Tag: learning lifestyle

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Curate Your Community

We are surrounded by impressive people who bring brilliance, strength, fun, compassion, beauty, bravery, passion, challenge, faith, joy, and love into our world. We gravitate towards excellence and engage it whenever possible. It’s no accident. After 12 hours of adventure in Philadelphia with home-educating families, Brazilian jiu-jitsu bad-asses, an FBI agent, and a couple librarians, I remembered why we frequently pause our adventures to connect with so many people.

I didn’t know it would lead to a holistic learning lifestyle when I first watched my sons asking museum security about a painting. I didn’t know chatting with a martial arts school at a crowded event about their summer camps would blossom into the most consistent component of our learning environment. I didn’t know small talking with homeschooling and unschooling moms would build a support structure that has buoyed us in hard times and created opportunities we would have otherwise missed.

I’ve learned that opportunity is everywhere and it is almost always locked away in a human who can’t wait to reveal it to you. I’ve learned that human connection is the key. Not just to experiences and knowledge, but to deeper understanding of God and the world around us. “Oneness” doesn’t mean we’re all the same, it means there are threads that join each of us together, one at a time. When we are open enough to see these threads and wrap our hands around them, we find something new in ourselves.

Each individual you meaningfully relate with becomes part of your community. Get into the habit of just chatting with people and soon you will find that you have an amazing world opening up around you.

Have a God blessed day,
Jason

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At the Park: Unschool Style


Even when we’re at the park for fun with friends these little learners won’t stop problem solving.

Beyond resolving conflicts, dealing with playground bullies, and inventing games, some of the boys decided this log needed to return to the river. With teamwork and simple machines they accomplished their goal with no adult guidance.

Surely a minor benchmark, but a fine example of how we look for problems to solve everywhere we go.

Have a God blessed day,

Jason

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My Favorite Home Education Question

“How can my husband help?”

My wife and I hadn’t discussed homeschooling and hadn’t even heard of unschooling nor deschooling when our elder son became eligible for kindergarten. A series of hiccups, annoyances, and coincidences inspired us to look at all the options we could imagine. My mind was set as I thought, “If I can’t teach him a kindergarten material, I’m a worthless dad.” We committed to a (school) year of homeschooling with the goal of honestly reevaluating at the end of it. We didn’t have a clear philosophy nor curriculum and were questioning ourselves within a month. The reevaluations came on a regular basis, never scheduled, but imposed by our failures. We talked through all the mistakes and started to see that we could work through minor adversities to discover major rewards. We didn’t stop at the end of that school year, we had established rhythms of learning and saw no reason to disrupt them. The evaluations continued, as did the failures, but our eyes lifted from the day-to-day struggles and gazed out to see what our goals were. It would be two more summers before my boys knew what “summer vacation” meant.

Our sons had shown an inherently strong capacity for learning, that part was relatively easy. What we wanted to model was thoughtfulness, confidence, kindness, and a capacity to love and help others. Although a useful shortcut for the uninitiated, we dropped the term “homeschool” in our personal discussions as we were not creating our version of school, we were practicing a learning lifestyle. Our faith community became a huge part of our mission. Not only could we bring cans of soup on Sunday, but we could hop on the trucks on Monday morning and go visit the people and places that benefited from the donations. We could spend a quiet Friday cleaning up a local park or setting up tables for the church rummage sale. Opportunity was to be had any day of the week.

We continue to find chances to help and broaden our ability to do so. We’ve learned immeasurable lessons along the way and achieved some good along the path.

God bless,
Jason

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I Come to Unschool Caesar, Not to Praise Him

Okay, not entirely. My sons have actually begun a class with the goal of putting on a production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Pages Alive Theater brings classic literature to students and guides them to bring the stories to life on stage for local audiences.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. 

I bring the unschool factor, sometimes inappropriately, and recently discovered Wisecrack‘s Thug Notes. NSFW, nor children, but it is hilarious and quickly hits the main points of the plot. Please review this before sharing it, as it represents the most base of my educational techniques.

My sons are excited about stop motion Lego films, we dug into those next.

Graphic novels are always a good starting point for us and the director recommended Julius Caesar (No Fear Shakespeare) for exploring more difficult language.

If I can’t find the play currently on stage (this type of prep work is usually done in anticipation of a live production), I’ll look around for a solid film production. Marlon Brando’s Caesar has been recommended to me and I think we’ll give it a shot.

If you are looking for a way to engage your children in classic literature, try one or more of these methods. They can also be a great way for adults to catch up on the beautiful material that their own schooling had no idea how to present. My sons maximize their recall when they compare different versions of a story, and the different choices made by authors, illustrators, directors, actors, and costume designers will lead to fascinating discussions.

The deepest way to investigate a text is to act it out. This is most true for children who are dying (quite literally in Shakespeare) to play in the adult world. With no stage experience myself, I am eternally grateful for organizations like Pages Alive Theater for providing this type of enrichment.

God bless,
Jason

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Active Learning

From Vogel Arte Visual:

Active learning; putting to mind and practice the basics of #jiujitsu || #ICANdoIt! || Learning, despite having general characteristics, always happens in the background in the context of one’s abilities, interests, down to the very moment itself. What is doable? What is solvable? Once we add our unique learning abilities, our educational experiences (settings) can encourage us to grasp ideas, acquire knowledge to retain and master. Or more generally, we may find activities that promote our curiosity. What can emerge, as we mature, is the ability for us to develop new capabilities. “Active learning is fundamental to the full development of human potential and that active learning occurs most effectively in settings that provide developmentally appropriate learning opportunities. Therefore the overarching goal of our early childhood work is to establish a flexible, ‘open framework…’
https://www.instagram.com/p/BpaSu6Ugdfm/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wsrmwn1tae7o

From me: Yes!

What’s so beautiful about BJJ is that the learner only sees progress where it really counts, in the long term. There aren’t grades and check marks to be gained on a daily basis from external sources. There is an accumulation of skill that is nearly impossible to see from day to day. A progress that is real and comes from within, there’s no need to please a teacher or a test, the learner will KNOW when he or she is performing at a higher level than previously attained.