like rebelling from the inside.
00:07:23
Speaker
It's no small feat, just as unschooling is no small feat.
00:07:26
Speaker
I'm sure that's a crazy demanding task to both raise four children in addition to teaching them, in addition to working.
00:07:35
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:07:36
Speaker
Conceptually, it's really interesting to note that there are a lot of misconceptions surrounding unschooling and homeschooling and what that looks like.
00:07:45
Speaker
I know recently you were talking about the convention of religious homeschooling.
00:07:49
Speaker
It's typically what people think of when they think of homeschooling, why their kids are not in school.
00:07:53
Speaker
Could you briefly talk about what it is that your students do in unschooling?
00:07:58
Speaker
What is like their day to day?
00:08:00
Speaker
Unschooling is just a philosophy.
00:08:03
Speaker
So I'm an unschooler too.
00:08:06
Speaker
I'm an adult, but I'm unschooling.
00:08:08
Speaker
It just means that I'm a lifelong learner, self-directed, and I learn things based off what I'm interested in.
00:08:15
Speaker
So what the kids do, that's what they do.
00:08:17
Speaker
They learn through their daily life activities.
00:08:22
Speaker
Um, we as unschoolers believe that every single thing that they're doing has educational value.
00:08:30
Speaker
So we don't separate things into subjects.
00:08:33
Speaker
Um, just like right now, my daughter, she's taken up baking again.
00:08:37
Speaker
She loves baking, but she's since we've been, um, quarantined or isolating, she's taking up baking even more.
00:08:45
Speaker
She bakes all the time, but when she bakes, I mean,
00:08:49
Speaker
We're talking about, you know, finding a recipe, we're researching and reading the recipe and then math, you know, the, all of the fractions and everything that goes into baking and the science.
00:09:03
Speaker
Don't forget the, you know, the leavening agents.
00:09:05
Speaker
And so when we, when we think about unschooling, baking and cooking is like a perfect example because, you know, it's all of the subjects in, in one, right?
00:09:18
Speaker
And it's also like preparing something with your hands.
00:09:21
Speaker
It's a project.
00:09:22
Speaker
And then presenting it.
00:09:23
Speaker
So that's basically what the kids do every day.
00:09:27
Speaker
They find things to do, but they're just living life.
00:09:31
Speaker
So like my son, my daughter, she likes to do just what she wants to do.
00:09:37
Speaker
So she's more of a fly by the seat of her pants.
00:09:40
Speaker
Whatever interests her that day, that's what she's going to do, whether it be music or, you know,
00:09:46
Speaker
I don't know, just like some science thing.
00:09:49
Speaker
She gets into like earth science.
00:09:50
Speaker
Sometimes she's into like turtles or animals or whatever.
00:09:55
Speaker
Whatever she feels like doing that day, that's what she will research that day.
00:09:59
Speaker
My older son, he's 14.
00:10:00
Speaker
He's into engineering.
00:10:03
Speaker
Completely self-directed.
00:10:04
Speaker
You know, we didn't suggest it.
00:10:06
Speaker
He just became interested in that.
00:10:08
Speaker
And he's way more structured.
00:10:10
Speaker
Like he has a schedule that he does every single day.
00:10:16
Speaker
that he made up on his own, you know, and my, it goes by days of the week.
00:10:22
Speaker
So like on Monday, he'll do engineering for a big chunk of the day.
00:10:27
Speaker
And on Tuesday he studies Japanese.
00:10:29
Speaker
So he'll do that for a big chunk of the day.
00:10:32
Speaker
And then I don't know what all the schedule is for the whole week.
00:10:35
Speaker
I'm going to be completely honest because.
00:10:38
Speaker
Another tenant that I follow is that they're learning is none of my business.
00:10:42
Speaker
you know, I I'm, I'm here and available for you, but this is your life.
00:10:47
Speaker
This is your path.
00:10:47
Speaker
This is your journey.
00:10:48
Speaker
And I'm not here to tell you what to do.
00:10:51
Speaker
I'm just here to provide you the resources to do it.
00:10:54
Speaker
So that is, you know, that's the kind of the guiding force that I live by so that I can give them the trust and the, you know, freedom that they need to, um, find their own path.
00:11:06
Speaker
Um, but I know on Fridays he just does, um,
00:11:11
Speaker
like reading fiction books.
00:11:12
Speaker
He likes to, that's like his day off is just, you know, finding a book that he likes and reading that just for fun.
00:11:20
Speaker
So those are like my older two.
00:11:22
Speaker
Those are like their day to day.
