For those I've introduced

http://eolife.org/articles/Cycles_Of_Life/The_Right_To_Be_You.aspx Ela's Sharing Artical

http://liberatedlearning.weebly.com/unschooling-by-ela-forest.html unschooling explained

For further info on Organic Farm Share

http://www.alforpen.com/enterprise.html

Candice

Distrust has led us here

I am putting in two links these I find really valid;

The first is an example of distrust in today’s world

  

The second is to remind us that this distrust is destroying us from the inside from our most vulnerable point; where our most innocent and trusting stand and instead of protecting them we need to be as they are on a world wide scale.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Child-Honouring/216111275489

How do we recover?

 'From the Grass Roots Up With Never Ending Patience’

 http://www.joebower.org/2010/10/we-need-more-standardization.html

To Recover when things are becoming worse than they are

This site I have just found helpful to assist me calm my emotions via refocusing on how I am feeling in this split second and then what my goal is and then back to reading nice thoughts from this site and then do it all over again.
http://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/2010/09/joy.html
Thanks Sandra Dodd

Learning to let go

This is a big thing for me and something that will take more than just one blog posting... this I came across today and I find it quite profound that is why I am putting it up here.
To find it you need to go to the very bottom of the page.
http://jtspencer.blogspot.com/

It is the second time that I am considering quiting a subject as I don't feel as though I know enough to do the assessment to the standard that I want to thus I need to just accept that it won't ever be perfect and i just need to get out there...

Our Judgemental Society Causes Early Deaths?

This is some thoughts that I have been having that I weren't able to put into words.. but now I have and I did so after reading the follosing blog (if you are interested)
http://www.joebower.org/2010/10/consequences-for-whom.html

Who has a right to say what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'... I have just come from the schooling system (in 2006), I am happily married, have 2 beautiful boys, a husband also suffering and more so though post traumatic stress, a mentally ill mother and only 2 years part time study to go before I'm a qualified teacher though still I do not believe that I am achieving enough. My internal critic runs constantly and I acknowledge that this is a complex that I have seen affected countless fellow high achieving students.

A lot of students don’t even get time to figure out who they are and where they belong on this planet before they are filled with guilt about not being the best in absolutely everything they do… We are constantly being judged… though being the best does not bring you happiness as my recently deceased friend Georgia may have told you if she had known of how many subliminal messages she had received from the way society is. This beautiful intelligent 21 year old had respect for all she came in contact with; she saw you for who you were a person not competition, she was at Uni, engaged and had bought a house and yet no-one knew that this busy life was her mask and her thoughts were so negative that she took her life on the 2nd of this month; October 2010. Isn’t this degree of judging meant for that higher power?

I’m interested in preserving life and therefore I will be Unschooling my children until society can step in and prevent such deaths. Did you know that her brain was still developing into the adult formation and the only skills she had to deal with this emotional time was that of how to run you pseudo life.

With this constant push for success measured by others agendas we as educators are the only ones who can bring about change where it is needed:- at the grass roots, to protect the innocent from those ignorant of the reality they live in. Please join me, as no further harm should ‘need’ to occur.

The best blog on Bullying I have found

Here it is....
I am also trying to wonder what and why it is that a friend Georgia Levi McBride left us so suddenly... I will have to wait until I get to the other side to answer this one but until then... this may or may not be on the right track.

http://lisarussell.org/blog/bullying-quite-possibly-the-longest-blog-post-ever/

Candice

IT is all starting to come together

MY DE-SCHOOLING IS HAPPENING!!!!

My Internal Frustration became my motivation for change; I have temporarily put a hold on my degree and will learn to argue and clearly NATURALLY through this critical educators network that I urge you to all join (if interested) to bring change to the ‘mainstream’. The issues of not being able to hand in my assignments because I do not know enough is going to the wayside because of RU logic is finally being CLEAR and I am SO THANKFUL TO ALL I HAVE INTERACTED WITH FOR THIS!!

THANKYOU THANKYOU, THANKYOU

Candice Thompson

P.S. This is the link…   http://freireproject.org/ when you come across Pedagogy replace it with practice and it all makes sense.

