Brett Veinotte interviewed me for the "School Sucks Project." I was hesitant, beforehand, because for me, as a kid, school was better than home, and it's still that way for many people. We discussed my problem with the title, a bit, and the conversation was good. We both had taught in public schools—six years, English, for me; nine years, History, for Brett. That comes up. Mostly, though, it's about unschooling.
There is a transcript in some form of repair and improvement, generated by Transcribe by wreally
Unschooling and Choice
The original page had disappeared, but the WayBack Machine kept a working copy! Sandra Dodd on Unschooling and Choice. From that archived page, I was able to upload the sound file to put here, in 2026.
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Brett:
Another thing that I really like that, I heard you saying another one of your videos with somebody asked you just about the whole unschooling Enterprise. How much time does this take? I think was the question and the answer was something like, it takes all the time and none of the time.
Sandra:
Pam Sorooshian and I were both there,
and I think she said none how much time you have to spend every day on this. She said "none" I said "all" and that's what it is, you change your life, you change the way you see and believe and
interact but it's also with respect to D schooling, it's the contrast between the expectations that people. Might bring verse what natural learning is, right? If you're asking me about natural learning, I might say then, yeah, it's all of your time. If you're talking to me about schooling and your schooling related expectations or your schooled expectations, then it's none of your time. That's
open. That's it. That's it. When we talk about choices to young people are coming into an Aegis. Gosh, Nick, all you have to do this or I had to do that, I stopped them and I give them a link to my page on 2:30 Saturday i.com slash have to if you feel like you have to do something, you've just made yourself powerless, unnecessarily, don't do that. At for one thing, you don't move from that, imagined have to write. You get in the habit of saying 2:30, you're going to pass it around. You're going to tell your kids what they have to do to and if they don't have a choice they can't make a choice. And when people say, well he chose to be an Olympic swimmer when he was seven, it's like no kid, ever learnt every chose to be an Olympic swimmer. When he was seven some people will come up with something like that. What he said, he wants to be a pilot. She said she's interested in this. Okay? But that interest last for about a minute or a lifetime Don't own it, don't take it over. And if the parents say, I want to unschooler Joyce, you don't have to do this then the choices can ratchet up gradually to starts to a place that you never knew. You could even get to as to patience and understanding and acceptance of how learning works. But it does. You can't jump 15 Steps all at once. You have to walk there yourself. So you might start with choices that are that sound horrible. Like like I said into school or I could buy a curriculum. Okay. Well by the curriculum, doesn't mean you have to use it just because you bought a curriculum doesn't mean that you're obligated to do 180 days of school at home at the table, right? So if people make, Choices all along, then they can walk away from the things that were harmful to them as children, or that might be harmful to their children. Now that can walk one step at a time towards something better as they gradually from. Read a little try, a little white a while. Watch start to see what does seem to them better.
[Music stops; good.]
Brett:
Hey everybody. This is Brett. Welcome back to the show. Today is Friday, November 9th and I'm very pleased to be welcoming a long-overdue guest. Somebody who is a world-renowned advocate for unschooling and natural learning, Sandra Dodd. She's the author of Sandra Dodd's Big Book of Unschooling and her website. Sandra.com. That's DOD. D is one of the most comprehensive resources that you were going to find on the topic of Unschooler on the entire internet and that is a very big place but Sanders been doing this work for a long time. She's the mother of three adult children who never attended School. We're going to talk about that in the show today. So this conversation actually went in a couple unexpected directions but I'm very very happy that it did. First of all I want to say that I was a little bit nervous going into this. I never talk to Sandra before and she expressed some concern in our political. Luminary, email discussions about our presentation, the name of our project, and we're going to talk about that in the conversation today and I found her explanation So thought-provoking and persuasive that I almost named the show "Stop telling young people that school sucks," but that was a little bit too narrow focus. It was only a small part of our conversation. The title "Unschooling and Choice" is a much broader capture of everything, we talked about the. So there was some initial Apprehension. And some of you might be saying Brett, you talk a lot about things making you nervous lately. Maybe you need to cut down on your caffeine intake. I appreciate your concern. But I would like to remind you that every time I talk about one of these nerve-racking propositions, there is always some success on the other side of it, and Today's Show is no exception. That reminds me. If you're interested in hearing the speech that I did on the Contra cruise, on my communication successes and failures. It is available on patreon or Or for our a.v. club supporters. You can go to school sucks. Project.com /av to get access to that. And so much more including the personal development themed, show that I do with my good friend and neighbor Andrew. It's called the discomfort Zone that is back up and running. Now that I'm done with my travels, the fourth installment was our most uncomfortable conversation yet, but also probably the most productive and important. See this theme, see how this works. So Sandra and I are going to talk a little bit about Add our background. One thing that I was particularly interested in is even though we've arrived at our unschooling advocacy through different paths, as we all do, there were some overlap in a couple of areas that I wanted to explore Sandra was a former teacher. She taught in public school for about six years. I wanted to know. Number one, why she left and how and why she made the transition into unschooling for all three of her children. So, that would be a big portion of our discussion. We're going to talk about the process of young people learning. To read. And I know that's something that a lot of parents in the audience have concerns about. So that thread will run through a good portion of this conversation. We will also talk about Sandra's influences including John Holt, the experiments in the open, classroom Concept in the 1960s and the 1970s and what it was like, I think her three children were born between 1986 and 1991. So we'll talk about the early days of trying to navigate Home Learning and trying to make connections with others and of Her unschooling philosophy. A big part of this conversation as well. So that's it. Everybody on today's show clearly geared more towards parents or people planning to be parents and I'm very very proud to now be able to add Sandra Dodd to our list of gas on the topic of unschooling. So I will talk to you more next week. I'll be teaming up with Richard Grove and Professor CJ for something special. You'll learn more about that soon. In the meantime, enjoy your weekend. Thank you for listening and taking care. Sandra. Welcome to the show. Thanks. So you're in New Mexico. Correct, correct. Albuquerque, Albuquerque. I was just there at this time. Last year, I was actually visiting with an unschooling family outside of Albuquerque. And I'm in Pittsburgh, we had our first Frost today. So definitely, appreciating New Mexico. I grew up north of here in my husband grew up.
Speaker 2: [00:08:22]
Self. So we had it covered as to friends and relatives are various places.
Speaker 1: [00:08:26]
You know, I was thinking about these people lived in kind of a remote location wasn't too. Too far away from the city, but it was, it was out there a little ways and they're, you know, they have a young daughter and they're trying to navigate the unschooling world and, and make connections in a fairly remote location. And I think about your story and you trying to do this, you have children that were born between the mid 1980s and the early 1990s. Three children, who are now adults. What was that? Like you know, in the dawn of the information age, trying to find resources or make connections with like-minded people,
Speaker 2: [00:09:03]
well even then some people were better at it than others. Some people just didn't have the connections to know what was available, but John Holt had died. Just before I had my first child, I had read some of his stuff in college, interestingly they made me read it and that's fine. But there was a magazine that he had started. I was still going so I subscribe to that. It came every other month and I'd read every word. It was sort of a question answer format. So it was a little bit like a bulletin board only arranged and I had done a magazine like that to myself, a philosophy based on a medieval studies Club. I was in. So I understood the format. Really well everybody writes in and then you put the best answers back out and it was helpful, but it wasn't constant and it was a random Arrangement. You, if you needed questions, if you were hoping for questions about younger, kids might be all about teens one issue, but That's all right. It was good. And then their people would meet up and talk and share, what they had and there were a few books. Teach your own, we John Holt wrote near the end. There he wrote another couple of books after that but it was good to have those and I had gone to the university to study. I wanted to be a teacher but I did not study education because there was a prejudice against doing that, I studied English and psychology and in the dark when no one was looking to get education classes. What was the Prejudice? That only girls who weren't very smart study
Speaker 1: [00:10:22]
education. Oh, I got you? Yeah,
Speaker 2: [00:10:24]
absolutely. The early 70s.
Speaker 1: [00:10:27]
Sure. It's so you Encounter through this experience, the work of John Holt. I'd be interested in hearing a little bit about his influence on you and what it was that he said in his work that really resonated with you.