00:11:23
Speaker
My younger
Unschooling vs Traditional Schooling During Pandemic
00:11:24
Speaker
one, their day to day is most, they they'll find just the most random things to do.
00:11:29
Speaker
Like they love playing video games.
00:11:31
Speaker
One likes Minecraft.
00:11:33
Speaker
They're both nine.
00:11:34
Speaker
One likes Minecraft a lot.
00:11:36
Speaker
The other one I'm,
00:11:37
Speaker
completely honest, I don't know what kind of video games he plays, but he likes to play video games.
00:11:42
Speaker
But they also like to do things like stop motion animation.
00:11:48
Speaker
They like to get their toys out and like they'll borrow my phone and then do stop motion animation and they'll show me their projects.
00:11:54
Speaker
They love doing stuff like that.
00:11:55
Speaker
I was earlier today, one of my twins asked me to play games with him.
00:12:00
Speaker
So we played Connect Four and we played Guess Who.
00:12:04
Speaker
But that's just basically what their days look like.
00:12:06
Speaker
Their days look like
00:12:07
Speaker
Living life, just what kids would do.
00:12:10
Speaker
I mean, it's, I would think that someone who's unfamiliar with unschooling would look at their day-to-day life as what their kids do during summer vacation.
00:12:19
Speaker
That's basically what my kids do all day.
00:12:22
Speaker
Every day is what kids normal school kids do during summer vacation.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really interesting build into the next question I was going to ask you, which is how educators are now seeing themselves as quote unquote homeschoolers for their own kids.
00:12:39
Speaker
I don't know if I could be entirely wrong, but I don't know if the majority of educators going back to raise their own children during.
00:12:47
Speaker
this crisis see their philosophy of education in line with yours.
00:12:51
Speaker
I think that it's a lot more structured because that's how the classroom typically tends to be.
00:12:55
Speaker
Do you see the change from basically people going from in the classroom to out of the classroom, almost being forcibly homeschooled as the same thing as what you're doing, or is it something else entirely?
00:13:09
Speaker
I think that a lot of the benefits that the
00:13:13
Speaker
homeschoolers enjoy, they are getting to enjoy during this time.
00:13:17
Speaker
Like their kids don't have to ask to go to the bathroom.
00:13:20
Speaker
They can go to the refrigerator anytime and get a snack.
00:13:23
Speaker
Um, and then a lot of it, they have time.
00:13:25
Speaker
They can do things at their own pace, hopefully.
00:13:28
Speaker
Um, but it's during this time, it's a lot more, um, intervention from outside of the home that comes in and is telling these new homeschoolers
00:13:40
Speaker
or COVID-19 homeschoolers, I don't know what a correct term would be, what to do.
00:13:45
Speaker
And that is a departure from what we do.
00:13:48
Speaker
We don't have someone that comes in from outside and gives us instruction or tells us these are the things that you have to do on a daily basis or, you know, you have to hit these markers and read this book or do these math projects.
00:14:04
Speaker
We don't have that.
00:14:05
Speaker
So I think that that's something that's different is that you have –
00:14:10
Speaker
a entity from outside coming in and instructing you on what you should be doing with your kids every day.
00:14:16
Speaker
And sometimes that's still strict.
00:14:19
Speaker
You know, I've heard, I've read a lot of Twitter feeds where people were saying that they can't even keep up with the demands, um, that that's coming from the school district.
00:14:27
Speaker
And that's very different than even homeschoolers that would do traditional like school at home.
00:14:33
Speaker
They don't even have that type of restriction.
00:14:37
Speaker
I'm hoping that, um, a lot of these parents
00:14:40
Speaker
will relax.
00:14:42
Speaker
I think that this is the perfect time to just be school a little bit and just relax and understand that these kids aren't losing anything.
00:14:52
Speaker
If anything, they're gaining by this opportunity to not be inside of the institution of school and to, you know, follow their interest.
00:15:03
Speaker
They have an opportunity to learn based off of what they're interested in.
00:15:07
Speaker
And I really think that they need to, um, their parents need to give them opportunities to do that because it's very important.
00:15:13
Speaker
And I think that they'll see what I hope.
00:15:17
Speaker
My hope is that they'll gain some confidence in their children and they'll gain confidence in their self, um, that they can do this.
00:15:26
Speaker
It's interesting that you bring that up because I don't have children of my own, but part of the silver lining of this crisis has been that I've gotten to see more of my students in a sense.
00:15:37
Speaker
I know more about their home lives because the way that we've changed our classroom is pretty much what you just said.
