Category: Unschooling
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First year of school
Fiona finished her first year of school, Grade 10, just over a week ago. Over the previous three years she had taken two core courses (math and science) and two short electives (Spanish and dance) at our local village school, but this year was the first time she attended school on a daily basis. And for this […]
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First school term
Fiona has reached the end of the first term of the first semester of her first year fully enrolled in school. She has a part-time course load, with just three out of four time-slots filled. She is taking Art 11, Chemistry 11 and Honours Physics 11. By age she in an eighth-grader, by enrolment she’s […]
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Physics is hard
Fiona has now been in high school for two weeks. It feels like a month! In both a bad way and a good way. Her life has been so crazy full that it feels like a month must have passed for all of that to have been packed in! But also … it has quickly started feeling normal […]
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Distributed learning: the exit
Fiona took some online Grade 10 courses this semester: PE and Personal & Career Planning. She took them partly because she wanted these required credits out of the way so that she can focus next year on the academic courses that she’s excited to dive into. But we also figured they would be a good introduction […]
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Conventional wisdom and unschooled teens
All four of my children grew up unschooling through their primary-school-aged years. Their learning was wide open, uncoerced, simultaneously lagging in some areas and massively precocious in others. It was typically highly efficient, mastery-oriented and interest-led. And then they all chose to attend school starting sometime between age 12 and 14. In some cases, at times, they attended part time. But […]
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Distributed Learning: The Final Episode
We are now nearing the end of what will be our last year of home-based learning. And the last part of the ride has been a bit bumpy. We started the year with Fiona (12 at the time, and officially “in Grade 9”) enrolled with SelfDesign, a DL program we’d had some experience with but hadn’t been part […]
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Accomplishments
Over the past few years the focus of my blog (well, it’s arguable whether it has any focus at all) has moved away from the specifics of what my children are up to. That’s been the natural result of them growing up and becoming their own people, and my feeling that I want to honour […]
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Getting ready for school
We’ve started the paperwork, the “Request for Transfer” into the bricks-and-mortar high school that Fiona wants to attend next year. Actually, she has started the paperwork; for whatever reason this kid loves filling out forms and isn’t afraid of a pen, so she has done it herself. Really, though, this whole year has really been about getting […]
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Changing DL programs
Again. For several years our family had been with the SelfDesign distributed learning (DL) program, an unschooling-friendly sort of virtual umbrella school to which we reported in various creative ways on a weekly basis in exchange for support primarily in the form of a resource allowance. Then the local school, a place full of humanity […]
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On being twelve
This isn’t about my own, current, 12-year-old, or about any of my former 12-year-olds. Maybe it’s a bit about the 12-year-old I used to be, and about who that has made me as a parent. It’s a copy and paste from a message board, where I was responding to a mom whose daughter had stolen […]
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Unschooled adolescents
Fiona’s primary enrolment this year is with SelfDesign, an independent umbrella program that supports home-based learners from Kindergarten through Grade 9 and their families, including loads of unschoolers. The support is primarily moral support, though there’s a little money available that can be used to fund things like sports and music lessons. I love the […]
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The school year, times 4
For the first time all four of my kids are officially enrolled in school. Fiona (12) is enrolled one-quarter time, taking two courses at the local school. She’s doing math and science for two hours on each of Monday and Tuesday mornings. Age-wise she’s Grade 7 age, placement-wise she’s “in” Grade 9, course-wise she’s taking […]
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So this happened…
In an instant her summer changed. A tool in the shop, a long-handled thing with a blade on the end used for peeling logs, fell onto her bare foot. It landed on her first three toes, slicing through the extensor tendons and into the joints of two, and through the nail of the third. She […]
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Building Rat Park
At a recent unschooling workshop, the issue of technology use came up. Some parents expressed concern over the potential addictive nature of technology. With unschoolers having far more autonomy over their lives, the risk of excess use seems much higher, particularly without the natural time constraints of school attendance and homework. “Video games and social […]
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The data-driven runner
Look, data! Running data! I admit I readily get too obsessed over this stuff, to the point where I forget why I run. (Note to self: I run for the happiness it brings, to clear my head, to learn how to be in the moment, to stay strong and fit, to be out in […]