At my partner Sally’s suggestion and based on her research, we have one more followup on Emily’s son in middle school looking for a profoundly different educational path. Another path through the high school years that we have seen work is the academic homeschooling coordinated through a private independent study school like Clonlara @ www.clonlara.org/home_based (located actually in my hometown of Ann Arbor but facilitating online students all over the country). They work with you to decide on the appropriate curriculum (including the appropriate “classes” for college prep) and then you work at your own pace and on a regular basis (weekly or monthly or whatever you work out) share your work with your remote supervising teacher who certifies your completion of each subject area and, when you have completed your program, creates your transcript and issues you a high school diploma. (more…)

Bill Ayers today

I want to share with you my feelings about the whole noteriety around Bill Ayers and his thinking on democratic education, especially after being referred to during the fall election campaign and then being more recently featured in the Huffington Post article, talking very eloquently about democratizing our education system. But it is hard for me to get at my strong feelings about it without a lot of context of where we are now and where I am coming from, which says alot about my whole “lefty parent” thing and the tension between the leftist milieu I grew up in and my left-handed outside-the-box view of it. So this will take more than a few paragraphs to try to convey what I feel. (more…)

Lisa Stroyan commented on my “School Decision Makers… Revisited” post that she has a son who was in public school through fifth grade, but is now homeschooling, and moving toward the more unschooling end of the homeschooling spectrum. As an initial suggestion, I think she should check out www.unschooling.com, for some information and provocative thoughts on that educational path.

Lisa said she was also interested in my own experience with my kids’ homeschool/unschool journey during their teen (normally high school) years, maybe how or whether an unschooled kid learns traditional academic subjects like algebra. So here goes…

Eric’s Story

Our Son Eric, Age 17

We pulled our son Eric out of school in February 2000 at age 14 because it had become clear that he hated going to school, and had basically become allergic to the conventional instructional academic environment. (See my earlier post on “Thoughts on Emily & Middle School Issues”). We had been considering doing it for a while, and my partner Sally (Eric’s mom) had done some research on homeschooling on the Internet. Sally and I had an initial strategy to attempt to guide our son in a homeschooling strategy including the four conventional academic subjects – English, social studies, science and math. Eric, as it turns out, had other ideas. (more…)

The Obama Transition Team is looking for feedback and stories as it attempts to craft the direction of its administration going forward. I urge everyone to post your ideas and stories at change.gov/page/s/yourstory. Here’s the story I just posted related to The No Child Left Behind Act and its impact on an alternative charter school my partner Sally was on staff for and my daughter Emma attended… (more…)