Among my favorite activities is welcoming and orienting new people to the field of self-directed education, especially young teachers who are disillusioned by the system they had felt inspired to improve. Now, the moment has arrived to join forces with some others who share this joy and expertise to turn this individual welcoming into a group effort and make this exploration deeper and wider. Along with Lora Smothers, Cassidy Younghans, and Sundiata Soon-Jahta, we are offering a six-month course for people who want to have a guided and shared experience of learning about Self-Directed Education. This course is for people who want to understand the history, people and ideas of this movement; it is not a ‘school-starter’ course. We especially hope our teamwork will welcome and appeal to a wider audience than any of us might reach on our own.
Please share this link and information with anyone you know who would enjoy this course. We welcome your donations to sponsor young people who will find paying the course fee a challenge.
For those of you already working in the field, please let us know if you would enjoy being a local referral to course participants in your geographical area.
Here is our Course Description:
Many of us have felt a tension teaching in conventional schools. On the one hand, we enter the field with a desire to treat young people as individuals whom we support and inspire. On the other hand, we are confronted with the institutional demands of the system in which we work, making us feel like cogs in a dehumanizing machine. We all know mentors and role models who have resolved this tension and established a long-term solution for themselves working in schools, but many of us begin to question the system itself. Isn’t there some way to change things, to bring out the best in everyone? There must be another way!
A first search of alternatives to conventional public and private schools may reveal that there aren’t so many options to the standard model out there, but one may encounter references to the field of Self-Directed Education. A deeper exploration of this field uncovers a range of programs and approaches that can feel confusing or fanciful, enmeshed in odd vocabulary and practices. Those of us who have persisted in this process have discovered an empowering and joyful world.
The four people founding this course have each made their own trek into Self-Directed Education by reading books, visiting schools and programs, consuming TED Talks and podcasts, volunteering or interning in the field, and discussing the ideas involved beyond the patience of our partners and friends. We have each mentored young people through this process individually. Now we would like to combine our efforts to offer a group experience that helps orient newcomers to the field of SDE. We believe that this combination of guidance, discussion, mutual reflection, and networking will support each participant to understand and enter this field with confidence.
Another Way: a course for visionary educators seeking to liberate children to learn naturally
will be a group experience to meet the people and encounter the programs that help define the current landscape of Self-Directed Education. We will consider the history of the movement, both of alternative schools and of non-school settings created by those who were excluded or oppressed. We will offer many notable books and articles as we consider some of the approaches in democratic schooling, such as Summerhill, the Sudbury Schools and the Democratic Free School movement. We will review the birth and growth of the modern homeschooling movement, particularly unschooling, and the work of those who have sought to expand the accessibility and sustainability of this approach including the Liberated Learners network. We will discover the vision, vitality, and appeal of the 21st century Agile Learning Center network, which is spreading the creation of intentional communities for children around the world. We will consider experiments of bringing SDE into conventional schools, and we will celebrate the use of self-directed learning among people of all ages in non-school settings.
Together, we will aim to resolve our tension about institutional schooling with the optimism and certainty that there is Another Way, and that each of us can find our own path to entering this world ourselves and welcoming more children and families to join us.