Speaker 2: [00:10:39]
I can't name all of the people, but there were several School Reform writers around that we were reading in the 70s and also in the the University of New Mexico. There were a couple of professors who had written a book called, The open classroom and so because they were there at the University where I was and Albuquerque, They had a lot of influence locally and there were schools built in Albuquerque on that model. On the wouldn't it be nice if open classroom school? And there I think there are three elementaries and a mid school. I'm not sure really what still exists, but what happened was, I'm kind of going on tangents. Are you okay?
Speaker 1: [00:11:15]
Go on tangents, please, we love tangents what happened? I wasn't involved in that because I finished my degree, my back to my hometown and Spagnola, which is north of Santa Fe to teach where I had gone to school. It was a huge education itself because I was teaching with people who had been my teachers, that was a great, great lab for learning about teaching. But I'd wanted to be a teacher since I was little. So I paid a lot of attention to this. I'd always said to all my friends, I'm going to be a teacher. My other choices were my other little fantasies were your backup. Plans were maybe I'll be a journalist, or maybe I'll be a nun. Only I was Baptist so that one going to work out. So as it turns out looking back, it seems that journalists missionary you know isn't it on? It was
Speaker 2: [00:11:56]
Sherry, actually, I mostly talked about, but I had this religious thought, you know, of helping people helping people who couldn't get other help. So now here I am, kind of like, a missionary for unschooling, for Education, through writing, so I rolled it all together. Yeah. Classroom, you have been classroom buildings. Have a big, big open area that they use for cafeteria or PE or lunch. And then off of that and sort of pie wedge shapes, are these, are their classrooms that were supposed to be the Learning Centers there we would have been one for history and one for science. One for a reading and I like that. But as soon as there's no choice that research in the late 60s and early 70s worked really well because the participants were self-chosen, it was the children of Education, professors or the kids of people who are studying at that University. And they knew that they were an experimental school and they were into it. The parents thought that would be great. The kids thought this is fun, this is more fun than regular school and so the results they got were good. And the research that they were doing was stuff like, what if kids aren't sorted In graded. What if the teachers don't have test scores on them? What if what if what if, what if you let them choose when and how to study science? And they're studying from things that they touch and grow and feed instead of just looking at pictures and books. What if history is going to real places, you're not the one field trip a year model that most schools have, but kind of live there where you bring people and things in and take the kids out to people in things, not just museums, but Where people are making things working building, right? Sounds good and it can work. It can work if everybody is
Speaker 1: [00:13:29]
voluntary and there's buying yeah.
Speaker 2: [00:13:33]
That makes it alive. You're right, everybody wants to be there, so they put it into the public schools and said we've tested this, it works and the teachers who were there, who were not getting paid very much who might maybe had been teaching already 15 or 20 years, they said we're changing everything and they said, that's not in my contract, but, yeah, absolutely. I remember that as a young teacher in my master's program when I think it was No Child Left Behind was being implemented and just the, you know, it's a different situation where, you know, you're trying to move this.
Speaker 1: [00:14:03]
You more at that time, that you're talking about, a more learner centered model and you know, No Child Left Behind was about something else, but the change like the, the perception of dramatic change, especially for people who have been there, you know, not veterans, but for five years, that was so disruptive to them. So I could imagine something that's such a paradigm shift, at that time, like, in the 1970s, for somebody who already had a decade plus under their belts that would be, you know, a real struggle to try and adapt and to try and understand. Why they needed to adapt to something and,
Speaker 2: [00:14:35]
and people who are, who are veteran teachers or even slightly experienced teachers, then had studied in the 40s and
Speaker 1: [00:14:40]
50s, right?
Speaker 2: [00:14:42]
And it was seen as a hippie thing, you know. Now what are these hippies trying to make us do, right? But it wasn't only the teachers who booked it was the kids and the parents. Well the parents because the kids said we don't have to have to was at the center of this thing. Have to has been at the center of a lot of what I've discovered and looked at in written about and come back to that in a minute, but sure. The kids that don't have to, I'm not going to because the only reason they had been doing anything in schools because they were threatened. So when the threat was lifted, then the kids just sort of went crazy. And the parents, meanwhile are told how they're changing everything, you're not going to have homework and they said well how is he going to learn? How are you going to prove? He's learning. I will give you a report at the very end of the year. Well how will? I know he's not going to fail, nobody's going to fail the because the people who were promoting it had so much confidence because they had seen it work, they didn't know what would happen if you put it out. Out into a place where you had just released all the rules and all of those structures, it's like those rubber band, airplanes that you whined, and whined, and whined and whined and whined or like a trebuchet, you know, the tighter you crank it. The further that's going to launch.
Speaker 1: [00:15:47]
Yeah, when you let it go, of course, you know people talk a lot about a sort of decompression like if a kid comes out of school and is in more of a natural learning or hands-off kind of environment, there's obviously going to need to be a period of decompression. Because all that boy or girl has known is the compulsion of school. The force the threat, you know, is often a strong word, but it certainly implicit and it's certainly consistent through the entire experience, right? So just the history here, that we've been talking about is in the universities. And and New Mexico is a bit of a hotbed for this while. You're studying experimentation and investigation of the open classroom concept of natural learning leads to the Development of these Laboratory Schools where there's, you know a lot of intrinsically motivated people both on the teaching side and on the learning side. And when this looks like a success, they try to pass it along to the public schools and it fails because the public schools are based on compulsion. So as far as you know is this like the end of this experiment in the public schools in the 1970s because I remember being in graduate school and they were still talking about this kind of education. It was interesting that a lot of my Professors and graduate schools, talked like people who worked at Sudbury schools. They had this sort of idealistic vision of what the public schools were going to be. And then I think, when a lot of us started student teaching, it wasn't, we realized that a lot of these ideas were not insertable into that environment. But were the, the 70s, the attempted implementation of that was that like the last, the public school wanted to hear about these ideas. As far as, you know
Speaker 2: [00:17:28]
what, I think was the first I heard about it, right? Right. I'm pretty close to the last, I don't know. No, generally in the whole world, how it was. I mean, I can't imagine that there was a lot of open classroom stuff going on in Nebraska, I'm just making up a place, you know, that apologies to be from Nebraska, if it was a hotbed of alternative it. But there were some places where it worked better and longer because some some individual was enthusiastic and a good leader, that's got to happen. That always happens. So if somebody had become an administrator or a principal or something, and could get it to go for a while, I'm sure it went, because if I were to say nope, Was the end? I don't know, but I visited some schools. Doing some demonstrations, sort of Education, things historical in the late 80s. Hmm itay T snow around the early 80s and the classrooms that we would go into that. We're in those open classroom buildings. The the teacher said just sort of built walls between those areas with filing cabinets and bookshelves. So the buildings were irritating because there was no sound division. Yeah, the Acoustics were doubled because they were made out of cinder block and concrete and they were intended to have soft places to read and carpet and all that, right? But that just didn't last. So the building was built for a philosophy and a practice that hadn't taken So not only were the people who were originally involved in it, looking down on open classroom, but the people who had to live in those old open classroom houses where irritated too because it didn't work. First for individual classes. I do understand teachers, not wanting to do weird stuff, right? Because they are feeling that they're answerable to that, they're responsible to prove that they're teaching and that open classroom stuff, the way it worked was near the end of the year and you're the end of the semester. However, Decided in that group and that class to do it, those who would be like, also, they would mix classes. It wouldn't be like one individual class. We like, all the fourth graders are all of the first through third doing things and various groups. So if a kid hadn't touched the math, curriculum, and it's April, then they press him through made by playing games or getting them in there and playing with him getting him to do it. So there was also still kind of a press in some pressure to have done all of the things because some kids would out of their own curiosity. Raza t or their own sort of organizational personality. Have done it all but some were avoiding one until the end and the teachers did know how to deal with that. I wouldn't know how to deal with it myself because after being sweet to this kid, now you're going to bully him the last four weeks last two weeks to get that credit. It's hard
Speaker 1: [00:20:05]
though the whole idea. Yeah. Is very difficult. I think about, you know, my we were both teachers and you know I think about my experience reflecting on my experience. One of the things that really frustrated me is like, obviously I felt a lot of pressure to be A good, you know, finger quotes, good teacher Effective Teacher. But so little of that pressure was coming from like what students thought of me and more of it was coming from the top down like what I was supposed to do in that role. So I'm agreeing with you that the implementation of something new where you're feeling a lot of uncertainty about what you're doing and why would be frustrating confusing, you know, and and bring about some anxiety for me as a young teacher, you know? And I I eventually did take more of the natural learning approach in my classroom because I had no choice, just because it was so clear that doing the top-down conception of what a good Effective Teacher managing Behavior, managing a classroom environment that did not work with the population of students that I taught and I had to change things. But I totally understand the apprehension that that most teachers would feel about that. Did you when you were teaching and you taught middle school for what period of time?
