Deschooling is a period of detox when you get yourself out of the public school mentality and into the homeschool way of thinking. It's also the process of rethinking what education means. Not only do children need to deschool but parents also need to make this shift. To help you move from rigid box checking and constant worrying about doing enough into a confident but relaxed perspective, guest June Doran of This Simple Balance shares her own transformation as a mom.
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QUOTABLES
June: "...deschooling means deconstructing school, really all things school. So saying, 'What does learning look like? What should it look like? What makes a good education, and who decides what that is? What's worth learning? Why are we even learning?' Really asking all of the questions that before were very easy. It was just, 'Oh, send your kids to school. They know all the answers. They have it all.' And instead taking it back into our hands and saying, 'We're going to deconstruct what is school, and we're going to rebuild from the ground up kind of our own definition of what school is and what a good education is and what learning is and what it looks like.'"
June: "So for me, the biggest risk would be my homeschool looking exactly like school and for me, the biggest thing was crushing my kids' love of learning, seeing that die in them, and then not being driven to learn the things they want to learn and not having that natural drive."
Thanks to show sponsor BookShark. Request a homeschool curriculum catalog or download samples at bookshark.com.
TIMESTAMPS
02:41 June tells how she came to be a homeschooler.
05:29 How a homeschool curriculum catalog moved the needle for June.
07:40 Deschooling means deconstructing all things school.
09:23 DeeDee admits that even after so many years of homeschooling, she still sometimes doesn't consider what she does with her children "real school."
10:02 June's daughter's reluctance to do worksheets moved her to rethink the nature of education.
11:18 June's parents were public school educators, so she felt it was essential to become a confident homeschooler who could answer her family's questions.
12:45 When people find out that you homeschool, their first question is typically, "Do you use a curriculum?" What are they really asking?
13:32 The risks of not deschooling.
16:09 June explains her goal for her kids to operate confidently outside a school system or a box that school puts us into.
21:41 Why you need to have hope, bravery, and faith as a homeschooling parent.
22:55 Practical ways to deschool. Start by reading the history of education. Then read unschooling books like Free to Learn by Peter Gray. Constantly ask why.
26:21 What about unschooling for high school years?
30:56 June talks about curriculum and how reading aloud is the core of her homeschool.
32:33 How long will deschooling take?
33:35 Make choices that will give you confidence as a homeschooler.
34:01 What to avoid during deschooling: don't throw out all structure. Having natural rhythms is good!
35:53 Remind yourself that your children are naturally driven to learn.
