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Partnerships and teams in the family

and other things from the 2010 HSC conference

Talks, notes, links, fun.

The notes are sparse, the talks are long, even though that first one ends abruptly.

Unschooling: How to Screw it Up

Michaelangelo said that to carve his statue of David, he just chipped away everything that didn't look like David. Or maybe he didn't say that. But clearly that's what he ultimately did. Here will be ideas to help you chip away what doesn't look like unschooling. It's not as difficult as you might think.

Found this quote on Joyce Fetteroll's page, with my name on it:

One easy way to decide how to be is to picture clearly what would make things worse, and then not do that. —Sandra Dodd

More about that one here. (Partial-to-full transcript, at some point.)

Partnerships and teams in the family

Below are notes for this one. You can download a file, if you would rather listen elsewhere.

NOTE: If Marty was 21, Holly was 19. I'm not good with remembering numbers, but she's truly NOT older than he is.

1986 La Leche League, partners in nursing

My mom was not my partner. I was her foe. I was her rival.
Things partners don't say:

Those statements, in that tone, are made to separate, to isolate, to "win."

When there will be one winner and one loser, between a parent and child, between a husband and wife, between best friends, then both lose.

"Conscious, continuous and mindful partnership. It doesn't do any good to be their partner once a week." (Sometimes I say a thing I hadn't written down in advance. 🙂 )

34:20 "Water handed to you nicely is a lot nicer than water slammed at you and sloshed."

Seeing and avoiding adversarial relationships. Nurturing partnerships with spouses or significant others, and with our children.

← ← ← Those "work in" notes to myself have become live links, here.

Work in "serving others as a gift."

"Have to."

Choices.

Ask "what is your relationship with your child?" The boss? The friend? VARIES depending on project—sometimes I'm the coach or the lead. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I'm a stagehand. Sometimes I'm the soloist. Sometimes my child is the soloist.

What happens with partners is that when one is the soloist, the others still sing backup, or sit in the audience supportively, and meet them at the stage door, figuratively or literally.

REVIEW:
I left Sandra's talk on "partnerships in the family" a changed woman. I bought her book and could feel old reasonings about bedtime, math, reading and eating breaking in my head and my heart.
Heather Booth wrote that and you can read more of it.
Also at that conference, Kirby and I were interviewed for a long time, and I'll bring a link to a place to buy that, I hope. A little of it made it into a documentary called Class Dismissed: A Film about Learning Outside of the Classroom, and the same site has (might still) an option to get the individual interviews, whole. (Here: scroll down; buy for $3, rent for $2)

But wait! A week after I wrote this paragraph, I discovered that it has been uploaded to YouTube, by the filmmakers. Sweet.

It needs to be watched rather than just heard, as the questions are put up on visually without voice-over.

Other presentations that weekend, links and notes, but no recordings:

Writey-Drawey—a pencil and paper game

Writey-Drawey is a game for several players at once, involving pencils and paper (to be provided). Players will need to read some, and have legible printing (because some people can't read cursive writing). For those too curious to wait, there are directions and samples here: /writey

All ages if reading and writing.

Oaths, Curses and Words that Can't Be Used

Cultural taboos involving words, and some history of "bad words."

I created two files after that conference:

Bad Words

Bad Words 2 (a continuation)

Connect the Dots

Connecting the dots, literally and figuratively. Come and work on your model of the universe. Materials will be provided, and we'll use "Thinking Sticks" for part of the workshop. The theme will be water. If you have obstacles to dot-connecting, bring those too.

Off-road thinking

Water, flowing off a mountain—where does it go? Partly depends how much of it there is. (quote the thing from Hawaii about coral bouncing up on mountains)

But water has a super-hero power. It can evaporate into thin air. (Not all of it, because at some point the air isn't thin anymore and the water falls back out.)

(I wish there was a recording of that one, but there doesn't seem to be.)
Other projects and writings for HSC

other recordings

other interviews