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| Rhiannon baking keto pecan shortbread, today. |
Last year, around this time, Rhiannon faced the uncertainty of returning to her part-time school program during the pandemic, and opted to register as a homeschooler, instead, following her own interest in a self-determined path to adulthood. She'd been unschooling all her life, in and out of alternative school programs and musical theatre, voice and acting programs. But always, she thought she would eventually fulfill graduation requirements, attend university, and end up teaching preschool or--even more to her liking--open a school for self-determined learners. When covid hit, the school she attended went online, and she discovered two things: First, commuting to school had been sucking the life out of her, quite literally. And secondly, online school just sucks in general.
Over the course of the lonely summer, she made peace with the reality of not seeing friends, and reassessed her needs. She contacted the university where she intends to study early childhood education, and formulated a plan for getting in as a homeschooler, which in our province means no graduation diploma. To her delight, they were very encouraging. And with that reassurance, she declared her decision not to graduate. What did she do with this first year of ultimate (but isolated) freedom? Well let me tell you about that.
Isolation
Looking back on those first few months of online pandemic schooling (all
the school with none of the face-to-face contact), I can see why it was so awful. The greatest thing about school for my young socialite daughter was the friends. From her earliest days of unschooling, when she nearly decided to attend Kindergarten with her friends, it was about the friends. Now here she is, at the beginning of what would have been her grad year, with no grad to attend, no friend-group to plan with, no dress to buy, and not even classes, tests, and teachers to complain about. I offered to buy her a dress and host a prom for her but she declined. To say this is a loss would be a massive understatement. It's a cold miserable metallic wall between my girl and some of the major life experiences we are conditioned to look forward to. It's an equally massive achievement that she has surmounted this disappointment, and a great relief to me that she seems to appreciate the benefits of the other side of the grad-no-grad coin.
She's free.
She's free, and do you know what that means? Well, that's the thing--it could mean anything to anyone, and she's had the freedom of defining that totally for herself. I can't speak for her, and most certainly not for her future, but I do see her with the perspective of a mother who's watched her grow. I see her with uncertainty and fear for her future, as most mothers would, but also with a great respect as she's shown me again and again that she is capable of achieving goals I couldn't even wrap my head around, myself. I see her, also, with the eye of someone who used to have to describe her activities in a convincingly schooly way to satisfy ministry requirements, and worried grandparents.
Evaluating Learning
Yep, there was a period of about six years, when we unschooled at home while enrolled in a ministry program that required me to report regularly how my kids' activities met the "prescribed learning outcomes" for their respective grades. I know now that unschooling would have been much easier if we'd just pulled out of the system entirely, but that experience really taught me to see the culturally-defined "value" in my kids' activities. So guess what? I'm going to do it again! But this time I'm describing the skills that I've seen my daughter develop during the first whole year of completely unschooling herself outside the system... including those activities that I have struggled to see the value of. Yeah. She's free. And here's what that's done for her.
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| Clara and Kalea waiting for their birthday pupcakes! |
Rhiannon began planning for a new puppy months before we agreed to it. Our previous dog had died quite tragically, so we adults were just not emotionally prepared to welcome a new puppy. But when the pandemic arrived and we watched our girl grow increasingly lonely, we began to see the value in it. The one requirement we had was that she would take this dog on, herself: poops, walks, vet bills and all. It would have to be her dog, and that meant a very big commitment. Years. Yes, she said. And she got her dog. Clara Snowberry Leftwie is now a year old. Rhiannon has trained her, walked her faithfully every day, taken on veterinary and other care decisions entirely on her own but with a great amount of research, and (mostly) kept our yard poop-free. When Clara ate something awful and needed to vomit every half-hour in the night, Rhiannon cleaned her bed and took her out. When Clara peed on the carpet, Rhiannon cleaned it up. When we ran out of dog treats, Rhiannon learned to bake some. When Clara's first birthday arrived, Rhiannon made pupcakes for Clara and her best doggy friend, Kalea. Rhiannon has not only shown herself to be responsible and a very capable dog owner, but also to be flexible, committed, and cautious in her decision-making.
