Catherine Forest and Family

Hi, I am Catherine. I will be coming to the Symposium with my amazing partner J-F and our 3 wonderful daughters, Mara and Aïsha (8 yo identical twins) and Mathilde (7 yo). We are a digital nomad family (a newly coined, very hip term, that I am still not sure that I like to say that we work online and travel full-time!). We are currently on a year-long road trip across Canada and the States in our travel trailer (and planned very carefully to be in Albuquerque just at the right time!). We spent last winter in Costa Rica, came back to our little foot on the ground at home in Orford, Quebec (Canada), rented it again and left for the Yukon, near Alaska, last summer (where we lived for 5 years from 2003 and 2008 and were our 3 girls were born).

We knew from the start that we wanted to homeschool and the girls never even went to daycare. I slowly build our translation business, working when they napped and at night in the beginning (while J-F worked as a translator for the Yukon government, from English into French). We moved back to Quebec in 2008 to take care of my grandma who moved in with us on a little hobby farm, where we had a huge garden and animals to care for. I had created that little Waldorf inspired heaven that I dreamed of... but you know what? We were all miserable... JF and I were so busy transforming the veggies and milk into cheese, butter and more, baking sourdough bread, memorizing rhymes and stories and drawing perfect chalkboard images at 10 pm for little girls that sighed when it was time « to do school »... We sold the farm and went on our first road-trip across Canada. This is during that trip that I read a life-changing book from Leandre Bergeron: For the Sake of our Children. This sent me on a quest and I discovered unschooling and read and read all I could find on Sandra and Joyce's website...

It took me a while to get it and to free myself from the Waldorf background... but I think I am finally there. Still reading, still learning, of course. This is a journey, but my beautiful girls are amazing teachers... now that I truly listen to them.

I am really looking forward to meeting each and everyone of you at the Symposium,

Catherine

http://catherine-et-les-fees.blogspot.com/

Family photo : Catherine, 34, Aïsha, 8, Mathilde, 7, Mara, 8, J-F, 35


First photo (dark pink sweater): Mathilde, 7


Second photo (light pink sweater): Mara, 8


Scooter photo : Mathilde in a skate park in Cortez, Colorado


Jumping photo : The twins, Mara and Aïsha, 8


In a canyon : Mathilde, JF, Mara and Aïsha


Second to last (serious look): Aïsha


Last : Catherine, very happy!

The Justice Family

We are the Justice Family from Phoenix, Arizona. Mom & dad are Ken & Andrea. We were highschool sweethearts and have been inseparable since we were 15.

Fast forward 14 years and we now have three kids ages 5, almost 4 and 1, a girl and two boys. And now we are all inseparable ;) Unschooling feels to us like a natural extension to attachment/peaceful parenting. We are excited to meet other unschooling families and absorb all we can from those that have been at this longer than we have. As a family we have many interests, we love being outside, reading, making and fixing stuff, roadtrips and having fun! Oh, and we eat...a lot :-)

Andrea

The Teeter Family

Hello everyone!!

We are the Teeters!  There's Russ (dad), Trista (mom), Brooklyn (6 1/2), and Sam (4 1/2).  We currently reside in Albuquerque, but only for a short time.  Russ works for Sandia National Labs, but at the Livermore, CA branch.  He got into a program into a 6 month program in Albuquerque, so are here through March.  Then the plan is to return to Livermore (unless Russ can find a job here at the ABQ branch--crossing our fingers!!!).  We love Albuquerque and have no desire to leave!

We made the switch to homeschooling a year ago.  Brooklyn had been in two different Kindergarten classes (a charter school in North Carolina and one of "the best" schools in Livermore).  In just 4 months she went from vivacious and full of wonder to "I hate reading and math" and being suspicious of us showing her new things, afraid we might be trying to teach her something.  We pulled her out of public school, and after a couple of more months I re-stumbled upon unschooling.  Trista jumped in head first, which in hindsight wasn't the smoothest choice and resulted in a bit of a bumpy road.  Fast-forward to now though and we are loving life!  Just a year ago we would require Brooklyn to read us a book at bedtime if she wanted us to read a book to her...I'm sure you can imagine how that went (and we were surprised that she hated reading?!)...  Just the other night we were snuggling in bed and Brooklyn says, "Mom, can I read you a book??  I just love reading!!  I know I can only read the small words (not so), but I would like to try."  We also underestimated how much deeper each of our relationships has become--we've learned not to look at how successful a day is based on how many things we get crossed off of our To Do lists, but by how many snuggles, spontaneous "I love you"s, and "You're the best mom/dad/brother/sister in the world!"s we get.


Some of our interests include:

Russ:  hiking and camping, cooking, wrestling with Brooklyn and Sam, learning different programs (currently learning Blender), building things (he's a KEVA blocks master!), watching documentaries and Mythbusters (his and Brooklyn's favorite show to watch together), listening to audio books, and is a coffee fiend!

Trista:  camping, crocheting (just finished a giant Minecraft creeper head blanket for Sam for Christmas!), reading at least 8 books at a time, snuggling in her PJs on the couch with a hot cup of tea,  and has learned WAY more than she ever thought about computers via Minecraft.

Brooklyn:  gymnastics (but at home, not at the gym), making her own experiments with kitchen items, swimming, watching dog movies, collecting stuffed animals, wants to be the first kid host on Mythbusters, loves Minecraft and making her own skins, dark chocolate, talking in accents, and reading Bad Kitty books.

Sam:  wrestling with Russ and Trista, is a Popsicle enthusiast, loves anything Minecraft, climbing trees, building with KEVA blocks, anything Mario Brothers, and loves seeing how adept our cat is at landing on its feet...


