Unschooling NYC

Occupy Wall Street is getting a lot of press in New York and across the country.   Today I was reading through some (many) of the testimonials  on the web site We Are the 99 Percent.   What struck me like a brick between the eyes was that the majority of the people writing on the website have massive amounts of debts from student loans.   They took student loans because of course they were told they needed a college degree in order to have a successful life.   Now they have the degree, the debt, and no job – or a job … Read more

Today Maya announced “There are so many exciting things happening.  It can’t get any better than this!”

Those are just about the best words I could think of hearing from one of my kids.  Words that say they are happy and excited with their lives.   Is there anything better?

And what, you might be thinking, prompted her declaration?   Mostly it was things like looking forward to her next book club meeting, knowing that her friend Greta will soon be spending a weekend with us while her parents are out of town, the prospect of a coming overnight with some other … Read more

The first art museum I consciously remember visiting was when I was a Sophomore in College studying abroad.   It was the KunstHistorische Museum in Vienna, which we went to as part of the Art History class we were taking.   That said, I could not name even one work of art I saw there.

My Senior year in college I traveled, with a group of fellow English majors, to different cities in order to see some Shakespeare plays as part of a Ford Foundation grant.   While in Chicago to attend what turned out to be a particularly horrible production of “Troilus … Read more

Maya started a book club this Fall.   She’s wanted to join one for a couple of years, but the one some of her friends are a part of had no room for new members.   Finally, tired of waiting for a spot to open up, she decided to start one of her own.  We had our first meeting last month.   There were 4 girls and 3 moms and we discussed the book Life As We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer.   The discussion went better than I ever expected, the girls were really animated with lots of opinions and good … Read more

Dr. William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England (a British organization dedicated to conserving and enhancing the natural environment), said in a recent Daily Mail article that children are healthier and better adjusted if they spend time in the countryside or parks.   “Studies have shown that people deprived of contact with nature were at greater risk of depression and anxiety.    Children are getting less and less unsupervised time in the natural environment.  They need time playing in the countryside, in parks and in gardens where they can explore, dig up the ground and build dens.”  (The italics in the … Read more

I have this (possibly annoying to the people forced to listen) tendency to be a ‘sneezer’.   A sneezer is someone, according to Seth Godin, author of The Purple Cow, who can be counted on to tell absolutely everyone they know about things they are interested in or enjoy.   Sneezers are great assets to small businesses; they are the epitome of word of mouth advertising.

In my case, I tend to be a sneezer when it comes to books and movies.   It is practically impossible for me to be reading a great book and not tell people about it at length … Read more

Two movie weekends are the best!   Yesterday it was the Lion King, and today all four of us went to see A Dolphin Tale, which is based on the true story of Winter, a dolphin who got wrapped up in a rope attached to a crab fishing cage.   She was rescued but lost her tail, and then survived against all odds, inspiring many others including human amputees, along the way.

That’s the main story, anyway.

Almost as good, at least in our family, was the secondary story of the two 11 year old kids in the movie.    Sawyer, the boy, … Read more

The Lion King is back in theaters!  Joshua and I saw that movie together when we lived in our first apartment in Alphabet City.   We were on 2nd St. between Avenues A & B, and although there was a drug den on the corner of 2nd & B that did double duty as a recording studio for grunge bands, the drug dealers were all passive, they had it if you wanted it types.   Ironically our ‘dangerous’ area had a very low crime rate due to the presence of the Hells Angels Club on 3rd St. between 1st & A.  (It’s … Read more

I’m a big believer that things often come to you when you really need them.  In my life this has happened repeatedly.  I might toy around with an idea for a long time, but when I finally get serious and focus my thoughts, answers & solutions seem almost to fall out of the sky.   Sometimes it’s big stuff, like when we were looking to buy an apartment and had a definite budget that almost no one thought we would meet, and other times it’s smaller stuff, like trying to order my thoughts on schools and make sense of being told … Read more

In A Life Worth Living, (John Holt’s selected letters)  Holt mentions a lot of other books;  books by George Dennison and James Herndon and Ivan Illich.    I’d read Illich’s Deschooling Society years ago, but other than that, the authors and their books were strangers to me.     Maybe all the other unschoolers out there have read them and I’m just way behind, but in any case I’m making it a point to catch up.

James Herndon authored 3 books dealing with his experiences as a teacher.     I am currently reading How to Survive in Your Native Land, originally published … Read more