all right. So we unschool our family. A lot of people have asked us what is
unschooling? so today we're going to talk about what
is unschooling why you may or may not want to do it. This video is for you if
you've heard about unschooling (whether it's from a friend family member or on
YouTube or somewhere on the internet) and you're trying to figure out is this
right for you and your children. This video is not for you if you already know
what unschooling is and you hate it. I'm not here to try to convince you that
unschooling is right or wrong. I don't look at it that way. I think whatever
works for you is fine and if public school works for you, stick with public
school. If regular homeschooling works for you, stick with regular homeschooling.
But if you're looking for an alternative. If you're trying to figure out because
what you're doing doesn't work. And you're trying to see if unschooling
might be for you, this video is for you. So what is unschooling? Probably, if you
ask different unschoolers what their definition is, you'll probably get a
different definition from each one of them. But the way we define it: it's the
process of shedding off your preconceived ideas of schooling so you
can find the way that you love to learn. A lot of people look at unschooling as
the end process, but we don't look at it that way. We see it as as that journey
that you go through to shed off the old stuff. But then once you get there, you
get to more of a life schooling or non schooling. However, for the sake of this
video I'm just going to refer to non schooling or life schooling as
unschooling, Because that's the way most people understand it. Some people have
said that the difference between unschoolers and home schoolers is as big
if not bigger than the difference between public schoolers and home
schoolers. That may be right because unschooling is very different from home
schooling. So there's different ways that people unschool. When we first started
learning at home, doing home schooling, it was basically just what it sounds like,
we took exactly the techniques and the things that you did in the classroom and
we did them at home. The kid sat down. They sat at tables or
desk and we gave them assignments. They had a curriculum and they went through
everything and they tried to complete everything that we gave them. We then
started looking at other alternatives to homeschooling so we started looking at
online curriculums, things that they could go to at their own pace, at the
rate that they wanted, to and tried that for a while. Then, after we tried online
curriculums, we basically went to a more unschooling model. However we did talk to
the kids. We sat him down and said (you know) we explained to them what unschooling
was and how it was gonna be self led; that they were going to be finding the
curriculum that they wanted to learn. And our biggest concern was that they had
basic skills. So we talked to them about having basic skills like reading, writing,
math (things like that) and they seemed okay with that. They liked the idea of
being able to self-direct their learning. A lot of the unschooling process, though,
was for us. That (we had to learn) we had to unlearn all the things we learned as
well. We had to unlearn all the preconceived
ideas that we had about schooling and learning. And I think that's why we
talked to the kids and said, "Hey look, you guys at least need these basics."
Ultimately we went to a more unschooling model where we didn't force anything.
Even the basics. And that took a little bit of faith on our part because we
weren't sure. We were worried. Will they learn how to read. Will they learn
how to do math. Will they learn all these other things that are we consider very
basic, if we don't force them to do it. Having that kind of faith in your
children was especially hard on me. I think Joan had confidence in them. She
thought that they were gonna learn, they were gonna get the basics just because
they were self-motivated and would become self-motivated to do it. I was a
little bit more concerned about that but I think at some point when they did
start to read on their own when they did start to do math on their own when they
did start to do all these things on their own when I say on their own I'm
not saying they didn't get any help from us we were there we were
helping them but it was always driven by them so if they came to us and said hey
mom can you help me what's this word say or how do I say this or you know can we
go over these lessons can you teach me this thing I mean we were still involved
but when they basically started to learn all those things on their own then I was
first of all relieved and second of all I then became a believer in this whole
philosophy of unschooling so one of the reasons that we started moving to a more
unschooling model was because the homeschool model just where you take
school and you put it in your home it became a battle so we ended up spending
a lot of our time not teaching our children but actually fighting with our
children trying to force them to sit and sit down and do their lessons trying to
force them to sit down and do their assignments and force them to read and
force them to do this so it really became almost the entire day was mostly
for the most part was focused on these arguments we didn't want homeschooling
to be that kind of a experience for them we wanted it to be a place where they
could learn to love learning another thing that we started to notice as we