We are so excited to attend ALL!!  We are going to do our best to mingle and talk to you all, but we are natural introverts and we do love to stick to those dark back corners of the room...don't be afraid to drag us out though!  Please!  :)

Sam isn't in the second photo because he's the one who took it.

Lisa Jonick

UPDATE:  Alistair (8) is coming, too.  

And if you're interested in a hike on Sunday afternoon, speak with Lisa during the symposium.

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Hello everyone!

We are The Jonicks. Lisa, Michael (my husband), Alistair age 8, and Emmett age 5. We live just down the road from the conference, so I will be the only one attending. I am leaving my boys with my husband to have some weekend fun, but would love to bring them all on a hike after the talks.


Alistair is 8, he is really into birds, nature, drawing, legos, and rock climbing. Emmett is 5 and he loves his toys madly! Anything that is good guys vs. bad guys, robots, bugs, and he has a killer sense of humour.

We have just begun our official Unschooling journey. My oldest son Alistair did a little bit of pre-school, and 2 months of a half homeschool/half school school. It was not for us. A couple of years ago I read Teach Your Own, and understood the ideas of Unschooling intellectually, but not in a really deep down way. We have been mostly reluctant Unschoolers up until now. I have never been able to implement an academic style homeschool schedule, but I did do the homeschool freak out once in a while and would pull out the math workbooks and reading lessons. I am leaving all that behind, and am now fully embracing Unschooling.

A few weeks ago I ordered Sandra's Big Book of Unschooling and I think I finally get it! I am really jazzed. I have always had to understand things on an emotional level before I could fully grasp it. Sandra's book did it for me. Getting Unschooling from a Mother's perspective, an Attachment Parenting perspective, really sent it home for me.

I am very excited about commiting to the practice of Unschooling. I have small doubts in myself, but being able to read women like Sandra, Joyce, and Pam everyday helps keep my confidence up, and my head full of ideas. I can't wait to hear all the speakers and meet all of the families at the conference. See you soon!

Cheers, Lisa Jonick

The Collins Family

I received a note on December 26 saying there was too much snow in the mountains between Salt Lake City and New Mexico. Safety is important; I'll be sorry not to meet Skyler and Julieta.

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We are the Collins Family from Salt Lake City, Utah. We are Skyler (dad), Julieta (pronounced hoo-lee-et-uh, Mom), Skyler, Jr. (7) and Liani (pronounced lee-annie, 3). We've been unschooling Skyler, Jr. since September of last year (he attended 1 week of kindergarten and a year of formal preschool), and Liani since birth. We don't know any other unschoolers in our area though we're friends with a couple of homeschooling families (one with older kids). We're mainly looking for support and guidance and hope to make some new friends.

Dad is a software quality assurance engineer and mom stays home with the kids (she works harder than dad, for sure). Skyler, Jr. loves video games (he's conquered several), dinosaurs, and super heroes. Liani loves animals, Diego and Dora, "reading" books, and painting her dad's nails. Both kids share a gelatin business as equal partners and absolutely adore each other. They are constantly wresting and playing cheerfully, though they do have their "disputes" from time to time. That's it for now, and we're excited for the ALL conference!

(For the record, our children know full well that Santa is "pretend", like are Diego and Spiderman, and they love them all anyway, and the Santa in the picture is my Uncle Rick, with my Aunt Sherri.)

Renee Cabatic

Renee Cabatic's family attended last year and this year Renee is going to be a presenter.

Here's their family's bio from last year. The Cabatics NOTE ADDED DECEMBER 15:

Here's how we can recognize XuMei this year (photo lifted from Facebook):

More on Pam's presentation

Pam Sorooshian posted this to Always Learning a week and a half ago. I thought I should put it here, too, as a preview. I'm looking forward to her presentation.

At the upcoming Always Learning Live Unschooling Symposium (ALL) in December, I'm going to be talking about what made me think unschooling was a good idea back umpteen years ago when we started. I've been thinking about that a lot, lately. I thought SO much more in terms of "education" back then, that my reasons all had to do with how the kids would learn math or science or history or reading and writing in natural ways that wouldn't destroy their love of learning. It is really interesting to me, now, that those are NOT the main reasons I think unschooling is wonderful. They seem pretty trivial in comparison to the really big important things in life that have so much more to do with character and behavior. I'll talk about them, but I no longer have any concern about whether or not unschooled kids will learn to read or write or do math or whether they'll have "gaps" in their education. I guess I'll talk about why that seems like a complete nonissue to me, these days.

I'm also going to talk about what I have learned about unschooling. I've learned a lot about it in just in the past week, so this talk is definitely a work in progress. What I have in mind is talking about some of the things I did not know about unschooling until we'd done it. The one thing I've been thinking about this week is that unschooling is a profoundly optimistic decision and that it involves a huge commitment to living a very optimistic life. I'm going to talk more about what I mean by that and what happens when children grow up that way - kind of amazing.

I'm also thinking a lot about the damage done by schooling - thinking of this in contrast to the above. Schooling is a quite pessimistic endeavor. It assumes negative behaviors are normal, expects the worst, and sets up system with a zillion rules and consequences for breaking the rules. It assumes kids don't want to learn and have to be bribed or punished to get the learning into them. What effect does living in such a pessimistic environment have on kids?

Scientists who study this stuff report that pessimism and optimism seem to be slightly inherited - maybe due to being connected to other factors that are genetic. But they are also largely learned habits of attitude. I think it is possible that THE most significant thing unschooling does is nurture optimism.

-pam