Speaker 2: [00:21:18]
Six years, four years of seventh grade and two years. Ninth grade, did you do you share those kids. So for your International audience, first twelve and thirteen-year-olds for the seventh grade, and in ninth grade, or there are 14 turning 15, is that right 15? So, yes, or no. 15. 15 turning 16. Yeah. So they were all in that pubescent age. I liked it. That's the kind that's the age I had wanted to teach. And when I went to my student teaching, I said I'm going to teach Junior High and they said we're gonna put your high school, it's easier. So what I need to learn how to do what I'm going to do and they said yeah. You're going to do high school. It's fine. So, what I went in there, what I had from drug, trying to think of how to answer your question about, what, what may be particularly? I took from John Hole, but I took the general, gist of there are things in school that prevent learning a discourage learning that be kids down and confuse them and there are ways to tweak it so that that's not happening. And so I thought, okay, given the structure and the structure of I they assigned me these kids at these hours. How can I do my best to be creative with them? My advantage was, I went back into a town and a district where I grew up. So I already had a reputation there for being pretty quick and creative and not dishonest. So when I said I'm going to do this and it's going to work, they all went okay because I had done things that worked before. I had designed a class when I was in high school and run that and it was called history 69. So you know how old I am. But it was a current events class where the kids did presentations and So, yeah, I had already primed the pump there for myself and that's fine, but I didn't use the books. I was teaching English, I used a magazine that came out for that sort of thing. And we used dictionaries that we would do a math project of your how cheap can we get these dictionaries as we get them in bulk? From the from Arrow books, or whatever? It was booked in the month, I forget what it was. The little paper things that they would give you to order books and classrooms. We would manage to get in for about a dollar, a dollar and a quarter, and then cover them with paper from Wallpaper samples and it was just like a projects within projects. So everybody had their own dictionary and we just keep them there, and we would do things about history of words games with the dictionaries and the and it to them, it seemed like games. And to me, I knew it was a Tamala G and vocabulary and spelling and geography and history and on every Friday, all those six years, every year, what I did was on Friday, I would say on Friday. I'm only going to sing you a ballad and it's all going to do on Fridays. And the first few years I would write the words on the chalkboard and they Would write him back down. They would copy them into a notebook, and that was because the kids were younger and it was, I don't know handwriting or whatever. But later on, I started just giving them a handout. I've talked to people in the last year, my daughter met a woman who turns out have been in my class and she started singing one of those songs to her and people write to me sometimes and say I still sing these songs so they thought that that was nothing that they were just now. Friday was a day off and I treated it that way. I was treated that way. They said, we have to learn these and I said no you have to learn anything. No Friday. So, not everybody can do that. Not everybody would want to do that. Not everybody knew enough ballads to last every Friday for a year, but I could so I used it. And so I knew when I was filling out my forms, my lesson plans and stuff that that was poetry and literature and vocabulary, but the kids didn't know, I never said it. And so, having been told, you don't have to learn this. They learn them, they still know him. So some of them,
Speaker 1: [00:24:40]
it sounds like you regard. Your Public School teaching experience in a lot, more positive light than A lot of the former teachers that I talked to and I guess that would be attributed to the fact that you were able to make it your own, more than a lot of other people are
Speaker 2: [00:24:54]
able. Well, why did I quit after six years? That was my next question. Yeah, I had no way out of giving grades, right? And it broke my heart to take a kid who was just that either had pressure from home, you know, really unhappy home life or just wasn't yet with it because sometimes kids, I know a lot from unschooling sometimes kids just can't read well at first and they Read when they're older, if it's not broken, if they could be allowed to wait till they were 12 or 13 to read. There are a lot of people who read it 12 or 13, if they're left alone. But in school they've been given FX and FX and FX and every other subject because they can't read well enough to do the assignment. And they're told you are a non-reader and the after that, they don't even try, they come to see books and libraries in the written word as their enemy. As the thing they can never do. As the thing that made them a failure, and I was living in that. And those Waters and I didn't know then that kids could naturally learn to read, but I know now. So also there were parents parents irritated me and behavioral issues, irritated me and administrators who had been promoted because they were really bad teachers. And the only way they could legally and easily get them out of classrooms to make them an assistant principal in charge of basketballs, only thing is then after a while they get promoted
Speaker 1: [00:26:09]
again, right? Yeah.
Speaker 2: [00:26:11]
So that sort of thing was irritating to me and I think probably it was it was mostly parents and Grading that made me feel that I was contributing again to something - so I did the best I could and I had fun and I learned a lot. And so again it's as a pattern of my life is ever since first grade I thought I want to be a teacher so what is it that they do? What's the thing that they do because it doesn't always show to kids like me talking about the ballots, you know those kids never do what my secret plan was. You know what? I was. It was fun for me to, it was fun for me. See them get excited about some weird thing, I knew some three or four hundred year old song and talk to them about it, but I started paying attention. I had a cousin, my parents raised you as who was in the same grade as I was. And I saw us go through school together, all those years and learn different things. And that was fun. And we would, we would share what we learned later at the house. We shared a bedroom for a long time and she was, she was learning Chaucer. I wasn't, and she knew a really cool verse about the planets, and she taught it to me, and there were things that, I learned that I shared with her and so I knew that two kids in the same house, in the same school could have completely different experiences. Sure what. I went from seventh grade to ninth grade, I was standing outside my classroom in the hallway of this big school, just like picture, any typical school and there. I was standing outside my room and the kids are looking at their schedules and some would look up and see me. And because that's what I was looking at. I'm looking at these kids to see them, see me? Because some of them would go. Whoa, my name at the time was Gil, it's kill Miss Gil. And they would just Giddy, happy that hopping up and down because they've been in my class in seventh
Speaker 1: [00:27:49]
grade
Speaker 2: [00:27:51]
and then some would look up, do a double take and just look like, oh, they're gonna puke. So, I thought. Okay, now this is a normal normal thing. It's just like, somebody can really love her husband to Pieces, but none of her friends would have had him, you know. Yeah, they're on top of all else. Teachers technique is not going to overcome personality, right? And so some people love a certain personality and some don't with unschooling, right? Ders and speakers. There are some that I collect. I collect other people's writings to on my site. So I know this well, sometimes somebody just doesn't like my writing because I tell stories, I go on tangents, I get emotional but they really liked the writing of Joyce federal or Pam laricchia. And the trick that I know that we know from the, you know, the Teachers Lounge as it were those guys were engineers, they were both Engineers. They're very methodical and how they present their information. And I bounced off the person who's asking me and I kind of Them a little bit to figure it out on their own. So the kind of interaction that I'm doing is probably kind of things I did when I was teaching to, which is a shame to say. But but, you know, if you can, if you can ask a question or say something that makes that surprises them enough, that makes them think that shakes up there thinking, that's better than just giving them the answer.
Speaker 1: [00:29:06]
Can I ask you, was it frustrating at the time when you know, you're standing outside that door? And there's a critics are a Critic criticism. Always seems Much louder than praise to me. And that was true. When I was a teacher, it's true as a podcaster but just thinking about those those experiences of students who are really excited to see you and students who are visibly. Not excited to see you. I think it speaks to you know the unfortunate Forge that school tries to be for you know all things to all people where even a very conscious involved and invested teacher is just not going to be able to Next with, with certain students, but what was that? Like for you? I mean, how did you register that in process that when there's kids, who are clearly, not excited to see you again? When you feel like, you're investing so much passion in what you're doing.
