What can I say about today’s guest? She’s definitely my favorite person in the world. Today I am joined by my smart, thoughtful, hardworking, patient, supportive, loving, nurturing, beautiful, funny, talented, creative, resourceful, determined (and many other great adjectives), wife Desiree Miller. We have been married for over 17 years, which means we are getting close to tipping the scales to where we’ve been together for longer than we were apart, and that’s ok by me. But today, we’re not talking about marriage, we’re talking about education.
The reason is because Desiree is an accredited teacher, with a 4-year degree in liberal studies, who has always had a love and passion for teaching young learners. For twenty years, Desiree has taught in classrooms, been a substitute teacher, been a tutor both with small groups, and one-on-one, at a facility, in the home, and online. She has also volunteered to help in church youth groups and children’s ministries, and for the last four or five years, she has been homeschooling our children.
When we started homeschooling, we liked the freedom and flexibility that it provided for us to teach our child who had a learning difference in a way that allowed us to meet her needs more effectively . However, even within the increased freedom that homeschooling provides, Desiree found herself frustrated with the traditional systems of learning, and began, more and more, to learn about and follow the teaching principle called “Unschooling.”
If you’ve never heard of “unschooling” it’s basically this: Interest based learning, with parental support. What does that mean? The core principle is that children are naturally curious, and naturally want to learn and love to learn. However, almost every kid that you ask says that they “hate school.” One of the biggest reasons for this is because schools are designed to teach the average student the average information, so they can pass an average standardized test. We put kids in these little boxes that squash their interests, creativity, and individuality, and tell them that they HAVE to learn the things that we tell them to learn, in a predetermined order, whether they like it or not.
Unschooling means that we allow our learners to pursue their interests at their own pace, with parental support. What it looks like in real life is that that we’re always in school and we’re never in school. Every conversation is an opportunity for learning. We’ve found that this approach to education has greatly reduced the stress, frustration, and self-doubt associated with with schooling, both for the students and the teacher. We’ve also found that our learners have increased confidence, are more in-tune to their own preferences, and will actually seek out answers on their own.
We had a great discussion and I feel like you can really tell that our children’s education is something that we don’t take lightly. I hope you learn something, because our family always is! If you have questions about unschooling, please feel free to reach out to Desiree, or start a discussion in the Facebook Group.
Important Links:
Desiree's Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/ddminis_/
Information about unschooling from Sue Patterson:
https://www.unschoolingmom2mom.com/
More info about unschooling from Pam Laricchia:
Visit the show’s Wordpress site:
N1podcastobsessedwithobsession.wordpress.com
Join the N+1 Podcast Facebook Group!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1800127593672581
My Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/n_plus_1_podcast/
