So relatable, especially this living in tension with what you are working with now and who we want to be, with recognizing modernity within us. I don't have a daughter yet but I can imagine the weight of this. I wish to figure out a way for myself to get through first.
I cannot even tell you how much of my healing work the last few years was related to the school system where I grew up. Which was a "good district" in conventional terms, which incorporated some innovative structures in elementary school (though almost none of that by high school). It is such a tension to hold gratitude for a safe, well-funded school with grief for a structure that marches kids to their next class after 50 minutes, in which everything is high-pressure and testing-based and non-responsive to youth's actual interests and brilliances, in which the schools themselves have harsh lighting and loud floors and kids are mean without teachers having a lot they can do about it.
Oh Kati…thank you for sharing this and it resonated deeply. I feel like a lot of my own healing work and the healing work I do with students is unlearning things we were taught in schools - seemingly small yet huge things like learning not to listen to our bodies, our intuition, our own curiosities….such grief, such tension ❤️
Currently navigating this tension! My family has been living without school for almost six years and I just put my youngest in an online school. It has actually been pretty awesome and I agree that liberatory educational practices can occur in many settings. We have a great unschooling community here, but it relies on unpaid labor of parents. That work shifts from direct caregiving to more project management/librarian/taxi driver type work as they age. It has always been my dream to return to the public school settings and integrate what I have learned through unschooling BUT the other thing that has happened for me is I have been able to reflect on practices I saw public school teachers doing DECADES ago, and see how they were implementing these practices, sometimes subversively.
You are one of the people I was thinking of when I wrote this, Katy, knowing the work you’ve done with your family and also in schools! Thanks so much for sharing all of this. Appreciate the “unpaid labor of parents” piece, and so happy to hear that the online school has been an awesome start! And 100% to teachers engaging in subversive practices. Even in Daphne’s current school, while there’s a lot of “schoolishness,” I can see the love and care as the foundation and that is no small thing. We had a rough arrival this morning, and by the time I got to campus I had a message from them checking in and letting me know she was doing well, and asking if there was anything they needed to know, which felt huge.
Appreciating your wisdom, and that we are navigating this tension together! Sending you a hug across the continent 🙂❤️🤗
So relatable, especially this living in tension with what you are working with now and who we want to be, with recognizing modernity within us. I don't have a daughter yet but I can imagine the weight of this. I wish to figure out a way for myself to get through first.
Thanks so much for reading and sharing your thoughts! Yes, we all have to figure a way through- and I think it has to be together, too.
I cannot even tell you how much of my healing work the last few years was related to the school system where I grew up. Which was a "good district" in conventional terms, which incorporated some innovative structures in elementary school (though almost none of that by high school). It is such a tension to hold gratitude for a safe, well-funded school with grief for a structure that marches kids to their next class after 50 minutes, in which everything is high-pressure and testing-based and non-responsive to youth's actual interests and brilliances, in which the schools themselves have harsh lighting and loud floors and kids are mean without teachers having a lot they can do about it.
Oh Kati…thank you for sharing this and it resonated deeply. I feel like a lot of my own healing work and the healing work I do with students is unlearning things we were taught in schools - seemingly small yet huge things like learning not to listen to our bodies, our intuition, our own curiosities….such grief, such tension ❤️
Currently navigating this tension! My family has been living without school for almost six years and I just put my youngest in an online school. It has actually been pretty awesome and I agree that liberatory educational practices can occur in many settings. We have a great unschooling community here, but it relies on unpaid labor of parents. That work shifts from direct caregiving to more project management/librarian/taxi driver type work as they age. It has always been my dream to return to the public school settings and integrate what I have learned through unschooling BUT the other thing that has happened for me is I have been able to reflect on practices I saw public school teachers doing DECADES ago, and see how they were implementing these practices, sometimes subversively.
You are one of the people I was thinking of when I wrote this, Katy, knowing the work you’ve done with your family and also in schools! Thanks so much for sharing all of this. Appreciate the “unpaid labor of parents” piece, and so happy to hear that the online school has been an awesome start! And 100% to teachers engaging in subversive practices. Even in Daphne’s current school, while there’s a lot of “schoolishness,” I can see the love and care as the foundation and that is no small thing. We had a rough arrival this morning, and by the time I got to campus I had a message from them checking in and letting me know she was doing well, and asking if there was anything they needed to know, which felt huge.
Appreciating your wisdom, and that we are navigating this tension together! Sending you a hug across the continent 🙂❤️🤗