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Let’s Explore Alternative Kid-Directed Schooling

With our neurodiverse family and the challenges of the pandemic, we choose to do self-directed home schooling for two and a half years through the start of the pandemic. It’s not for everybody, (it’s wasn’t particularly ideal for us) and it’s not any ‘better’ than other types of education.

We were lucky enough to have the privileges and resources to practice alternative schooling, and for it to be the least-traumatizing and risk-averse option for us. Not everyone has the resources to explore education alternatives.

No matter what education path you end up on, I hope you and your unique kids are able to find a method that helps your kids feel like safe and valuable members of the community.

So with that, here are some books to kick us off in our particular flavor of Bumblebee Hollow Academy: Luminary Lessons!

Read:

• Weslandia (Ages 4-10)
• Ike’s Incredible Ink (ages 4-8)
• On A Magical Do-Nothing Day (Ages 4+)

Discuss with kids:

• What do each of our kids want to achieve in life?
• What education will we need to make that possible?
• What rights should every kid have to access a quality education?
• What type of education works best for our family?
• What barriers do we face getting the type of education that works best for us?
• What resources do we have available to educate ourselves?
• Do we like our education to be:
  • Self-directed or orchestrated by someone else?
  • By myself, with a partner, or in a group?
  • Uninterrupted, or would it be helpful to have someone check in with me?
  • Built into everyday life, or lessons during a special time of each day or week?
• How will I know if the type of education I’m practicing is working for me? What results are we looking for? How can we measure them?

Take Action

• Is someone shaming you for the decisions you’re making on your kid’s education?
• Tell them to fuck off.

Additional resources to dig deeper into this topic:

• More Kids Books About Education Rights & Even more kids stories about Education Rights
• Forest School
• Unschooling, alt-schooling & stories of kid-directed learning
• Access a year’s worth of discussion guides, resources, and lessons from our 2020-2021 Luminary Lessons.
  This was previously locked for Patreon members only, so if you’d like to send a few bucks my way in exchange for an entire year’s worth of lesson plans, do that here: Paypal | Venmo | Ko-fi