Episode 191 is all about the deeper work after we accept self-directedness, and get into the layers of transitions, consent, emergent structure, children and trust.
We’ll be chatting with Tiersa McQueen, an SDE advocate, wife and working mom of 4 children (including twins), who is serious on how to develop new tools for liberation-centered relationships. We’ll be making mad question’ askin on power, boundaries and decolonization.
“I tweet for the Black married moms who homeschool. We outchea. Unschooler. Gentle parenting.” – Tiersa McQueen
WHAT WE DISCUSS
Digital community and liberation tools: Tiersa talks about how Twitter has given her the opportunity to discuss unschooling as a liberation tool towards she and her husband’s commitment to raising free people. It’s important for her to create a bigger community as a way of resisting schoolishness, to be the voice that facilitates the emergence of creative thinking, returning to old, healthy knowledge, and different perspectives for people that thought unschooling wasn’t an option for them. We need a community of people spreading the word, and Tiersa is about that life.
Intergenerational trauma / intergenerational healing and unschooling: We move forward to Tiersa’s experiences with her four children. She describes her unlearning process as something that happened in a very organic way, by observing her children, checking the way they spent more time in things they were interested in, as opposed to the things she told them to do. It became an ongoing evolution of emerging structure. She also points out the importance of listening, returning to what learning already is, and to relationships with trustworthiness in ourselves and towards children.
Let it be. Intuition, trust and relationships: Akilah and Tiersa talk about the importance of letting things just be, and how something apparently passive can open up so many possibilities. When we don’t force any of the learning processes of our children, we can learn from what’s already happening, and develop partnership practices from that space.
Relationships based on power vs trustworthy relationships: They also chat about how conditioned we are under certain structures that are supposed to work out as ideal to educate our children, Tiersa shares how good it’s been for her to unschool her children.
Community and Self-Directed Education – Boundaries and responsibility: Akilah and Tiersa conclude by discussing how freedom includes responsibility, along with intention, therefore we need practice in our home environment to ready our children to be responsible in communal spaces. They talk about unschooling as a series of transitions to get to a deeper relationship, and a means of learning some ways to be supportive while also honoring our and other people’s boundaries.
LIBERATION WALK
- Check out Tiersa’s Twitter for great content and more insights on unschooling and self-directed education. Here’s also Tiersa McQueen’s Youtube Channel as another resource!
- Unschooling was in the New York Times! In case you missed it, it’s called ‘When You Get Into Unschooling, It’s Almost Like a Religion’ by Molly Worthen
- Akilah’s book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work is available! Go to rfp.com/book to get it, and tell Akilah what you were feelin’ or what you discovered or what got you hyped… all of it. She’d love to know!
- Raising Free People Network’s Presence Counselors Leslie Bray and Anthony Galloway, Jr. are here to support unschooling and deschooling processes for families and organizations
- Join patreon.com/akilah and support the show!
- Subscribe to Akilah’s Youtube Channel!
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