Speaker 2: [00:30:00]
I knew all that since fourth grade that there are, I love my fourth grade teacher used to spank like, she kept put the names on the board of the people who had been bad. And at the end of the day, you had a choice of a spanking or to write lines. Wow. Write something. And I loved her and I would write lines and not get a spanking because I My writing, but some people hated her, the hated her at the time. And she was also a, their catechism teacher. And so, some of them were really bugged to have to be in their catechism, teacher's classroom, but I just thought she was the sweetest person, and she came to my house and met my parents, which was a little bit necessary, because there is some Oddity in my mom. And she, and she, and my cousin's teacher, both came to our house. They were friends, and they just came and visited said around drink coffee, but, you know, as a home visitation, but I just thought she was wonderful. And I, when my daughter was nine, the age I had been in her classroom, we went to a funeral. My hometown, we went over and spent the rest of the day with her, instead of going to the burial of the lunch. And then we just went to her house and I was even though we were unschooling, she was my third kid unschooling. I was really happy to get liked. A can introduce her to my fourth grade teacher, and talk about when, when I was that age. So I was not an anti School person. I was a realistic person, I think. But in fourth grade because people didn't like, Miss Gonzales, I thought, okay, she's an angel although she's Spencer boys, right? How could they not like her? And I saw that many other times after that. And so here, I was teaching in the same school, district, and same buildings, both of those buildings that I taught. And I had been in for a long time. I saw kids in the classrooms of teachers that I had liked or not liked, I saw them like or not like, in various combinations. So it's a dyad. There's always that dyad between the teacher and the student, and there's no teacher that I've ever seen that everybody likes, right? And their egos students. Everybody hates. Because there, there there was another teacher of English and she didn't like the boys after they were bigger and she I would trade her. If there was a kid who had no preference at all, you know, I didn't mind going to her class or I would say, well, I'll take him but you got to give me a piece of furniture, you know, it's just Wheelin and dealin like that, but I knew then that there were people who would, who didn't have a preference, who would say whatever, I don't care. And some who really had a preference among the teachers and the
Speaker 1: [00:32:11]
students. Hmm.
Speaker 2: [00:32:13]
So that's that happens in all areas of life. Someone will really like a club or some resource store and some won't. So if somebody doesn't like your podcast, I don't know who knows what it might be. I
Speaker 1: [00:32:26]
guess the difference is that in those other situations people can easily Escape it, right? Like I'm not going to chase somebody.
Speaker 2: [00:32:34]
Nobody's and I've said that about unschooling sometimes. When people complain about my discussion group, I say, we're was, anyone court ordered to be here if not, you can leave, you know, there's, there's not even a door, you just click a click. Right on, right?
Speaker 1: [00:32:48]
So you you talk about not coming at this from from an anti School attitude which is obviously very common attitude. For a lot of people who become, you know, Advocates of unschooling. At least its present. You have three adult children. None of them went to school at. All right. Even for a day. Is that correct?
Sandra:
Holly visited. Yeah, three days. Yeah. But no, she didn't. Listen roll,
right. And she's your youngest the the two oldest. Kirby and Marty are boys. So, when Kirby was young, you were thinking, though, that you were going to send him to school? So can you talk a little bit about that transition in mindset from, you know, preparing Kirby to go to school, maybe H4 H5, and the path? I know it's a long path and there's lots of detail in it, but you can tell it however you want the
Speaker 2: [00:33:39]
story until an important aspect of it. Sure. Sure. New Mexico, when I was a kid, didn't have compulsory kindergarten. It was Jeff, you want to pay for kindergarten, do it, but the schools weren't providing it. So there is now by the time I had children kindergarten was requirement, but Kirby's, birthday is July 29th and anyone with a birthday so close to the time school starts has an option. You can say, I don't think he's ready for school yet. I'll go. Okay. See you next year. Studies if he had already been almost six. They would have said, no, he better put him in so but he was, he was barely five. So for us to To keep him out of school was a freebie Escape was a very long runway in a way because we could have the next year. Either put him in first, put him in kindergarten or not, put him in. And we knew that the whole year, it's like, okay, well we have all the options in the world, this year is gimme. So, I got the scope and sequence of the schools to see what they expected kindergarten kids to do and about that time, my third child was born, so I had to others and I thought Kirby may want to go back to school. I was not saying You will never see the inside of a classroom as some families to sure. Right. I was saying, yeah, you can stay home. We knew some other we knew for other unschooling families through a La Leche League play group and babysitting Co-op that we were in. So again, my life has been kind of a magical education lab. I've just lucked out like having a cousin my age that I share a room. That's lucky, having been consciously intending to be a teacher as I went through school, that was helpful, right? So, I knew foreign school for homeschooling families to unschooler, And into curriculum using families, and I knew their kids and because of the way, the babysitting Co-op work I had seen their kids at my house without their parents. My kids have been to their house without us and I had seen them with their families because we had a barbecue, every month, and then, a weekly play group, or a barbecue or whatever, y'all Gathering every month with the dads and all, and then a play group every week. So I knew the family is pretty well in a way that most people don't get to see other families. You don't usually get to separate the parents and kids and also see them together. It's Either one or the other, right, right? So when we thought about keeping Kirby home, I definitely had no interest in buying a curriculum and starting to play school with him. So, I just started paying attention to what the unschooler as you're doing, and learned it from them and from subscribing to Growing without schooling and reading what I could find and when I look at the scope and sequence, I thought, oh my gosh, no up to third grade, there's really nothing there. It's like balance on aboard and all this little little really coordination stuff. Right. Name the colors, recite the alphabet. So I wasn't worried about it and also new from being in school and teaching that there's reading and then their school reading and school reading is not real reading. There are readers that are that are graded. So a second grader will very often say well, I can read but I can't read that to something wild at home, you know, magazine or newspaper or TV listing or now. I don't know what what kids look at that. They need to read menus internet. Menus are restaurant menus, but they knew they could read second grade readers. And so I just think that that's a way for schools to, huh? I guess I can be cynical on your program. Huh? That's a great. That's a way for that money to keep flowing that teachers claim, we're teaching your child to read and then they create a situation that mimics, the learning learning to read so that it looks like they can read so that they can give them a grade. But a lot of us reading readiness
Brett:
Reading in a box, kind of to where they don't want to take that outside and maybe start experimenting with other things that could read. At least that's how I remember feeling about it.
or
Sandra:
couldn't read it. Well, that same teacher, I like Sally Gonzalez was she when she was putting us into reading groups she gave me a reader, you know, whatever, third grade reader, fourth grade reader read, this showed me, the fifth grade reader read this and she sort of quizzically reached into her drawer and pulled out a Reader's Digest and pulled it out and gave me something to read and I read and I still remember I Pronounced one word. And it was remember, she's the catechism teacher and I'm the Baptist. She it was the word was holy and I said, Holly and that's the only word I mispronounced. And she said, you don't know this word and I said, I don't think I've ever read it. She's okay. And so I remember that that it was unusual for a fourth grader to be able to read from Readers Digest, right? That's all it took. That one moment of I she took me a field. From how you, how, you see, if a fourth grader can read these kids are nine. A lot of nine-year-olds are reading, novels sure. At a, lot of nine-year-olds are not reading anything. They're pretending to read. And I remember when there was something to read aloud, some kids would see if they could manage to be fifth or sixth to read it because then they're just reciting what they heard before. So the teaching of reading in school, I knew was, I had a bogus NE stew it, it had a performance to it. So that all the third graders are reading at third grade materials and taking a test and the teachers are giving them a good grade. Maybe an a, you could get an A and reading and not really be fluidly fluently, reading, real, anything that just right. So with unschooling, what I started to see, how about a tangent as usual, what with unschooling, what I started to see words when I said my kids can't read People said, oh sure they can read and they're trying to justify the little things that they can do. And one person said, well, I consider that my kids are reading because they can tell a McDonald's logo from Burger King. I suppose that's like being able to tell a horse from a cow. That's not reading where these the other unschooling families that you were. Yeah. More beginning, unschooling families. Sure, people come along and they just have the habit of being supportive, right? Of course. Yeah. And that was, that was the air quotes supportive, which means telling women, you're an awesome, mom, you're the greatest Mom. Your kids are lucky to have you. Everything you're doing is Which is a way to have zero progress and zero analytical thought. Absolutely. Right. And it's unfortunately common among women and the internet makes it great because they send those messages with hearts and flowers and sparkles
Speaker 1: [00:39:46]
with left with very little investment in the actual people especially if you're talking about like a Facebook group or a message board, a I've seen a lot of that just has that sort of automatic support. I mean, that's kind of the function of the group and it's not so much about real talk or real
Speaker 2: [00:39:59]
feedback. So for all the time that I've ever had discussions, Are some people who stayed with those for 20 years or more a few, a few people, I understand people wandering off, but those who have stayed have seen it for years. But we've always said, it's not a support group, it's a discussion group. So if we say oh here's your looks like this could be a problem. Or have you tried this? Or you might want to back off a while and come at it, another way and then there will be people who just showed up here going, oh, don't discourage her. Know, I'm sure you're doing a great job. I'm sure you're doing the best you can and you know, your child better than anybody and you know, all that stuff. There's a flood of it. It. I have a collection of it. It's on a page, all of the any pages that I mentioned are center.com / something. And this one is support, and it's just a collection of those because F, I wish I collected all of them because after a while it's just kind of ridiculous, but one of the pages, has a sad story. About a woman who had shot her teens, she wasn't it unschooler but she got mad at her teens and killed them. And in the article that I read, it said she had talked to her friend the day before. About it. Her friend reminded her that they were really good students and Ice kids but I think her mom her friend, probably whatever she said was supportive. So I
Speaker 1: [00:41:11]
thought how she's feeling right? And not recognizing the crisis. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: [00:41:15]
told that story there's that's little bit depressing but but so that's that's an extreme that support can but but on the basic face of it, support can lead to a person. Not trying to do better for unschooler is that's a problem because it's possible to unschooler very badly. Ryan effectively into just for the parents, not to focus on learning, but to focus on freedom, freedom, happy quotes and sparkles.