started homeschooling was that the kids stopped fighting as much so before when
they are in public school they come home they take an hour or two and they just
fight the whole time and then they get used to each other and then they'd start
getting along and playing well with each other so when we started homeschooling
that's it really happened they didn't fight they maybe got into small fights
but they ended pretty quickly they didn't need several hours a day to stop
fighting with each other because they were just used to each other and when
they would go off to school they would have to come back home and react ylim
eight to each other which was always a challenge
haber so one of the questions we've gotten is is it legal to unschooled yes
it is absolutely legal to 'unschool however every state has its own laws
about schooling so you do have to follow the laws for your specific state and
follow those requirements so I recommend going look you can look it up online
find the requirements for your state and as long as you meet those simple
requirements you can absolutely unschool because basically unschool is just
letting your child lead their own learning so when we first started to
home-school we lived in New York and it has some pretty strict home schooling
laws and so we had all this paperwork we had to fill out and when we first
started we would fill it out and we would write it here's exactly what we're
gonna be teaching our children here's our curriculum here's the books we're
gonna use here's all the things we're gonna learn you know check check check
check check check check check too and then we felt this huge pressure to be
able to have to do those things and in fact we probably transferred that
pressure I'm in fact I'm sure we transferred that pressure onto our
children to say hey look we have to get these things done we've committed to it
we've submitted it and we have to get done we probably impose that on
ourselves more than anything as we went year after
year we got a little bit better we got a little bit more vague and what we're
gonna teach our children it wasn't because we didn't want to teach them as
much we just wanted a little bit more flexibility in how we're teaching them
it's a secret to dealing with things in a really strict state where we just
started adding things like all of this is subject to change so we would write
our curriculum but then we would tell let them know at the end of this all of
this is subject to change depending on the direction that the child needs to
learn or things that they need to learn about so that basically was like the
little disclaimer the little our loophole to everything so we could
basically teach them what we wanted when they were interested in the subjects
that they wanted to learn and do the things that they wanted to do and so
that really helped us more than anything because
unschooling isn't just about the children it's also about us we had to
shed all of these preconceived ideas of schooling we had to get past these ideas
that oh you have to check all of these box and do all of these things at these
specific times or you're failing as a student or you're failing for us as
parents so being able to feel freer definitely helped us as we wrote our
curriculum and put in those little bottom note saying subject to change so
another concern that people have when you tell them that you unschool is well
that sounds like you're neglecting your kids you're not teaching them anything
you're not doing anything which i think is and i think every unschoolers would
wholeheartedly disagree with that in fact I think you're more engaged with
your children when you unschool it often it's harder to not step in and solve the
problem for your kids than it is to watch them struggle and trying to figure
something out because often it's easier just to jump in and say hey let me show
you this is how you do this this is how you figure this out and I'm just gonna
show you before they ask if they ask of course we jump in and we help them there
is definitely a level of some healthy neglect where we allow that our children
give them enough space so that they can try to figure things out on their on
their own but also be a very available we have four kids so to make ourselves
available to all four kids throughout the day when when they are ready for it
is really hard and takes a lot of management and there are definitely
times when we have to tell them I want to help you with this but I'm helping
you know your brother right now I'm helping your sister right now I can't do
it and that can be frustrating for them but else it was probably a good lesson
to learn that they don't always get what they want when they want and that they
have to learn a little bit of patience and work around our schedule but it is
anything but neglect is actively engaged in your children
children's learning on a whole different level than I think other ways because
it's not just hey here's what I've planned now let's do it it's oh wait you
want to learn about this okay now I got to figure out how can I teach you this
really obscure subject that is not necessarily easy to find information on
it's not necessarily easy to figure out or to talk to someone or to find an
expert or whatever but those are the kinds of things you do when you are in
school you try to find an expert you try to connect your kids with people who
have knowledge in those areas and it actually is a lot more work I think than