Baking
Like many people during this pandemic, our family has done a lot of baking. Rhiannon eats a mostly ketogenic diet, due to her ongoing thyroid and autoimmune issues. So when she wants bread, sweets or, well... almost anything... she has to make it from scratch. In the past year she's become quite adept at baking cookies, cakes and quick breads without a recipe, as well as all sorts of interesting potato and veggie dishes, depending what's available in the garden. To my mind, the "without a recipe" part is the best part, because it means she's experimenting, and learning heaps about the properties of the ingredients and processes she's using. Above all, she's learning to take calculated risks; to have faith in her choices and to problem-solve along the way.
Once, when Rhiannon was much, much younger, I found her miserably hanging over a bowl of what looked like cereal, her spoon dripping thick-looking milk into the bowl. She looked near tears. When I asked what was wrong, she looked bleakly at me and said that she had made herself an invention of cornflakes, pepperoni, frozen peas, milk and lemon juice, and now that she had made it, she felt she had to eat it. But it was bad. Well... she's come a long way!! Plus, we now have chickens to help us deal with the accidents.
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| Our rooster, the Splash, helping to construct his new coop. |
Yep--chickens!!! I saw a t-shirt the other day that said "I might look like I'm listening to you, but in my head I'm thinking about getting more chickens..." Well, that would be us, I guess. Before we agreed to the dog, we agreed to the chickens. We also agreed to visit a farm, where Rhiannon sat for hours (and more hours) watching the cattle, just waiting to see if one of the pregnant cows would go into labour. Was that a labour moo? I think that one's been pacing a bit. Do you think that one is standing especially still? ... So just over a year ago we brought home thirty chicks and built them a really fabulous coop and run. Over time, they needed all sorts of unexpected care, as well as a new coop to be built. Rhiannon and her brother, Tali built that second coop themselves, out of scrap lumber, which is infinitely more work than using new materials. It requires not only a good amount of construction know-how (which they learned from helping with the first coop) but also a huge amount of engineering problem-solving, since there really never is an appropriately-sized piece for the job. Learning improvised construction on the fly is something we didn't expect from farming, but it sure is happening!
In addition to the more tangible skills like construction, coop and run maintenance, and chicken husbandry, we've all had to confront our own ethical choices. We're raising chickens as part of a general rewilding of our home. We slaughter and eat our chickens, and Rhiannon has chosen to keep at a distance from that activity. Every time we gleefully give one of our broody hens some eggs and then count down days until hatching, we fall in love, and every time we do, we accept the eventuality that most of those chicks will end up on our plates. Some of them may die before that even happens, and a couple of times it's been Rhiannon who finds the corpses or ailing birds. Coming to terms with the reality of consciously farming and eating meat, as well as how much of our vegetable garden we need to sacrifice to the chickens while still retaining enough to feed ourselves, involves some deep emotional growth. Rhiannon may not always eat meat, but this farming journey, with its extreme elation (babies!!) and deep reckoning on slaughter days is, I feel, a very important part of what it is to be human.
Another lesson we're all learning from this process is to eat seasonally. Rhiannon (and all of us) have become much more adept at designing a meal around what's available in the garden today than we were a couple of years ago. No eggs today? No macaroons. No lettuce? Make salad out of kale, or pick wild greens. No pickles? I guess we should have grown more cucumbers. It forces all of us to plan for the future; to be aware of what we have now, and to consume as if our consumption matters. Because it does, and farming makes that more evident.
Playing The Sims
You might have noticed me mentioning babies quite a bit. The puppy, the chicks, watching cows hoping to see them calve... Rhiannon has loved babies since she was a baby herself. That's not going to change. So she's been playing The Sims for years now: Basically making homes for cartoon people to grow and raise babies in. Sure you can play without babies, but I'm not sure she does that much, if ever. I can't say I love the amount of time or the money (all her own) that she spends on this game, but if I'm going to write about the benefits of The Sims, I'll have to find some.
Sims is all hers. That's one thing. She paid for it, and that means I can't complain, even though I want to. Independence is always good. And it turns out there's a massive community around this game, like so many others. She and an apparently huge number of other people livestream their gameplay and chat together about their experiences. In a time of very little in-person social interaction, I can see the benefit of this. And to be fair, she's learned a great deal about video game politics and self-regulation through her playing of this game.
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| Watching TV with Clara and a rooster. |
Erm. This is a hard one for me. She watches some things I really appreciate, and some that horrify me. I could say we're always learning from whatever we watch, and that's true, but actually, the shows the kids watch have led to some epic conversations (and arguments) about social and political issues in our house. And that's definitely always a good thing!
