Living (and Learning) as an Alternative to Educational Reform

Before I had children, I worked for 5 years as a bilingual elementary school teacher in Fresno, California. Both my maternal grandmother and mother were elementary school teachers, 20 and 40 years respectively. I have heard a lot about educational reform over the years, and I am still hearing it, pretty much daily. It is all over the internet, in the news, on ballots, and on people's minds.

There is some good information out there to help people understand how our brains work and therefore what types of experiences really promote learning - and it is definitely NOT what is still happening in many schools these days.

Here is an example of such information that I came across today via some postings on Facebook - an animated video entitled Born to Learn.



Unfortunately, even with such clear information, people are stuck in still trying to reform schools and the "educational system". Why must we continue to separate learning from life, almost as if they had nothing to do with each other? Living is learning, and education doesn't "prepare" you for life because you are already living life.

At this time in human evolution we don't know what the future will hold, so it is important to encourage and support the creativity, curiosity and intense internal drive to make meaning of the world around them that children naturally have - and NOT KILL IT.

You probably know first hand what killing it feels like and looks like in your own life (and luckily if you are reading this blog you regained it somehow, probably by having children of your own). Some of what killed it for me included being tested, compared to others, kept indoors, and held at a certain grade level working on curriculum that I found tedious and boring, and frankly, too easy, not to mention having to spend hours each day with teachers who really didn't care what I wanted to learn or what might be happening to me because of such indifference and inability to deal with individual student concerns, passions and interests.

With so many people talking about reforming schools and the problems of our educational system, I just sit here in gratitude to John Holt and the many other pioneering homeschoolers and unschoolers who have shown us another way. They didn't need any research scientists to tell them about brain development, they just looked at what works for humans and did that, namely connection to each other, freedom, respect, love, fun, passion, play, exploration, time and well, simply put, life being lived.

I hope more people stop worrying about test scores and such and get back to living and learning, and realize that this is all there is.

Play, explore, discover, create, live, learn, grow, enjoy - repeat until you die - and then go somewhere else and do it all over again - perhaps.

Some photos of us living and learning over the past two years.

Emily and Sophia looking at books at our local library.




Eli had an interest in cake decorating for several years, and so my mom took them to a place in Fresno, CA (where she lives) so he and Avery could learn how to decorate with fondant.



The kids love to sleep outside. They know how to make fire by friction safely and how to stay warm outside, even in the cold weather of Washington.




Emily and Sophia spend most of their days creating. Here they are working on some sewing projects.



Shelter building on the beach is always a favorite way to pass a few hours. Sometimes they create entire villages.



Avery found a turtle on a trip to Victoria, B.C. with his nature class. The nature class is made up of about 12 homeschoolers who meet once per week for 4 to 5 hours with two local nature mentors. He loves it!