regular public school or a regular home school so a lot of people ask well if
you let your kids decide what they do all day won't they just play video games
it's possible it's possible that they will play video games all day long for
weeks months I don't know how long that is definitely a possibility hopefully
you have the dialogue you have the communication the open communication
with your children so that you can talk to them about things not necessarily say
you know in shaming them to say hey you know you're spending all your day you're
wasting your time but in a way that you can help facilitate and encourage and
find other interests that are going to help them or maybe they're gonna become
the next great youtuber because they play video games and and they do it all
day and you say hey let me help you figure out how to stream this to YouTube
let me help you to figure out how to do twitch or whatever it is and there may
be a new platform coming by the time they're adults all this stuff could be
gone and there may be some completely new platform some completely new career
that they can build around what they love and we don't know what that is
there are possibilities other than the traditional I'm gonna go to school I'm
gonna go to college I'm gonna get a job I'm gonna do these things there are
careers out there that involve YouTube that involve twitch that involve other
social media and other things that they're gonna learn from doing whatever
they love doing and so we like encouraging that that may not
work for you your children but we found that it has worked really well and that
they don't spend all day playing video games so another thing people have asked
is do you worry about your children's future well yeah I mean what parent
doesn't worry about their children's future however I don't want to control
their future I want them to be able to decide what their future is going to be
and if they fail they fail because they've made the decision to do that if
they succeed they succeed because of the things they've decided to do and the
things they've done along the way so yes as a parent you always worry about your
children I mean you love them you want to see them succeed you want to see them
learn and grow and become productive members of society and be good and
wholesome people and loving people so yeah we worry about that but you worry
about that no matter how you school your children all right so what are the
benefits of unschooling so there are lots of benefits time schooling and they
fall into one of three different categories there's benefits to the child
themselves there's benefits to us as parents there's benefits to the family
as a whole and I guess there's a fourth one which is benefits to society in
general all right so what are the benefits for the child I think there's a
lot of ownership in the things that you learn when you in school so you're
figuring things out so when you figure it out you own that and you build
self-esteem and you feel really good about the things that you party that
you're learning there's also benefits in the fact that
as a child you can spend most of your time learning so as opposed to doing
busy work or doing things that aren't going to necessarily help you learn or
just doing things for a test so that everything you're learning is something
that can help you and generally you're gonna remember it better because
it's self led so this is something I'm interested in so I'm gonna learn it and
you're actually gonna learn it those are just a few of the benefits as a child
you're also less likely to spend a lot of your time fighting with your family
so if your parents aren't forcing you to do something you can actually spend your
time learning and figuring things out and so that brings us to our next point
which is the benefits as a family the main benefit again is less fighting less
arguing that we get along better we learn better communication skills we can
sit down and have a good conversation with each other we can resolve problems
quickly because we can spend time figuring out how do we learn how to
resolve problems and we can spend some time helping our children resolve those
problems because we're not spending all that time trying to force them to learn
something we've gotten lots of compliments about our children as they
interact with other people I think you learn a lot more social skills home
schooling than you do anywhere else because you actually have to interact
with all sorts of different types of people all sorts of different types of
age groups you interact with adults you interact with kids your age you interact
with your younger and older siblings and so you have to develop really good
communication skills in order to get along with them you can't just surround
yourself with your few friends that think and act and are at the same exact
level as you you have to have a plurality
interaction styles depending on who you're with so as a parent there's a lot
of benefits some of them I've already touched upon we don't have to spend a
lot of time arguing with our children we don't have to feel like we have to force
them to learn something we don't have to spend all that time creating curriculum
where we can actually spend that time now people might say well that's your
job you're supposed to do that when you learn when you homeschool you're
supposed to take on all that responsibility but we can actually spend
our time helping our children learn that I think should be where we spend most of