Brett:
Sure. Let me, let me ask you this because how does this real honest feedback fit into, you know, the unschooling nest environment that you talked about, creating with your own family? We're obviously, you know, optimism and an emotionally supportive environment that Foster's natural learning is very important, but if this other type of feedback isn't happening, it invites, many of the same problems that we've been talking about here for the last few minutes. So, can you? Because I think that's a question that a lot of the unschooling parents in my audience would be interested in. And I think it really just comes down to communicating, and expressing and clarifying needs and getting needs met both as children and parents. So could you talk a little bit about that? If you tell someone, you know, someone you're actually
Speaker 2: [00:42:28]
Observing. This was very cool. What you just did? That's honest. But if you blindly say to someone who's using a fake name, you don't even know what country they're from that. They're an awesome mom, right? That's harmful,
Brett:
Right. Absolutely.
Sandra:
So I think it's a difference between strangers being supportive partly for their own feel. Good, reasons? Yes, isn't they feel like a good person and someone who actually is, they're actually trying to help Shepherd you or go with you through a difficult time in your life or through happy time in your life to keep you from screwing up. I don't know how to exactly how to say that. I'm one thing example, I've used that has been stolen from me by a couple of people but it's a good example is to treat your kids especially when they're really little like somebody from another country whose cultures are really different from ours. And so if you assume that your child is is a fully formed human, they just don't understand the expectations of the day. So you might have to coach them about shaking hands and we're not to be loud and we're to be loud and where do you have your shoes on? And we're not to have your shoes on. All those things they need to learn but the same way you would with an adult guest, an adult visitor. If somebody comes to New Mexico I might say okay we get to the restaurant, they're going to say do you want red or green? And here's what that means, right? Little things that are factors in Life or whatever, reason it helps to coach, the people on what's expected some unschooler. Say we're unschooler, is you do whatever you want to? And there is some people who like taking photos of their kids where the kids shouldn't have been and then go unschooling The Coop. It's very irritating to me that they do that they're willing to make unschooler 'z look bad in that, they don't really. Understand the potential or the value of what they could be doing, right? I was I want to go back to reading because I saw kids, read and learn to read naturally some of them very young. And I think everybody's known a person or two in their lives. Who learn to read it two or three, just saw this stuff and figured it out, then they go to school and they endure years of reading lessons while they already know how to read. And then some don't figure it out till they're 12 or 13, but they do at some point they have all of the maturity and calm and experience, whatever. All it takes. Because I don't know what all it takes, but some of its physical and mental maturity, to figure that puzzle out on their own. Because they do figure it out on their own, some Qi, another, another of my great lab experiences. When I was in first grade I was went to school in Texas near my grandmother and then all the other years I was in New Mexico, We were learning, looks looks say I think it was called you outlined the number of words and there was also some phonics involved but it was mostly what the word looks
Speaker 1: [00:45:15]
like you say. You were. You would say you were learning to read at that age primarily through look say
Sandra:
well and first grade, okay? Okay. I didn't know how to read what I went in and I knew how to read by the end of the year. Halfway through, they used to sneak me over to the library, where first graders were allowed to go, and I checked out books couple of times. I remember the teacher looking both ways down the hallway. And going in the library quickly, that was funny, but I learned to read at school. I don't know if I learned to read from school because having been a teacher now, and having hung out with all these unschooler, and having seen my own kids learn to read. When a kid learns to read, it's not because they wanted to, it's not because they worked at it. It's because it came to them, the things started to make sense. So whether one of my kids is, is the typical left-handed mathish, engineerish kid,
who in school could easily, they would have said "dyslexic."
It didn't make any difference to me because I knew that he was going to figure out in his own way. Because so do the kids at school, no matter how many reading experts that give them or how many little reading machines that drag your eyes left to, right and stuff, it doesn't matter because at some point you either figure it out or you get so pissed off at people pushing you and trying and shaming you that you don't learn it.
School creates non-readers. I've never seen unschooling create a non-reader, but I have seen a couple of kids who didn't learn 'til they were are 14 or 15. That's the outside edge, and it wasn't because of anything, because they were not being pressured, it was just because they weren't ready. And when they read, what what I was going to say about the comparison between unschooler kids, reading and school kids reading, his school kids are dragged, her act dragged for years through the reading curriculum where every year the reading levels. I learned how to how to figure out the reading levels of books at one point To know to find a passage. It has to do with the length of words. The number of words, in a sentence how complicated or the words. So they purposely weed out anything that's going to be hard to read and give you an easy thing that with the only the sounds that you study and stuff. But when I moved to New Mexico is phonics all the way, absolutely hardcore phonics. So I had both, I had both tools, right? And most people didn't. So I knew that some people can learn easily one way and some people can learn the other way, makes more sense to them. I don't mean learn to read easily. I mean, they take those tools and use them. So every kid who learns Reed is going to learn his own way, no matter what the noise is around him.
Speaker 1: [00:47:39]
So, let's talk just for a second about the parent kind of observing this process. A lot of people talk about being a parent in a natural learning environment as a kind of patient. Experimentation. And I've heard you say in one of your videos, read a little try, a little weight, a little watch, and I want to talk about that that watching process, right? When it comes to like, specifically reading, maybe as you were going through, Through this with your own children. What were you watching for?
Speaker 2: [00:48:12]
There's nothing really to watch for except they when they can read, they do.
Speaker 1: [00:48:16]
I think a lot of people might feel anxious like people who haven't gone through this yet, and I've talked to a lot of parents who and they are aware of this, they admit that they are processing. What's happening with their own children, through a kind of schooled mindset, you know what I mean? Like, they're still working on this timetable that was put into their head so it's it can be a little nerve-wracking and this is just, you know, From the the authentic experiences that I've heard from people watching and waiting and not knowing when this is going to happen and the wondering like what else could I or unfortunately, should I be doing in a situation like
Speaker 2: [00:48:56]
this? Oh, I see the question better now. Yeah. Well in any case in any given situation or moment, the Parents Choice can't might be seen as you could screw it up or you could leave it
alone. Mmm.
