[email protected]

<< > I really do mean this in the friendliest possible way. An unschooling
> conference is not one "teacher" in a classroom full of "children".

<<It was a joke. Sorry it didn't come across that way. >>

That whole exchange bugged me. (In case anyone cares.)

I thought someone jumped too hard on something that was obviously a joke.

Sometimes people are touchy and that's okay.


I can't teach sewing, but I can sew. I can help one person with one machine
(if there's a book) but I'm not good at explaining sewing. I was doing a
pair of pants this morning with a fancy three-part gore in the crotch. I was
copying a pair of pants a friend made, for medieval pants for Kirby. I got
really confused at one point, because I was thinking in words. And so I took
a deep breath, and went back to it wordlessly, and thought only in pictures
and memories of what I know of traditional pants cuts and human movement
(squatting and stretching and other pants-related things). It helped, and I
got it to go together without a problem. I wouldn't have been able to
explain it easily to someone else, though.

Last night I was helping Holly with a sock monkey. I was physically helpful,
but I don't have a lot of sewing-related patter to pass on, it seems,
compared to some other things I can talk about fairly lucidly.

When I go to conferences I like to hear people talk, though, I don't mind
hearing them answer questions, but I don't want to go to a conference to hear
everybody else say what they think, because some of the people at conferences
haven't even unschooled, and so their opinions are kinda time-wasting if they
get the mike for too long. And if an hour of a conference is spent answering
things like "what about socialization" and "how can they learn to read
without phonics" then those who paid money aren't getting much good
information, and those asking those questions could have them answered by
just looking around at the kids and by reading any beginning unschooling
article, or picking up two or three homeschooling magazines until they find
an article on reading.

I don't love panel discussions much either, because too often it granulates
the information down into little reactionary bits and there's not enough
cohesion to get a good point. There was an unschooling panel at last year's
HSC conference. There were some good moments, but overall it seemed very
disjoint to me.

This year's HSC conference will be almost all panels, so those people who DO
love panel discussions should be in heaven!!
http://conference.hsc.org/



Sandra