My daughter is 9 and she has never been to a traditional school. We are homeschoolers. Within the homeschooling community, we identify as unschoolers. This means, that I don't have a classroom set up in my house, and I don't don an old school marm outfit. We learn what we want, when we want.
So how does one "do" unschooling? I am going to just discuss one component of it here, being passionate about learning. Have you ever wanted to make something new or further investigate a situation or thing? THAT is being passionate about learning. As adults, we do it often in our free time. Here is a recent example of a situation I found myself in.
My daughter plays hockey and I was asked to be head coach during a summer session (I literally had less than one year of hockey experience at this time). I had some moments of self-doubts, but then I suppressed my fear of failing and started to research. There is a LOT of books on coaching, YouTube videos on coaching, and even practice plans already developed for coaching at the level I was interested in. We had a fun summer, won a few games, and I learned some new approaches to coaching hockey.
That was my personal learning experience, but my daughter also learned too. She saw me take on a project that was out of my comfort zone and experience level, research how to do it, gathering a team of assistant coaches (based on their experience levels), and organize practices and pre-game discussions. She was also my consultant, who I bounced ideas off of (she is the goalie and had a good perspective on how the team is handling different situations).
Unschooling involves an open mind to the power of passionate learning. Learning happens so much more intensely when we are self-motivated to learn about something. It also involves a complex array of skill building. Learning is also contagious to those who are experiencing it with you. Please note though, that this post is not about pushing your own passions or pre-conceived ideas about what should be learnt onto others. Be a good role model, don’t be afraid to try new things, and ask how you can support your child’s passions. You might just end up being really good at something you never thought you could do.