You can make it worse or you could choose not to make it worse, there may not be a way to make it better better. Might be don't screw it up and maybe the best analogy for that is not pulling a plant up to see if the roots are growing, shut up, you to get it back in the hole, that's not good for the plant, there are Roots you couldn't see, they've just torn off so anytime that they take the kid aside and say, okay well we've been on schooling for three years. So what do you actually know? Let's have a test. Like what are you doing? Hmm. No. You're showing backstage to the kid. Why don't you go clean up backstage instead? So the D schooling of the parents is the dismantling of their sensibly long-held beliefs, that there's something just as natural about semesters and tests and grade levels as the leaves turning in the fall and the moon coming up. Sure, it's not, it is not natural but because they grew up that way seeing it in themselves and everybody else, it became natural and they need to start gradually and themselves. Sorting out what it is construct from what is natural or they can't have natural learning happen or flourish at their houses if they're still looking at school learning and comparing it to that. It's a lot of work and that's a bad thing about unschooling. So, when anybody's trying to sell unschooling and saying it's easy, you have to do anything, just take your kids out of school, right, right. Makes me mad because then those people that still have that still that's happened to me twice this week, where somebody learned at somebody else's group, some nonsense and came and complained to us. Well, I did. All of this. And now, my husband and I are fighting and the kids are unhappy and one of them stays up all night. It's like I don't want to say where did you get this bad and advice? Because sometimes I already know, but we end up saying, okay, step back a little bit. You jump too far. You didn't you were doing things, you didn't understand, you didn't know the y or the the idea of it, you did it like, it was a new rule, like, you replace the old rules with some new unschooling rules, and that won't work. You need to go with the principles behind it. And that just sounds like so much work to some people. And it is because if people start to unschooler and they lie and I don't like it, then put the kid back in school of some sort, which I was always willing to do with my kids. I didn't get to that part in my story, but I thought maybe Kirby will not be ready for school right away. But the other kids will be, alright play, right. He just wasn't good in groups. He wasn't good at being at taking Direction. In one group, he was in, he got frustrated and cried. Another another that was a dance class and an art class he was in. He couldn't wait. Wait for the teacher to give the directions. He just start grabbing this stuff, right? That's happens to school. It wasn't that it wasn't that he wasn't receptive to things. It was that he was not going to participate in a group in such a way that the parent that the teachers would be impressed with so that I give away a year. But I still thought, Marty might go because Marty's kind of a joke ish kid and might want the other kids to, you know, run around with play ball with and then he didn't go. And then how I thought Holly Holly used to change clothes three times a day and make outfits and parade around and say isn't this pretty - pretty that Holly's going to 1? Audience. There's a built-in audience, right, right? But each, as they came along, I said, do you want to go to school or stay home for me? That was crucial. That's the pivot point that made it work. Because of what I knew about the open classroom failure. I thought I could do this with unschooling, I could put this on someone who didn't agree to it. Who didn't choose it, and it would fail, right? Because it's possible to be as resentful about not being allowed to go to school as being forced to go to school. Yeah, because it's still a
Speaker 1: [00:52:42]
power over a relationship like being made explicit, if a parent says you're and I do hear a lot of people who wind up being unschooler say this, like they definitely had the choice, you know, obviously we talked a lot about the problem of power over relationships in parenting where that is very, very clear throughout the entire relationship. There's this other problem that I think you've spoken about a little bit and I agree. It's not good for parents and It's not good for children that instead of Power with, which is what you're talking about, a kind of partnership, there's a mutual wool, powerlessness where kids are placated, there left to do whatever they want. The parents tell themselves the story about why this totally I don't want to use judgmental language about it more than I already have, I guess. But just this idea that it's totally hands off. Whatever happens will happen, and that's kind of magical. In itself where there's this lack of Consciousness about it. So I think we're agreeing that that power with relationship. That partnership is really what's important here but it starts with the presentation of a
Speaker 2: [00:53:54]
choice. Yes. And the parents have a choice because they can put their kids in school. I think it's a bad thing for kids to vilify school. So the name of your project here made me nervous at first because if parents tell a child school is horrible, school is the devil school is hell. You will never see a school as long as you live and then the parents died in a flaming car wreck and their kids end up going to school. Yeah, that scared me to death. I always said schools. Cool. It's all right. Some people don't like it very much. You don't have to go. If you don't want to, if you want to go, you can write seems to me aren't more honest and healthier because there, there can be a family. My mom wasn't as nice to me as my teachers. Were she drank And she was resentful and jealous, and she just had some bad personality traits and it wasn't as good at my house as it was at school. I was at school as much as I could possibly be. If there is another club, I could join or anything, I could do marching band choir. Is there any, any sort of club that I could join where I stay after school? I would because I liked the other people. I all those things. I was attributed to my kids, I think I liked it, I wanted the audience, I wanted the other people to bounce ideas off of, I wanted the social life and I wanted the library and I wanted To talk to the teachers who had traveled and who had really cool. Hobbies at home, my science teacher restored, old cars, you know, I would talk to them about whatever they were willing to talk about and so for me, I use School in my own way for my own purposes, not everyone can or will do that.
Speaker 1: [00:55:24]
Yeah, and most of my teaching experience was actually with a population of students who had very troubled, distressed kinds of Home lives. And it's, it's obviously something that I have to acknowledge. Knowledge that for many people out there school can be a kind of respite the problem. And I think we agree is that once you walk in the door Choice ends, and if you don't know how to survive that process, it can obviously be quite destructive for a lot of people whether it's through Conformity or rebellion and not finding the middle ground and not having the perspective. As a young person to navigate that successfully, I named the show School Sox number one because Nine years ago, I was much angrier than I am now. I felt lied to. I felt very betrayed. I thought about renaming it several times, but one is
Speaker 2: [00:56:14]
that when you quit teaching, was that a nine year
Speaker 1: [00:56:16]
mark? No, I had actually quit teaching in 2006 and then I had gone on to do like college Consulting and private tutoring, completely switching populations from, you know, inner city kids who had a lot of emotional challenges from broken homes and going and working in, you know, the Greater Boston area with wealthy overachievers Bound for Ivy. League schools, helping them write college essays and and recognizing that a lot of the same problems existed as far as the, the emotional impact of the coercion that experience. And I think that at the time working, as a tutor with these kids who were captain of the football team, AP level and and just seeing that they had, you know, a general lack of enthusiasm, a general lack of confidence in themselves and a Sense of optimism about their future. They just very much appeared to me like they were following tracks kind of unconsciously and I contrasted that experience with nieces and nephews that I had at the time who were you know, 5 and 6 years old and they had this incredible enthusiasm, they believed in themselves they wanted to show you what they could do and I kind of in my analysis I was like all right well these kids you know these little kids have have done nothing, you know they they are just, they know a few jokes, they can do a cartwheel. I am not saying they've done nothing. They do wonderful things all the time, but I'm saying, like, as far as like, what they're told achievements are, they don't have any of that under their belt yet. So, what's separating them? What's the difference between these kids who have finger quotes achieved, and these little kids who haven't and it was you know, 50,000 hours of schooling between that sucked, a lot of the natural teaching tools. You know? There's any teaching tools that we have especially like curiosity and creativity. And and self-direction, they haven't been broken of that, yet way these older kids had, so it seemed like an appropriate name. It was also I feel like the number one phrase that my own students used to describe their school experience. So I've heard it
Speaker 2: [00:58:22]
myself but I totally get what you're saying. Yeah, you and I could both tell, you know, hours and hours of stories about what sucks about school. And I know that. But I also have seen kids just frightened out of their wit's about what if I have to go back to school sometimes one pair Don't usually the mom occasionally, the dad is so attached. The idea of unschooling that she's willing to throw over everything else in her life, including her husband and then the kids end up in school because the judge said they had to be in school. Yeah. And those poor kids are so scared that they they can't function. So I don't I don't think it's worth doing that and I have seen people other than myself who like school also, to be fair. You're rich. Boston clients were paying for tutoring. Yeah. So they weren't the kids who I liked it a well enough to bounce up to the top and bounced out.
Speaker 1: [00:59:11]
Oh, sure. Absolutely
Speaker 2: [00:59:13]
or their parents want him to do better. Whatever could be pressure to get into Harvard. I read years ago. Many years ago, that Harvard was ignoring any applications that were 4.0 Eagle Scout because all of them were like, they had enough of those every year to fill up the whole class.