00:15:44
Speaker
Their quote-unquote assignment is doing something that they like doing and then talking about it.
00:15:49
Speaker
Because they have more time and space at home to manage these things,
00:15:53
Speaker
And it's less structured.
00:15:55
Speaker
Ironically, I find them doing more.
00:15:58
Speaker
which is in line with progressive education in general, giving them time, space, the ability to self-direct.
00:16:05
Speaker
Given what you see, what advice would you have for educators who now are kind of moving into your world?
00:16:12
Speaker
And in many ways, public educators are being told by their districts, hey, you need to do something for your students.
00:16:19
Speaker
You need to teach them something.
00:16:20
Speaker
What might that look like and how would you go about structuring that?
00:16:24
Speaker
That's a very difficult question because unschooling, like I said, is more of a mindset than it's the way that you go about your day.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's the thought process behind education.
00:16:38
Speaker
It's more of a theory than an actual practice.
00:16:41
Speaker
I don't unschool my kids.
00:16:43
Speaker
You know, they're unschoolers, but I'm not unschooling them, if that makes any sense.
00:16:50
Speaker
The thing that
00:16:51
Speaker
Um, I would suggest that the one thing that I would suggest to teachers as they move into this new space that trust, you're going to have to trust them.
00:17:04
Speaker
I think that that's the, that's the main, that's like the cornerstone of unschooling is trust.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I understand that that is a difficult thing because that's not traditionally what you see in schools.
00:17:16
Speaker
People don't trust the students.
00:17:18
Speaker
I mean, I mean, that's just that the school is based on a lack of trust for students.
00:17:26
Speaker
So that is the thing that we're going to have to do.
00:17:29
Speaker
And I think that that's, this is a perfect opportunity to do it because they're not there.
00:17:34
Speaker
So this is an opportunity to trust them more, give them a little bit more freedom, give them a little bit more leeway and see what they come back with.
00:17:44
Speaker
And I, I guarantee you're going to be surprised.
00:17:47
Speaker
And a lot of times though,
00:17:49
Speaker
when you're in this process of like, I went from structured to unstructured, there's a lot of downtime and it's because people don't know what to do.
Challenges in Traditional Education
00:17:58
Speaker
You know, they never had this freedom before.
00:18:01
Speaker
So now that they have the freedom to do all the things they wanted to do, they tend to like, not what it looks like.
00:18:07
Speaker
They're not doing anything, but that's not true.
00:18:11
Speaker
They're just, they're gathering their thoughts.
00:18:13
Speaker
They're figuring it out.
00:18:15
Speaker
And that takes that time, that like interim, it takes trust.
00:18:20
Speaker
It takes trust that they're going to come back around, that they are going to be interested in reading, that they are going to be interested in math.
00:18:27
Speaker
They are going to be interested in all of the things that you want them to be interested in.
00:18:32
Speaker
They are going to get there.
00:18:33
Speaker
They just need that time.
00:18:35
Speaker
They need the time to breathe.
00:18:37
Speaker
They need the time to figure it out, figure out what it means to be self-directed, because that's the problem with
00:18:43
Speaker
you know, traditional schooling is because if, when you control someone, they don't know how to make decisions for themselves.
00:18:51
Speaker
And that is the part that they're learning right now is how to make a decision for themselves, how to get up in the morning and find something to do when, without anyone saying, without, you know, listening to a bell or, you know, having to catch the bus, how do you get up in the morning and direct yourself and find things to do?
00:19:11
Speaker
This is an opportunity for them to find that intrinsic motivation that they don't have because they go to school.
00:19:19
Speaker
So I think that that would be my main point that I would try to get across to teachers is that you're going to have to gain some trust.
00:19:26
Speaker
I don't know how to suggest that you do that or what that's going to look like, but that's what you need to do.
00:19:34
Speaker
I mean, I agree with you wholeheartedly because in my case, one of the most frustrating things about being a teacher is that we are restricted to some form of schedule.
00:19:43
Speaker
And as a result, you know, a lot of my students at eight o'clock in the morning are not exactly stoked to be there.
00:19:48
Speaker
And I get that.
00:19:49
Speaker
And there's still this obligation like, hey, you're in this time right now, you should be doing something.
00:19:54
Speaker
Whereas now, interestingly enough, because we're not coming into the building at all, I get so many questions at around like 6 or 7 p.m., which is great because there are more questions than I would have ever gotten from my first period class had it been 8 o'clock in the morning.
00:20:09
Speaker
And there's a lot more of like deep inquiry questions.