Writing Her Second Novel
Rhiannon actually somehow managed to write her first novel while also attending programs many days per week, but one thing we've all learned this year is that second novels are sometimes much harder to write. First novels often come from such a deep place of self-knowledge and personal experience that they can't help but be deeply moving and engaging. With a second novel, a writer wants, perhaps, to break the mould and create something new. That might require not only a whole lot more research than a more personal novel, but also a kind of deep personal introspection, as the writer makes infinite ethical, narrative, imaginative and descriptive decisions. In Rhiannon's case, this second novel has a much more complex narrative, so has required quite a bit more editing and rewriting than her first novel did. Learning to navigate criticism from editors as well as quite a substantial amount of redrafting is an intense lesson in self-regulation, resilience, and tenacity. Not to mention mastery of language, obviously. She's not ready to publish her second novel yet, but you can be sure I'll write about it, when she does.
Publishing a Youth Magazine
The whole idea behind this magazine thrills me. In a world where many people are looking for fame, my writer daughter decided to publish a magazine solely for the purpose of publishing other people's work. The Youth Voice Magazine publishes kids' work, of course, because... well... if you haven't noticed yet... Rhiannon's whole life is about supporting kids of all species. The number of interesting things she's learning from the process of promoting, collecting submissions for, curating, editing and publishing a magazine has been wonderful for me to watch. She figured it out all on her own, promoted largely through social media, and after a few months has a list of contributors from around the world, and another teen volunteering as an editor. She's been invited to speak about the magazine, and with every issue that comes out she learns more about editing, publishing, supporting contributors, and generally working with kids.
Babysitting, Mentoring, and Running Community Programs
Working with kids. You didn't think a measly pandemic could stop her, did you? She still babysits, outside and with masks on. But that wasn't enough for her, so she organized and ran some kids' book clubs over the past spring and summer, and has now moved on to mentoring young(er) writers, and will soon be running two programs for kids at our local school. The process of developing her career during a pandemic has taught her all the more obvious things, like networking, management skills, professional engagement with parents and the kids she's teaching, but it has also given her opportunity to grow, emotionally. She has had to learn to engage over Zoom, as so many of us have (but it's so much more difficult with young children!), and to stick to her values when presented with job opportunities that she doesn't agree with, from an educational standpoint.
Organizing and Facilitating an Un/Learning Festival
What is her educational standpoint? Well... it's basically unschooling. (Yeah, I'm proud and not going to hide it.) My daughter and some other young people organized an online Un/Learning Festival this past summer. It was amazing. They had attendance and speakers from some very well-respected self-determined learning organizations, as well as many interested parents and learners. They produced this festival on their own terms and were so successful that they're now deep in planning for an in-person festival, next year. Imagine families and educators all with dreams of creating deep self-determined learning opportunities for everyone, all getting together for one fabulous weekend of creative engagement. And it's likely going to happen on a farm. (A farm! See where I’m going, here?)
The Future
In one year of fully unschooling herself outside the system, my daughter has brought together everything she loves about life and is pursuing her dreams with abandon. Her rather large dog sits on her lap as she runs Zoom book clubs for kids, or runs out to protect the chickens when ravens fly through the yard. My girl can cook up a really delicious chicken dinner from a bird she watched hatch from an egg, but she knows herself well enough to stay in the house on slaughter day. She has maintained friendships with those closest to her, and broadened her circle to include people who share her values about nurturing healthy childhoods and providing freedom in education. She gets together nearly every day with either the Un/Learning Festival organizing committee, the kids she mentors in person or online, her young writer's group, Sims players from around the world, or other people out walking their dogs. Today she and one of her oldest friends had a puppy play date. They watched as the friend's slightly younger dog observed the signs of Rhiannon's Clara going into heat. She is hoping to go on an epic post-grad trip with friends.
Oh yeah. It's her friends' grad; not hers. She's not graduating. But maybe there will be a formal un-grad ceremony and dance at the Un/Learning Festival next year. Because opting out of high school doesn't mean opting out of life. It means creating your own best life. And apparently, that's what Rhiannon is busy doing.
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*For those wondering about our son, Taliesin, he's working as a freelance 3D artist, now. I wrote about him recently, here: Why My Son Quit Science and How to Raise a Scientist
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