Speaker 1: [00:59:30]
Indeed. Yeah, the first client I ever had as a tutor. She was a non-traditional. Boston College student. She was from South. It Nam and she was old enough at the time to have actually survived the Vietcong and fled the country and wound up in the United States. And she was applying to Harvard as a non-traditional student. And I was just working with her on the application process and her, her reading and writing skills, or English, reading and writing skills were really underdeveloped, and I had a much different attitude. Obviously, or less knowledge about Harvard at that time. And I said, to the person who's running the company that I work for, I was like, this isn't gonna work, you know, she's really like, not at the level of Democrat formance that Harvard is going to require and she's a no. She's already in like you're going through a formality, right? Because they like they like the story. That's that's what they want. And So that obviously opened my eyes to what I think Harvard is actually a lot of those Ivy League schools are looking for because you're absolutely right. They have no shortage of those kinds of applicants and it was actually another frustration related to this job. I would need a lot of people who are very very intelligent and they were kind of going into this, you know, even at that time thirty forty thousand dollar a year college. I Endeavor, very unconsciously just feeling like it was the 13th grade and I felt like I was enforcing that pressure on
Speaker 2: [01:00:46]
them through my job. So even though you quit teaching, now you're still serving the
Speaker 1: [01:00:50]
schools. Oh no. I was doing a kind of eulogy for John Taylor, Gatto in my last podcast, and I was reflecting on how his work shaped my experience, where I'm encountering, you know, Holt, cosel gato, all at the time when I'm doing this work, and it's kind of Coloring everything that I'm doing and showing it in this new light and I described my experience at the time as being a public school enforcement officer. If I showed up at your house to work on grades with you, the implicit suggestion was some time here because something is wrong with you
Speaker 2: [01:01:23]
down here. You're on probation. You can tell ya if your other life. Exactly. Oh my gosh. That'd be
Speaker 1: [01:01:29]
so harsh. Yeah, it was. And that was eventually. What led me to doing this project? Full-time is I just Felt like, you know, through the help of these influences like Holt like Auto, like cosel was a big one and a handful of others. And then you know, I started to say, all right, well who else is criticizing the schools and why and you know I was introduced to what is often called The Radical School Reform movement of the 1960s and and all of those voices is the D schooling concept. You know, I put together in my own mind map that was you know philosophically influence but also experientially influenced and that's how I wound up moving forward with this project but I was very, very lucky to encounter the things I encountered. When I did, I wanted to be a high school principal. That was my career track is after I taught Public School history for a while. I would go and be an administrator, right? Because that's where the money was. And it was also being involved in education in some way. So I'm very grateful that I had the encounters that I did and it steered me in a different direction. But yeah, the the frustration and the questioning I had of what I was doing, it became so palpable that eventually A I just kind of had to do something about it
Speaker 2: [01:02:39]
that reminded me of a recent that I quit not that I already was thinking about quitting but I said I would like to transfer the high school next year because aren't each some electives I'm tired of 51 prep. I've thing over and over all day and I was told by people I knew to be half incompetent that I'd known. Since I was a kid that I was doing very well where I was and that I was more suited for what so is, if you do badly, you become an administrator. If you do too well, they stick you there for life and they said and I said, well think about it anyway. I would really like to transfer And they hired two people, from out of District that year to teach you, the high school and left me in 9th grade, and that became the beginning of my last year because I thought these guys don't care what I want. But I have I have been doing a good job. I was they were going to for what it's worth. I was going to be the head of the English Department there and I was the youngest and they wanted me to be like represent the union and all of that I did. I wasn't interested in that. I wasn't interested in politics of it. But even the other, you know, the other teachers respected me is what I'm trying to say. They weren't like oh you're so irritating, they would say your class is kind of loud. Could you keep it down? But that was, that was the complaint. So I wanted to talk about choices. Ali quickly because I know times almost up sure. You said, what do the, what should the parents be doing while they're waiting? Well, they shouldn't be waiting. They should be living a really rich life where input isn't dependent on reading. Yes. My youngest read later than the boys did. I expect her to read earlier because she was a girl and I'd this Prejudice are things. I had learned reading about how reading works that girls learn he's learned earlier and she just didn't. And so what happened was when she first read she read a Judy Blume I had a I had a guy and Failure to say, I was that. I was lying. I thought you said television. He said, yes, yeah, that TV guy. Yes. When I talked to him after that interview, I said my daughter learned to read and I told him this story, her neighbor who was home-schooled with a curriculum had been told by her mother. You don't want to grow up like, Holly Dodd you. Don't you need to learn to read. So she gave her a Judy Blume book. I remember which one and it was you need to learn read this book but the mom was reading it with her. It's just like read a chapter and coming, you know, tell me you read it, where are you in the book? So Holly felt bad. For this girl because she couldn't go out and play cuz she was supposed to be reading this book. So Holly asked me to get her copy. And I did so Holly's. Letting the girl read it to her. Because Holly can't read the other girls 10 and Holly's 11. I think so, Holly ends up, figuring out how to read from that, from Reading along with her and helping her read it. Holly learn to read the next book she read was Stephen King's The Body which is a novella but you know, that's not written at anybody's grade level and she loved Stand By Me that was her favorite show since she was a little kid. And so she Isn't that a book short story, I said it was longer than a short story but yeah I went and got her a copy that day, brought it back and she started reading that. So if an 11 year old can read Stephen King and she couldn't read a few months before that, at that point, I already knew that this could happen but that was a really pretty fancy demo at my house because her vocabulary, our vocabulary is already really big. So it wasn't like she if she was five or six and saw a big word, she would just be lost. You know, where do I attack this with what little phonics I know. Right. This is a book, a word I've never seen before. Drawing an outline around, it isn't going to work like that Dick. And Jane book thing that they're only like 30 words in the whole thing or something. So, I was, I was Confident by then because I'd seen my boys learn to read. But for Holly to jump, Judy, Blume, Stephen, King. That's the crowning moment. I don't need to worry about it anymore, but so for parents who think that there should be intermediate steps, that's a good story. Maybe there aren't intermediate steps. Maybe I learned to read when I was six because I was ready to learn to read in the fact that Around me were reciting phonics rules and we were reading through in our in our classroom, you stick and Jane books. Maybe that's not what caused me to read, or maybe like Holly seeing her friend make mistakes, maybe me seeing the other kids attack, a word badly helped me. See what how not
Speaker 1: [01:06:32]
to read, right, right. I
Speaker 2: [01:06:34]
don't know because I wasn't yet that analytical but I don't think that teaching a child to read is going to help. I think it's going to make them afraid and make them frustrated because if they can't, they can't period whether they're in school or their home. And so it's not anything. To anybody can do. And then some people will come into a discussion and say when they really want to learn to read, they will know if they really want to learn to read and they're not ready. Distract them movies, share movies with them, share music. And don't don't not like right out the song, lyrics and make them real. Um, nothing like that. Nothing. Nothing scholarly. You know. Nothing. Nothing. That's that looks like school when the parents are still trying to make unschooling look like school. That's because the parents haven't be schooled before I ever came to home schooling. Somebody Where had said these cooling takes a month for every year you've been in school. I'd still never have heard where that first came from. And it wasn't even about unschooling was about any kind of school and he kind of home schooling. And so I thought, well, why would there be a claim like that? But I've never seen it fail, right? Yeah, it takes
Speaker 1: [01:07:35]
it's interesting. And another thing that I really like that, I heard you saying another one of your videos with somebody asked, you just about the whole unschooling Enterprise. How long does it how much time does this take? I think was the question and the answer. The answer was something like it takes all the time and none of the time
Speaker 2: [01:07:51]
stamps Russia and I were both there and I think she said none how much time how much time you have to spend every day on this said and done. I said all and that's what it is, you change your life, you change the way you see and believe and
Speaker 1: [01:08:03]
interact but it's also with respect to D schooling. It's the contrast between what people, the expectations that people might bring verse what natural learning is right? If you're asking me about natural learning, I might say then yeah it's all of your I'm if you're talking to me about schooling and your schooling related expectations or your schooled expectations, then it's not of your time. That's
Speaker 2: [01:08:25]