P.P.S. A great pledge/definition for what Unschooling is and what we are trying to do with our children:

http://familyrun.ning.com/forum/topics/what-is-radical-unschooling?xg_source=msg_mes_network

P.P.P.S My next project is to get together all that are interested in having a learning enabling environment for Unschoolers to hang out at / a happier medium for families who are HS and would like to US though don't have the confidence / mainstream to come closer to effective learning that US is. SO please contact me!

Ｔｈａｎｋｙｏｕ ｆｏｒ ｔｈｅ Ｕｎｓｃｈｏｏｌｉｎｇ Ｃｏｎｆｅｒｅｎｃｅ

Hi All Unschoolers and Unschooled,

I am putting in my blurb about how the conference affect me and us as a family. If you don’t know me my name is Candice and I have two beautiful boys Jacob (if you were there a blond curly 30mths old) and Benjamin (light brown haired smiley 6.5mth old) and a red haired giving husband who has a lot to sort through before he is fully capable to truly be on the unschooling path (haven’t we all).

Firstly I would love to thank the two lovely ladies who ran the event- you did a great job and it was really well done. It is and will always be a turning point in my life where (unbeknown to me until the just recently- just yesterday when I watched ‘The Secret’) I was finally getting some answers to my questions I have been asking for a long time. A lot of these questions have to do with increasing my abilities to better communicate/be able to enquire to understand in an unchallenging environment, to share the joy I feel when I am giving to others, my ability to shelter my children from limitation via others and my own expectations and still be aware of what may/may not be a social/developmental ‘norm’  as we are so varied that it isn’t fair to impose anything onto another being (this though when it comes to parenting is a hard one that can only be addressed via our partnerships with our children).

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou to all those who attended, questioned, ran, interacted in any way as it was made by this to be an extraordinary experience that one cannot realise until hindsight just how much they got out of it.   It is because of this hindsight that I suppose I haven’t started writing about it until now.

I am really thankful and greatful that we got to stay on an extra week as this allowed for a little bit of a holiday linked to a extra full schedule (when though isn’t it with children?) . This allowed us to stay in a less stressed environment and bring in the knowledge that we learnt to our parenting then and there… and also make stronger the connections we had made. Thankyou so much to those including Dayna and family, Annette and family, Giselle and boys and any others who stayed on; your input to our experience was invaluable. We hope to be friends with you for a long time and see you often in our journeys.

We’re at home now and stresses have come into play as they do… Unschooling with a toddler is quite challenging when I have put too much stress on the family as is with my workload within and surrounding my Uni studies. As I have been studying to be a teacher- as since I acknowledge early on the more effective ways I learnt I have been fascinated with effective learning. The baggage that I brought home and had to intellectually sort through just to realise that I still want to continue my degree is one that I am just settling now. I am not sure how I will be using my knowledge to suit this world in a way that I agree with through my still developing understandings, though this is one that I believe I will be leaving up to Law of Attraction (LOA).

NVC was something I didn’t get to see to much of though I believe this is going to be such an valuable tool….

This probably is a lot of just thankful words to you and that it is; though if you were to know me my present state of frustration and my family’s life and then put in scope the thinking you will understand just how big a transformation/key the conference was to bettering our lives. Thankyou all of those who opened themselves and their lives up to those who know near to nothing about the level of understanding and acceptance Unschooling provides, it has meant a (a lot more than a)great deal to us!

Restorative Circles

Recently I have found NVC and I believe this is going to help all the relationships within my life and this concept I want to spread far and wide as hurts take up to much time and transform the way we see each other and overall our quality of life. All the people I know prior to the US Conference are affected by violent communication and this needs to change.

This other thing called Restorative Circles; this helps rebuild relationships... thus this will be another set of tools we will gather under our belts within our relationship and hopefully our families.

http://vimeo.com/6557584 - 16 mins Interview with Dominic Barter in which he describes his work with Restorative Circles, a Restorative Justice model developed in Brazil.

P.S. I so want to go to Brazil!!

NVC and Natural Giving

This is where I want to go!!! This is where my family needs to go... I will bring more forth ASAP.