00:20:13
Speaker
So I teach digital design and media and I get a lot of questions over like, how do I Photoshop this or how do I make this into a book?
00:20:19
Speaker
And a lot of these like really cool questions that I wish I would see more of during the school day.
00:20:24
Speaker
But ironically, it takes a crisis for us to start rethinking about how a school schedule looks and what free time looks like and what self-determination theory would look like in a public school setting.
00:20:35
Speaker
Is there anything else that you would want to throw out as potentially things that you feel like need to be shared?
00:20:41
Speaker
I mean, it just all comes back to trust for me.
00:20:45
Speaker
It really does.
00:20:46
Speaker
I mean, I get the...
00:20:49
Speaker
all of the things that the teachers are up against, I understand it.
00:20:53
Speaker
Like I used to be a substitute teacher.
00:20:55
Speaker
I mean, and I was for years and I had my own classroom because it's such a lack of teachers.
00:21:00
Speaker
So, you know, it's, that's, it's unfortunate, but that is one of the reasons why I knew that I could be, I could let my children do this because I saw firsthand and I taught middle school, which is a very difficult time.
Respecting Children as Human Beings
00:21:19
Speaker
I understood that maybe if these kids just had some more sleep, they wouldn't be, you know, so upset.
00:21:29
Speaker
Maybe if they could eat right now, like I just, just basic human things.
00:21:34
Speaker
And I think that along with trust, we need to give the students a lot more grace and understanding that this isn't easy.
00:21:46
Speaker
What they're, what we're asking them to do isn't easy.
00:21:49
Speaker
It's not easy for me to sit in a classroom or a lecture that I'm not interested in, or at a time when I'm sleepy or I'm hungry, you know, it's not easy for me to do.
00:22:01
Speaker
And I'm a grown woman.
00:22:02
Speaker
So we're asking them to do things that adults have a hard time doing, and we're expecting them to do it perfectly, you know?
00:22:11
Speaker
So, and I think that that's, it's unfair.
00:22:14
Speaker
And I think that we need to get
00:22:16
Speaker
give our children a little bit more grace and to look at them as human beings.
00:22:25
Speaker
I know this seems very simple and it seems obvious, but I don't think it is.
00:22:30
Speaker
I don't think that people give children that, you know, that humanity that they deserve, you know?
00:22:37
Speaker
And I understand that it's hard.
00:22:40
Speaker
I do.
00:22:41
Speaker
I have four children.
00:22:42
Speaker
I mean, I have a 14-year-old
00:22:44
Speaker
a 12-year-old and two nine-year-olds, and they're not always nice.
00:22:49
Speaker
They're cranky sometimes, and they get anxious, and they get hungry, and they get frustrated.
00:22:55
Speaker
But so do I. So I think that that's something that I think we need more of, just in general, in teaching and parenting, just in the way that we interact with and relate to children.
Socialization in Homeschooling
00:23:13
Speaker
I think that we need more of that.
00:23:14
Speaker
And also I would say during this, during this time, I've seen a lot of people be anxious about socialization during the time.
00:23:23
Speaker
And that's a big thing that people worry about, about homeschooling.
00:23:26
Speaker
Like they like, Oh, I think that it's great, but I worry about my kids being socialized.
00:23:31
Speaker
And I don't, you know, I don't even socialization as in, you know, we put our children in a classroom with full of children, their same age.
00:23:41
Speaker
from the same zip code and we say that they're being socialized.
00:23:46
Speaker
I don't believe that that's socialization, just in general.
00:23:50
Speaker
But even if it was and the kids were missing out on something because they don't have that right now, I would say that you shouldn't worry about it because you're there.
00:24:01
Speaker
The adult is there.
00:24:03
Speaker
And this is an opportunity for you to talk to your children and get to know them and for them to get to know you.
00:24:11
Speaker
I mean, as long as you're there and you are talking to them, you're socializing.
00:24:16
Speaker
It doesn't have to be with a child that another child interacts with.
00:24:22
Speaker
It can be with an adult.
00:24:24
Speaker
You know, my kids, my son, he's 14.
00:24:26
Speaker
He goes to chess club at the library and he always jokes that their chess club at the library is nine, nine-year-olds and 90-year-olds.
00:24:34
Speaker
Those are the people that are at chess club.
00:24:37
Speaker
And so he gets to talk with and play with
00:24:40
Speaker
elderly people when he's at chess and he talks to them and they talk to him and he, he becomes friends with these, with these older gentlemen that play in the chess club at the library.
00:24:51
Speaker
And it allows him to, you know, get a different perspective and, and it makes him, you know, better in the world.