okay, that's it, that's it. And so when people, when we talk about choices, when I say you don't have to when people are coming into an age, aggression they go. Well you have to do this or I had to do that. I stopped them and I give them a link to my page on have to Center.com have to. It's because if you feel like you have to do something, you've just made yourself powerless, unnecessarily, don't do that. For one thing, you don't move. From that imagined have to write. And for another thing you get in the habit of saying have to, you're going to pass it around, you're going to tell your kids what they have to do to, and if they don't have a choice, they can't make a choice. And when people say, well he chose to be an Olympic swimmer when he was seven, like no kid ever learnt ever chose to be an Olympic swimmer when he was 7, but some people will come up with something like that. What he said, he wants to be a pilot. She said, she's interested in this. Okay, let that interest last for about a minute. Or a lifetime but don't own it. Don't take it over and if the parents say, I want to unschooler Cooling to, if you're going to have a good relationship with another person, with your partner, with your child, with the neighbors with the other unschooler 'z, you need to choose over and over and over. As often as you can, maybe maybe people are going to make three conscious choices a day, but if they're really good at in there, in the flow and they have a bunch of little kids, they can get up to 40, 40, conscious choices a day. I don't think anybody's ever counted on, but you know what I mean, right. Absolutely much one, conscious choice to be a kind parent forever isn't going to get you past the next morning, you're going to get tired. Tired and irritated. But if every time you start to do something, you try to remember that you do have a choice, you don't have to do this, then the choices can ratchet up gradually to such a place that you never knew. You could even get to as to patience and understanding and acceptance of how learning works. But it does. You can't jump 15 Steps all at once. You have to walk there yourself. So you might start with choices that are that sound horrible. Like like I said into school or I could buy a curriculum. Okay. Well, by the That is mean you have to use it just because you bought a curriculum doesn't mean that you're obligated to do 180 days of school at home, at the table, right? So if people make choices all along, then they can walk away from the things that were harmful to them as children, or that might be harmful to their children. Now, they can walk one step at a time towards something better as they gradually from. Read a little try a little Wait Awhile, watch start to see what does seem to them better,
Speaker 1: [01:11:10]
right? And it's a great way to promote conscious living the absence of choice, really. B, apathy where the abundance of choice is kind of a shield against the development to that apathy like in school. I felt like I was it wasn't, you know, it was always implicit but it was consistent obey and conform, you know, like fit in fit this mold and, and the result of that for me. Anyway, and I understand everybody's experience is different, but it was a kind of apathy where I became an adult. And in that state, I said, well, who's going to who's going to author this life? You know, not Me, you know, because I had never had the availability of choices in so many aspects of life. But I have seen that contrasts with with unschooler 's or people who really embraced this idea that you're talking about, they very much see themselves as authoring their own story. And, you know, that is one of the most important things that, that I'm promoting with my work and it sounds like you're doing something similar. I don't know, that doesn't sound like me. No, no, I Aunt, I think living in the moment is more my style than authoring your own story.
Speaker 2: [01:12:23]
But I may be misunderstanding what you're envisioning with your phrase to, but I don't think that deciding what you want to do in advance and then feeling that you have to do that is is as useful as living in a sort of alert and open way with, what happens, the next day. And the next moment
Speaker 1: [01:12:41]
I think the two are totally related. I mean, not to torture the metaphor, but you do have to kind of author Your Own Story, one, one line at a time, you know? And okay, I'll go with it. That is that is that that conscious living and, and being in the Moment.
Speaker 2: [01:12:53]
Sure, there's a joke about stuntman and circuses and stuff where they say kids don't try this at home. Hmm, there are things about school that parents should not try at home, right?
Speaker 1: [01:13:04]
Right. That was one of John holds most powerful warnings. I think I forget what he called it. It maybe he just said, don't make your home, a miniature school or something like that. Yes,
Speaker 2: [01:13:12]
yes. That's a good quote. I like that. So another thing about John Holt, I just want to throw in here. Sure has. Okay, was a huge John Holt Family. I first started this, that's what I would read for inspiration is John Holt books. Then, as my kids got older, and I saw myself and some of the other people that I hung around with a lot, Joyce fetteroll, Pam sorooshian, some other ones Deb. Louis. As we tried this stuff out, we learn things that John Holt didn't have the ability to do to see to get to. Because when he traveled, he stayed with families but he was always a visitor right? And that it's like the principle of an experiment affecting the data. Absolutely. Yep. How is it going to act when John Holt's visiting? Well you know, not the way he acts When John Holt's not visiting for to whatever extent we don't know and it doesn't matter, he never was a parent. And so he didn't have to get up in middle of night with anybody. He didn't. He it was, it was school with him and Theory with him. And I'm very, very grateful that he did Learning Without schooling because he was, he had the time and energy and interest to connect these people together a lot of unschooler. Still then then, especially in still. Now, don't take it Beyond academics and for me to separate life from academics, mrs. 90% of the learning that happens when you when you don't divide the world into subject areas. Yeah, when any moment can, when people are new, they're consciously going to be looking at that. Like they'll do something and go. Oh my gosh. I've and I've mentioned a few things already hear about when I was teaching that was science and history and language, it's like okay after you after you do that for a year or two and you're and you're categorizing things as they happen after a while. You can stop doing that because you Become confident enough, that everything will touch on everything, eventually that every single thing, every thought every object connects to two or ten other things, and pretty soon you realize that you're living in this web and this grid of connections and that whatever you do, whatever happens tomorrow will be part of your own story but you don't need to know where it's going to go. Just be the best most joyful most open you that you can be healthy. Happy learning and it. Won't slide backwards. You won't fall out of that. It'll hold you up. It'll it'll have never said this before. So I ran out of words. It's like boy you up in that learning environment and there's no hole to fall out of,
Speaker 1: [01:15:45]
right? Absolutely I remember in I think it was class dismissed you were interviewed for that documentary and I remember being quite like struck by this statement that you made that you didn't like the word education and Then I kind of thought about it. You know, like one of the most important things that I try to do is make explicit the difference between schooling and education on my show, but I got the sense that you felt like education makes it the word itself like an education, right? So now it becomes this noun that is like self-contained, it's defined its limited especially when you consider how most people think about education. Did you get an education?
Speaker 2: [01:16:26]
Where did you get your education? It should has edges right?
Speaker 1: [01:16:29]
Exactly yeah.
Speaker 2: [01:16:31]
It also is, is something that was predefined. It was something that existed that then you went and
Speaker 1: [01:16:36]
got right. Exactly. Yeah, so I really I really like that reframing of it. I think that's really valuable and I think that would be a nice place to end. I really really enjoyed the conversation, Sandra and I was hoping you could just tell my audience a little bit about where they could find more of your work, audio video, articles and
Speaker 2: [01:16:55]
books. My books are being re-released later this year or early next year new additions by Pam laricchia, so don't get a book yet or I don't know. You can I have two books? The Big Book of unschooling and moving a puddle, which moving a puddle is a collection of all of the published, essays up to 2005. And so some of those are pre internet and from when my kids were little, which can be interesting all itself as a lot of photos in it. If you get the e-book from Lulu, the photos are in color to but just to find to find anything of mine, go to. Sandra.com, and there are links to other things. You can also go to the you can put Sandra.com and then type garbage and then you'll get a search box. You can look things up there are. I thought I had over 2,000 pages of unschooling information. And, and when I last talked to my provider about my site, they said there are over 6,000 HTML Pages, some of those, some of those are not about unschooling. So I that must be 5,000 Pages. There's a lot, and by Page, you know what I mean? Like, someone might be printout be 10. So I've just been collecting and adding to this collection as People wrote wonderful things. I save them, and so there's tons of stuff there. Nobody will ever, find it all a read it all, and I don't expect anybody to even try. But my point is going to be whatever. You're looking for, might be in there and if not find a discussion that I'm in and ask and we will build you something that is terrific. Well, it's long overdue that I had you on the show. You've been on my list of guests that I was excited about for a long time. And I know at this point, you are a world-renowned unschooling advocate. So I definitely appreciate your time and I appreciate you taking a chance with us.
Speaker 1: [01:18:31]
Called school sucks. And I'm very, I'm very happy with how it went. So thank you so much. Thank you. Is
Speaker 2: [01:19:01]
still the
Speaker 1: [01:19:01]
same.
