For the past year and a half or so, I’ve been writing unschooling challenges for our Stories of an Unschooling Family community. Each challenge is designed to stimulate thought and discussion about a particular aspect of unschooling. Hopefully, the challenges help turn unschooling principles into something real in people’s lives.
This week, I posted A Small Steps Unschooling Challenge in the community, but I’m posting it here on my blog as well!
A Small Steps Unschooling Challenge
Hey friends, it’s time for a new unschooling challenge!
Who is this challenge for? It could be for you if you’d like to unschool but don’t know where to start. Or you could do it if you’re unsure about unschooling and don’t want to dive straight in but take things slowly. Or maybe it will help if things were going along okay for your family, but now something no longer feels right.
But what if you’re an experienced unschooler who’s happy with how things are in your family? I hope you’ll still get involved. I’m sure you have loads of valuable ideas and stories that you can share in the comments!
So, what are we going to do?
This week, we’re going to look at our current situation and then make a list of positives. What’s working for our family? What do we enjoy? What brings us joy?
Then we’ll list the negatives. Are there things that are causing conflict in our family? What drains us of energy? What do we dread doing? What isn’t fulfilling the current needs of our children?
The positive list is just to remind us to keep doing what works. Perhaps your family enjoys read-alouds or going on outings or reading poetry together. That’s wonderful. Do more of these things! We don’t need to change what we’re doing unless, over time, something no longer answers our kids’ needs and becomes a burden,
Next, we’re going to think about everything on our negative list. Can we cross off some of these things straightaway? Perhaps we’re doing them for the wrong reasons: to gain the approval and acceptance of family and friends, to impress people from outside our immediate family…
Our next step is to identify the one thing on this list that causes our family the most conflict or unhappiness. If we could change only one thing what would it be? Once we know where we’d like to start, can we make a change? Can we let go of something completely? Or do it in a different way?
Can we change something that isn’t fulfilling the needs of our kids and take one small step towards unschooling?
You might know that our family never intended to become unschoolers. I rejected unschooling because, although it sounded attractive – I thought I wouldn’t have to do anything! – I just couldn’t see how it would work. We did try unschooling in the early days of our homeschooling life, but because I didn’t really understand what it was all about, we left it behind. We moved onto other things and ended up trying lots of other homeschooling options, as I searched for the perfect way to educate my kids. One day, after circling through the various homeschooling methods once again, I was ready to admit that none of them was working for our family. I decided it was time to ‘do our own thing.’
One by one, I got rid of the things that weren’t working for us until we got to a stage where we were all learning and thriving and happy. Life felt peaceful. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, we’d become unschoolers.
So, we got to unschooling by taking small steps, keeping what we enjoyed and was important to us, and eliminating the things that weren’t answering our needs. Perhaps you could do the same.
Of course, we shouldn’t change things just so we can call ourselves unschoolers. That can’t be our goal. Instead, we should be looking at the needs of our kids rather than trying to unschool ‘properly’. But if we focus on those needs, we very well may end up at unschooling!
I find it very reassuring that we can arrive at unschooling without intending to. Maybe this indicates that unschooling is a very natural thing to do. What do you think?
This week, shall we talk about a gradual or step-by-step approach to unschooling? Will you share your experiences and stories and ideas? If you’d like to, you could also share your lists.
So, will you take up this week’s unschooling challenge?
Something Extra
If you’re interested in a step-by-step approach to unschooling, maybe you’d like to read my story, A Gradual Approach to Unschooling. The edited version of this story can be found in my book Curious Unschoolers, but the original post is here on my blog.
Here is an excerpt from A Gradual Approach to Unschooling:
But what if we only let go as far as we’re comfortable? What if we approached unschooling in tiny steps? Let ourselves get used to it bit by bit? Not jump in the deep end but instead adopt a gradual approach?
You know what? I reckon this is the best way to move to an unschooling way of life.
Yes, we can listen to people who have more unschooling experience than us. Ponder what they have to say. Maybe push ourselves a little bit out of our comfort zone. But we shouldn’t do things that we’re not happy with just because we’ve been told by others that this is the way to go if we want to unschool properly. If we do, maybe we’ll end up rejecting unschooling altogether.
And who knows where a step-by-step approach to unschooling will lead? If someone had told me a few years ago that we’d become radical unschoolers, I would have protested loudly, “Oh no, I could never let go to that extent. I’m not even sure I should. It doesn’t feel right.” But here we are living the life I said we would never live.
Photos
Usually, I post my own photos, but this time, I’m posting some that I downloaded from Unsplash. The two main photos were taken by one of my favourite Unsplash photographers, Annie Spratt.
Update
Since writing this post, I’ve published a book full of unschooling challenges, including an updated and expanded version of this one. Why not check out The Unschool Challenge? You can find it on Amazon!
