After having led many discussions on screen time, Brooklyn brings a different angle to this year’s SDE weekend, with a focus on the quality and values pop culture and screens bring to our lives. The idea of youth accessing popular media can be scary. Moving past the conventional; discussion of managing your youths’ time on screens, Brooklyn will explore how opening up to popular media brings a deeper world view for the whole family. How dissolving value judgments brings trust to our relationships with our youth and how to build media literacy and online safety into your family culture.

Self-Directed Education, not progressive education, is the wave of the future.

In self-directed education, adults act as passion-driven role models, offering students silent invitations to explore diverse interests and showcasing alternative paths of learning and growth.

This is a collection of Flash Fiction (1,000 words or less) that was submitted to Tipping Points Magazine starting October 16, 2023.

Rosalia presented on the different aspects of body autonomy, boundaries, and consent. This foundational education is the basis for raising empowered children that understand their rights, but also the rights of others, and how this can create the robust and more effective transition to body safety education as the child develops.

How to recognize and process the thoughts and behaviors in educators, parents, and students that can compromise the integrity of your SDE practice

It is not uncommon for one parent to be all in (or mostly in!) on SDE, and for another to be skeptical or, sometimes, completely against it. This can be such a difficult situation, but one that many of us encounter. Listen to our panel discussion to hear the ways different families approach this and how it shows up for them.

This is a presentation and discussion exploring the practice of intuitive family travel; an exploration ethic that aims to honor our internal navigation systems and create rich, fulfilling experiences for the whole family. Based on our 2+ years as a nomadic, unschooling family, I will discuss how we included our children in itinerary building, how our changing environments and landscapes shaped what and how we learned, as well as how our Worldschooling stories and strategies reverberate in our lives. We are engaging in embodied, environment-dependent learning even as we haven’t left our current home in a year! In the interest of including children in discussions about them, there will perhaps be some input on the day from my young people, should spirit move them to do so.

A book review for the 2022 collection of essays from Ricci and Riley: Joys of Self-Determined Learning

In this Radical Deschooling Chat, we’ll share why we adults so often engage in (and create!) power struggles with young people. We’ll dive deep into triggering moments and the underlying fears that spark them, and how changing our perspective of what’s happening can help us both change our attitude and language in order to build connection with the young humans in our lives. Are you ready to combat the adult supremist in you? Regardless if you’re a facilitator, running an ALC or a parent, if you’re an adult supporting youth – this offering is for you!

How I came face-to-face with society’s (and my own) anti-teen biases

My observations and reflections on spontaneous self-directed learning, aka, play.

Are you new, or semi-new, to Self-Directed Education (SDE)? In this session we chatted about what SDE is, the underlying values and optimizing conditions for SDE to flourish, the many and varied ways SDE can look in practice, and answered any questions participants had about Self-Directed Education, and the Alliance. Watch this recording if you are looking to learn more about SDE and how it shows up in the world.

Are you thinking about starting an SDE center or community, or have you recently started one? Is your child a part of an SDE collective? Are you just looking for inspiration? During this workshop, Raj shared the Liberated Kids journey from seed idea to reality. Participants had the chance to ask questions, break out into small groups to map out their next steps, and share their own seed ideas with the rest of the group.

Flying Squads is a youth liberation and anti-oppression collective. We believe in the abolition of divided spaces between young people and the rest of their community. This means that Flying Squads step out of the classroom and off the playground and into public space as a form of youth activism. Listen to a group of flying squad youth and facilitators discuss the ins and outs of Flying Squads.

In this panel, Unschoolers will discuss their experiences and thoughts on growing up in a world that is often doubting, questioning, mistrusting, and making fun of young people who aren’t sitting in school all day. Navigating doubtful family members, comparing oneself to peers, and getting the most ignorant questions from new acquaintances, unschooling can often feel alienating in a world where school is the default. We’ll talk about how we deal with these issues, and oftentimes, just laugh it off.

Intuition is an inner guidance system which is often conditioned into silence through dominant culture education and approaches to learning. Societal expectations and intergenerational trauma histories also impact our ability to access this life-giving tool. Through this session, you will be invited to reflect on your current relationship to intuition, how it informs your relationship to those around you, and how you want to weave intuition-building skills into your decisions moving forward.

A poem describing the cyclical stages/thoughts we go through after committing to unschooling

RIGGED: Uncovering strengths, friendships, and a teen’s difficult journey to maturity

Members of the Organizing Team for the Alliance for Self-Directed Education answered your questions about anything related to SDE and ASDE! Together, Bria, Domari, Daveed, and Alex have decades of experience working with young people, parenting, facilitating, working with parents and families, and advocating for Self-Directed Education and youth liberation.