Getting School Out of Our Heads
Unlearning Our Own School Experience
and
Embracing a Better Way to Learn... for Our Kids
We spent a lot of years in school. Undoing some of those voices yelling, or just raising their eyebrows at us - that’s going to take a little bit of time. But I’m here to help you chip away at those ideas that no longer really serve us. And truth be told they maybe didn’t serve us all that well back then.
How many of us asked,
“When am I REALLY going to need this?”
or
“What am I learning this for?”
And you were blown off, right?
You were told,
“This will make you a more well-rounded person.”
But in whose eyes? Who is looking at our well-roundedness now as adults and saying,
"Wow.. she knows a little about everything. Not a lot - so not really USEFUL, but well rounded! She’s that!"
No. I have never heard that in my life.
When we choose to unschool - or even homeschool - we have to let so many ideas go.
Some we hold onto longer than others. For all kinds of reasons.
Maybe we were the good kid in school...we hacked the system. I think unschooling is sometimes harder for these people. If you spent a lot of years doing this, it may be more deeply integrated into your sense of who you are.
Maybe you've told yoursel...
I’m Type A. I work hard. I do have a little People Pleasing in me. I like things neat and orderly.
Those traits made you successful in school. Not necessarily in Real Life, after you got OUT of school.
As opposed to the rebels. Who gave up on pleasing people. That wasn’t in the cards. Or maybe it just wasn’t as easy for them to hack into it.
Point is, so many of our thought processes as now adults and parents, have been shaped by our experiences. They’re not all bad...but we need to shine some light on them to see which we believe really matter and which don’t.
Which work for our kids, and which don't.
Which fit this day and and age, as opposed to the world back when we were kids - because it’s certainly different.
Almost 30 years ago, I was exactly where you are now.
I had sent my kids to school and thought...come on now. Why isn’t this working?
Then later, when I brought them home from the school system, and I was trying curriculum… I was thinking, it’s just one or two sentences, for Pete’s Sake! When I was in school, we had years of this!
Why won’t the kids comply?
Because I still had SO much school stuck in my head.
The emphasis on top-down teacher-driven, “I know what’s best for you” pounded into us as THE ONLY RIGHT WAY.
Sure, we heard lip service to “Being unique is good!” “Individualizing the learning (IEPs?) are good.”
But the reality was prioritizing conformity. Through whatever method they had at their disposal.
We kind of have conflicting ideas in our own heads, right?
We start to feel confident about doing something a little differently, and then we start to second guess ourselves. Like a rubber band, it flings us back!
Why IS breaking free from schoolish ways important?
Because it’s not good enough. Not anymore at least.
And our kids are not thriving with that school approach that we were completely indoctrinated into.
If we’re going to see learning as a positive wonderful way to find answers to our questions, solutions to our problems, we’re going to have to step away from the idea of...
✔️Checking a box before we get to the good stuff.
✔️ Following someone else’s agenda
We are capable. We are adults moving around in our adult world.
And what do we do if we need to know something?
Do we mimic school and quiz ourselves on Friday? No.
We probably
Google it. Or watch a
YouTube video.
That wasn’t really something we did 10 or 15 years ago.
And 10 or 15 years from now, our kids will probably laugh at this antiquated of way of gathering information.
So much of school was built around the students proving to the teachers that they KNEW the material.
Students learned how to bluff and skim and come across knowledgeable.
And before you knew it, we didn’t care about learning it, we only cared about the grade.
Or getting out of there.
So if we decide we’re going to embrace an approach that’s actually better than our own past experiences, we have some undoing to do.
So often, parents say,
“Wow! I had no idea this was going to be so hard for ME!”
I had no idea so many schoolish ideas were woven around in my own mind.
Making the decision to do that, is step one.
And it’s how you’ll get the most out of an unschooling or any non-traditional learning experience.
I’ve started to give you some ideas about why this is so hard to do.
Why, when you THINK you’ve got it figured out, fear creeps back in.
You’re back to scrolling the internet for some math curriculum or writing lessons.
Everybody’s reason we do this is going to be so individualized.
- Did your sister’s kid rattle off some times table answer, and your kid just looked at you?
- Did something seem ok when they were 8 but now that they’re 10… that seems “a bit late.”?
