Copasetic Flow

A thing happened to us in an LA transit station that never-ever happens in San Francisco: a safety officer tried to shepherd the kids... sort of.  I can't say exactly why this has never happened to us in San Francisco, but I've got ideas: frankly, I think San Francisco is just used to us.  We live there.  We're in and out of the stations several times a day every day. Consequently, I'm guessing the same folks who are in the station day after day have noticed the gang plenty of times, perhaps so many times they've completely discounted them at this point. LA on the other hand, seems not to be used to us yet. Our tale starts a few days back.  The kids had spent most of the day doing a seven mile hike up to Griffith Observatory.  We met downtown shortly afterwards to head out on a Metro train.  The journey was pleasant enough—Metro trains are kinda odd for denizens of BART because you can't move from car to car.  The kids ride subways every day, s...

I can’t wait!  Our annual two week camping trip is coming up in a few weeks.  We’ll head out and away from town—the one time all year we actually drive a car—to explore the forests, rivers, deserts and rock formations around us in a roughly four or five state radius.  We plan travel a lot like we plan unschooling—in broad swaths of possibilities.  We know we want to camp.  We know we want to fish.  We know we’d like to see snow.  (Yup, there are totally places to see snow in June.  It even snowed on us a little last June.)  Finally, we know we’d like to see the dry, warm desert.  We’re making a north, then south loop that will get these things done, but we’re unclear on all the rest of the details so far.  I know we’ll stay off of interstates in favor of state highways.  The little towns and the countryside are better out there; there’s less traffic; and the people are really nice.  We might head towards a few places w...

Do kids need to learn math?  When do they need to learn to read?  Are history, art, and civics still important?  Do kids still need well-rounded educations (whatever that means)?  A recent conversation  on edu twitter  revolved around an article printed in the Atlantic  quoting the results of a research study: the vast majority of people use little math beyond fractions in their daily lives.  As a white collar worker in engineering who rarely uses math beyond fractions I’m inclined to believe it. Here’s the thing though, does any of this really matter?  What if instead of deciding what was important to learn, spending countless hours debating what we should force other people to learn; what if we just let those people learn what they were interested in?  And of course, the people of which I speak are kids because really, how many of us would deign to think it was OK to tell anyone that wasn’t a kid what they had to learn? Here’s ...

I got to visit with friends in New Mexico this week.  I grew up in NM, so it was great to be back, to see out over the wide open spaces, and to breath the crisp fresh air.  Oh, and also to get my fill of green chili.  Yum! As it usually does—especially when I travel with one of the kids—homeschooling and ‘exactly how that works’ came up.  Everything was fine.  I went through the basics of it: how you only have to file a one page affidavit to homeschool in California; how the kids learn new things, how and when the kids hang out with their friends.  I’ve answered these questions hundreds of times at this point, so I have plenty of practice, and it’s nice that our friends are interested in the kids. Upon returning home I was treated to a tweet espousing how great homeschooling might be if only it wasn’t so isolating.  Bleah, the isolation thing again.  So, without further ado, please allow me to walk through how un-isolating homeschooling is onc...

Two of the unschooling gang, 8 year-old No. One and six year-old No. Two went to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Property Use and Transportation Committee, (that’ a mouthfull!) meeting today!  Four year-old No. Three would have attended, but she was feeling a little bit under the weather. We’ve been planning to do this for months. We’d—all of us—like to ask to have a Free Play Proclamation passed by our mayor and the board of supervisors.  The proclamation is a document, drafted by the LetGrow free-range play organization, saying that yes, kids will play outside, yes they will be without their parents, yes they will be OK. First though, we figured we should meet our supervisor, and get a feel for how supervisors’ meetings went. That’s the plan we set out for ourselves months ago, but we didn’t act on it.  Our need was high, but not compelling. Until last week. That’s when one of our friends congratulated us on the new playground update we were about to r...

As six year-old No. Two and I lay in our tent dozing off I heard gunfire in the distance.  At first it was just a shot or two.  I convinced myself that it it in fact wasn’t gunfire; clearly it was just the state park’s caretaker plopping things into the bed of a pickup truck.  Afew more bangs burst out from a little further up the vallery from where our tent perched overlooking the Pecos River.  I wondered what goofballs were out shooting at dusk, but frankly since we were in New Mexico, it wasn’t really that uncommon of a thing.  I closed my eyes again only to hear bang bang bang bang bang bang bang bang a few moments later.  Not many people in NM have automatic weapons, so that was a bit odd.  Still, the sounds were coming from around the bend of the valley so I wasn’t too concerned.  I watched the moon of our tent’s mesh roof trying to slide back into sleep. Then—Two and I both heard it this time—an ominous roar rolled in from the opposit...

Having the kids able to help out with our everyday lives has been one of the huge perks of unschooling.  Rather than being off somewhere discussing life skills, or practicing life skills, or doing homework on life skills, the unschooling kid s here are out using their life skills as they develop them.  Lately, as the gang have been out and about, living their lives, they've also been able to help me out.  The 8, 6, and 4 year-old here have learned how to do shopping without me.  We started out with them collecting items in the same grocery store I was in to save time.  Now, we’re splitting up to hit different stores, and then meeting back at the bus stop.  The latest advantage I received from unschooling though had to do with my airport commute in LA.  First, I was surprised to find out public transit works in LA!  I"d heard the rumors that LA is a driving-only town, but they're just not true.  There aren’t as many routes as there are i...