our time as opposed to paperwork and busy work and you know whatever tests or
whatever that we want who we may think that they need that we have to not give
them and grade and help them learn it again if we feel like they didn't learn
it well enough or whatever we can spend that time helping them actually learn
stuff and because it's self driven they're interested they're motivated to
learn it and so it's not a fight for us it's just hey oh you're coming to me you
want to learn this let me help you figure that out so the benefits I think
to society is that you end up with children who I think can be very
productive in society and not just in the standard way there's lots of people
who go through the regular schooling methods that will be able to fill
whatever jobs I think for us at least began probably because I'm also an
entrepreneur as our children have a lot of entrepreneurial ideas and motivations
and you know when they were small they would think you know we say hey what are
you thinking about and sometimes our children would say I'm trying to think
about what kind of business I want to create someday so you know they're
already thinking about businesses that they might want to do or that's gonna
provide jobs that's going to help stimulate the economy it's going to help
them that they can better contribute to their community so I think another
benefit to unschooling is that kids learn at a very young age who they are
what they like to do and what they want to spend the rest of their lives doing a
lot of people and this isn't everyone but a lot of people they go
to school they go to college and they get out of college and they don't know
what they want to do for the rest of their lives maybe they don't want to do
anything in the degree they just got and they need time to find themselves I
think one of the benefits of unschooling is that generally you you've already
figured that stuff out before you're even considering going to college you
figured out who am i what do I love to do what kind of career do I want to go
into because you've found yourself that's what you spend a lot of your time
doing if you're playing video games all day
maybe that's helping you find yourself in some way find out what you like to do
what you enjoy if you are learning about a specific subject you're figuring out
oh these are this is a subject that really interests me for these reasons if
you figure out that you really like hands-on kinds of things and you kind of
have figured out oh this is the kind of career that I want to have for myself
you know a lot of people worry that unschoolers are spending a lot of time
wasting a lot of time but really that's the time that they have to waste time I
mean this is the time in their life where they don't have the
responsibilities of paying for an apartment or a house or food or
groceries or all these other things if you're gonna spend time finding yourself
this these are the prime years to being able to do that you know some people
have referred to your teenage years as your selfish years and in some ways they
are and they should be you're selfish years you should be focusing on yourself
trying to figure out what is this I want to do you know what do I enjoy and and
you got to be a little selfish to be able to do that you got to you know sort
of shut out the rest of the world and say you know I got to figure out me it's
way better to do it when you're a child and before you're 18 then after you've
spent a lot of money on college you now have college debt or worse you're in
your 30s or 40s or 50s or whatever and now you're having some sort of crisis
because you haven't done what you actually love I think
unschooling is perfect if you want your kids to be
able to figure that out at a very early age but it can be a little frustrating
it can be a little bit scary as a parent's seeing your kids go through
that they will end up doing things that you're like what are you doing all day
like what are you getting accomplished by doing what you're doing all day
but it just brings me back to remembering that okay I just have to
have faith in my children I have to have faith that they're going to figure this
out that they're gonna get past this that they're gonna be come out the other
side way better because of the things they figured out by doing something that
I might look at and say that's very unproductive and I try to keep all of
those thoughts to myself I try not always I don't always accomplish it
sometimes I revert back to my my previous schooling and I get on their
case a little bit but I try really hard not to alright so if you're listening to
this and you haven't said this will never work for me I know there's no way
I'm doing this my kids can't handle this that's fine that's fine
unschooling may not be right for you but if you're going through it and you're
thinking this sounds perfect this is what I want this is what I need then the
question is how do I get started one of our favorite books is a book called
learning all the time by John Holt it is a great book and will help you
tremendously in not just helping you help your kids on school but also
helping you start to 'unschool another book which I love which is not
necessarily about unspooling but it's about communication is parent
effectiveness training by Thomas Gordon and that's going to help you learn the
skills to be able to better communicate with your children in a way that doesn't
come across as being very attacking or demeaning or whatever and help you