- Are you simply around too many people who are talking about the latest and greatest curriculum?
- Or maybe they’ve given you the impression that deschooling should be two weeks of laying around and then, it’s time to get busy with the Homeschooling.
Because at first glance, that curriculum sounds much easier to do. Someone else tells you what kids need to know, it’s all laid out nice and tidy. We could cough up the money and :::Ding!:::
In our mind, we’ve done our good deed. We’ve found what we need. Gold star for us! ⭐️
And then our kid...disagrees.
Maybe they do it for a little while, just to keep you happy. They want to be a "Good Kid" too.
But then, they don’t see the point. They don’t see the reason this is more important than leveling up in their game.
A game full of coins and building , strategies and scenarios - translated into math and engineering, language arts and history… not that the kids will know to argue that position with you, but...that’s the truth of those games.
So the power struggles begin.
We want to be good stewards of our money - and we’ve already bought this pricey curriculum.
We’ve maybe been raised that kids need to do as they’re told. Don’t be defiant.
And we’re supposed to be In Charge.
And we are clearly losing ground in that arena.
So now, not only have we wasted money, we’re looking like we’re incapable or incompetent.
We’re going to have to give up our Gold Star. What the heck??
And the truth is, learning always does and always has belonged to the Learner. No matter how hard the teacher cajoled or coerced, it was really up to the learner whether they learneed it - or not.
And that’s what nobody told us.
They gave us the impression that if we can’t MAKE them learn it, either the kid or we the parents were not doing it right.
Again, that’s what we were conditioned to believe from all those years in school. It was always the learner’s fault..not paying enough attention, not applying themselves enough - they convinced us that WE were the problem - not that their methods were not right or the curriculum was lame. Oh no! It was never THEIR fault. Even though, now as we look back, we can see them shifting around all the time… phonics approach to reading…no, now it’s Whole Word... Back to basic.. no Common Core. Every decade or so, another new way is tried - and because it’s a big system barreling along, they can’t step back enough to see the structure itself is what’s the problem.
But we can. WE can pull the kids OUT of that structure and START with the Learner. Start with their interests and curiosities. Start with LISTENING instead of Lecturing.
And that’s what deschooling is about. Shifting away from the School approach to learning, and turning it upside down. Noticing more about the Learner instead of trying to mold them into some story in our head - or some example that the School System has laid out as what’s desirable.
When you really individualize the learning, you have to start with...The Individual.
I get it. You can’t do that in a classroom. But YOU - parents - can do that.
All you have to do - simple and hard at the same time - is get over your Fear.
Be brave enough to forge your own path.
Look around to learn more - because you’ve got a lot to learn too! You don’t have to fake that you’re the Expert. The Quintessential Homeschooling Mom. Forget that! You’re learning to do something you were not prepared to do. But you have a reason for all this effort. That child standing in front of you. They deserve better than school or the school approach at homeschooling.
Let’s conquer your fears, one at a time.
With grown kids who learned this way, I can tell you that this non-traditional unschooling way works.
They didn’t use traditional methods for learning - and they still got into college, have careers, own homes and businesses. They were not unprepared for adulthood. Think about how kids learn to walk and talk before school without lessons and curriculum - and how we learn as adults after we leave the school system. I’m here to tell you that my kids and thousands of others who have done this quietly under the radar, learned what they needed to be happy successful adults.
More about Grown Unschoolers
What if it’s as simple as that?
What if you can begin to dismantle the ideas schools conditioned you to believe, and you begin to look at learning like this? A natural, curiosity-driven approach.
A deeper involvement in the world and everything that’s available - instead of waiting for Life to start at age 18 or after school hours.
Because it’s right there waiting for you!
You just have to be brave enough to step up.
Shed those shackles of conformity above everything else, and step into the Real World.
I want to try to stop here at the 10 minute mark, but I have more to share with you about this. Leave a comment if this resonates with you or if you think you’d like me to talk more about this.
And in the meantime, hop over to the
UnschoolingMom2Mom.com website and learn a little more about how this could work for you and your kids.
If unschooling is taboo where you live, you don’t have to tell anyone you’re reading up on it.
Your secret is safe with me.
I’ll talk to you again next week!
~Sue