00:25:00
Speaker
He recently had a job interview at the grocery store and he was very comfortable speaking with the adults.
00:25:07
Speaker
He wasn't nervous at all because that's his life.
00:25:10
Speaker
He speaks with adults.
00:25:11
Speaker
He understands how to talk to adults.
00:25:12
Speaker
He doesn't see it as a hierarchy where he's supposed to be, you know, nervous around adults or wait for his turn to talk.
00:25:21
Speaker
No, he just jumps right in there and starts talking just like an adult would.
00:25:25
Speaker
So I think that this is an opportunity for children who generally don't have that time that they get to speak to adults, just like peers.
00:25:36
Speaker
to have that with their parents.
00:25:38
Speaker
And I know that's going to be radical for some people because they don't think of themselves on the same level as children.
00:25:43
Speaker
They think of themselves as higher than children, but that's fine.
00:25:48
Speaker
You can still have that mentality, but just have a conversation with the kid.
00:25:53
Speaker
Just take some time out every single day and talk to them and let them talk to you.
00:25:58
Speaker
And then that's the same.
00:26:00
Speaker
They're still having a social interaction that they generally probably don't have.
00:26:06
Speaker
because we're really short on time, especially when kids are in school, they're short on time.
00:26:11
Speaker
And people are getting, parents are getting more time with their kids probably than they have since their children were toddlers.
00:26:20
Speaker
So they should take advantage of it and talk to them and get to know them and let them get to know you.
Unschooling as Natural Parenting
00:26:26
Speaker
And I think that that will be good in lieu of
00:26:30
Speaker
the socialization that they would have gotten in school.
00:26:33
Speaker
Sure.
00:26:34
Speaker
Especially considering in middle school, there's a lot of things that can really warp how a child sees the world.
00:26:41
Speaker
I know personally, I never went to middle school.
00:26:43
Speaker
I skipped like 90 days of school or something.
00:26:46
Speaker
So it's a rough time to be a kid.
00:26:49
Speaker
If you don't mind, I'm going to sneak in a philosophical question for you because I think it caters to exactly what you're saying, which is when you go through school, school in many ways via the teachers, via the curriculum, via just the rank and file and labeling of students reinforces the dominant culture.
00:27:08
Speaker
Do you see unschooling as part of a greater movement to...
00:27:15
Speaker
almost like restructure the literal societal fabric?
00:27:18
Speaker
That's like a really like crazy question, but I see it almost like a small piece.
00:27:23
Speaker
Well, I don't see it as a restructuring of the culture.
00:27:30
Speaker
I mean, I understand why that line that you can draw to that.
00:27:35
Speaker
I get it.
00:27:36
Speaker
But for me, unschooling is just, it's going back.
00:27:43
Speaker
You know, it's not, I mean, it's restructuring, I guess that is a good word to use.
00:27:49
Speaker
But for me, it's just going back to basics.
00:27:52
Speaker
Because school is the experiment.
00:27:54
Speaker
We didn't always do school the way that we do it now.
00:27:59
Speaker
What I'm doing as an unschooler is what people did forever before school became a thing, you know?
00:28:07
Speaker
And so for me, school is the experiment.
00:28:11
Speaker
School is the
00:28:12
Speaker
restructuring of society and unschooling as a return to nature unschooling as a return to what feels good what feels natural what comes naturally as a parent just guiding your child just teaching them as that's just an extension of parenting instead of outsourcing that part of parenting to the state to teachers
00:28:40
Speaker
So I just feel like that unschooling is just going back to basics.
00:28:44
Speaker
That's how I feel about it.
00:28:46
Speaker
Um, and that's how I look at it.
00:28:48
Speaker
I just look at it.
00:28:49
Speaker
Like, um, if I, like my kids learn to walk, I didn't teach them how to walk.
00:28:55
Speaker
They learned, I was just there to help them and make sure that they don't fall and hurt their head.
00:29:00
Speaker
And that's what I'm doing right now.
00:29:02
Speaker
That's what I'm schooling is.
00:29:03
Speaker
It's the same thing.
00:29:05
Speaker
Um, I just an extension of that.
00:29:07
Speaker
And it's just, you know, as they grow older,
00:29:10
Speaker
They already know how to walk, so what's the next thing that they need to learn how to do?
00:29:14
Speaker
I'm going to be there for them in the same way I was when they learned how to walk.
00:29:19
Speaker
I'm just going to make sure that they don't fall and hurt themselves.
00:29:23
Speaker
That's how I view it.
00:29:25
Speaker
That's how I look at it.