better resolve conflict if you run into an issue your
you know you're starting to butt heads or whatever this will help you to be
able to resolve those issues very quickly the one thing about the book is
as you read it you may think like unschooling this will never work I you
know my kids won't respond to this they won't do what I want them to if this
happen if I try to follow these practices but I've seen it from both my
family and Jones family so her siblings were brought up with a lot of these
practices it works so well that's that's another video maybe also if you have any
questions about unschooling feel free to leave them in the comments below we try
to answer all the comments and so you know we we want to answer so something
we missed we'll make another video so just
whatever questions you have ask them ask away we'll try to get to them as soon as
we can another question we get is is
unschooling right for me and my family and honestly I don't know I don't know
you and your family it was definitely right for our family
we sat down with the kids we talked to them about it we discussed how it might
work and let them know and this was a big thing where we let them know hey
look if you're gonna take more responsibility here's here's the
concepts of unschooling if you're gonna take more responsibility for this though
you have to take on this responsibility that learning really is on your
shoulders you can't blame us later on when we're 90 and say hey mom
you never taught me this or that or whatever because it really is up to you
to take your education by the range and learn the things that you want to learn
I would recommend if you're not sure whether unschooling is right for you is
sit down talk to your kids ask them what they think ask them if they would be
interested in unschooling and maybe they're not maybe they are so that I
would start there it also may be right for you if you have maybe a more
laid-back parenting style so I mean if you're if you're highly highly agitated
if you are if you really really worry like every second it's gonna drive you
crazy you're gonna really struggle having faith in your children that that
anxiety is going to come through and it's probably better to do regular
homeschooling or some other thing if your anxiety is well is high because
that anxiety is going to be transferred to your children so they're gonna feel
that and so if it's going to cause you a lot of anxiety absolutely do not do
unschooling okay so for those of you who are already trying to 'unschool and if
you're struggling know that we all have good and bad days know that we all worry
about our children and that they're doing things that we find unproductive
know that you're not alone as you're struggling not to step in and save your
child from making mistakes when you you know that they're making a mistake
that's completely normal it's only because you love them and I you know my
best advice for you is to just keep loving your children love them as much
as you can and support them as much as you can and they're gonna come around
more than likely to whatever they need to come around to not maybe not what you
want them to come around to but they're they're going to learn they're going to
figure it out they're going to struggle through it and
they're gonna be better for it because they went through that struggle
themselves so all of this is completely normal so don't fret you will have good
days you will have bad days don't give up because of the bad days another
question we get is can my kids actually learn in an unschooling environment and
first I would say yes but secondly I would say how do you learn best do you
learn best when you are interested in a subject and you really want to learn it
or do you learn better when someone sits you down and says hey here's exactly
what you have to learn here's when you need to learn it by and by the way I'm
gonna test you on it when you're done the other question I have for you is the
thing that everyone knows you for the thing that you're amazing at was that
something you went to school for or is that something that you learned on your
own began the thing that you're amazing at that everyone knows you for is that
something that you were formerly taught or that's something you learned because
you were really interested and you really loved it so finally are you a nun
schooler are you thinking about unschooling we want to get to know you
we want to talk with you leave comments you know let's let's chat let's talk
about it and maybe we can get together maybe we can do something we love doing
things with other unschoolers so if that's you leave comments let's let's
get to know each other a little bit we you know let's build a community here on
YouTube now if you're not sure whether you're still not sure whether
unschooling is right for you you can also leave comments you know we want to
hear from you ask your questions there will probably be other people here who
have answers for you probably even better than ours but we are so grateful
for this community here on YouTube how positive everything is the positive
feedback we've gotten from her channel so if you're interested in finding out
more and following along with our family's adventure feel free to
subscribe comment interact with us talk with us let's build a community let's
get together let's be a family we do a daily vlog and we will talk to you
tomorrow
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét