When can we stop going back to school?
Newsletter Content:
- Erasure of Community-Rooted Work
- Life without School-Youth in SDE, a Youth Panel
- ASDE’s Organizational Member Features
- ASDE Facilitators Discord Community
- Not Back to School Equinox Global Discord Day of Events
When can we stop going back to school?
Hey Folks,
Today we are sharing some resources and highlights for Not Back to School Season. How are y’all feeling this month as back to school photos and posts flood some of our social media feeds, and back to school displays (some blatantly acknowledging how much young people dislike school) are in every store? We want to share some beautiful resources for folks living and learning outside of the conventional school system, and highlight some amazing centers and alternatives to school that folks are cherishing returning to this season.
We also want to bring specific attention to the systemic erasure of the work of folks of the global majority, particularly Black women, and one recent example of this in our community.
Erasure of Community-Rooted Work
Where you could once google “schoolishness” and get linked to the various places you would find Akilah S. Richards, now the first several pages of search results are of an author and anthropologist who’s released a book of the same name.
Akilah has spoken extensively on the topic of schoolishness and been instrumental in the SDE community understanding of schoolishness. She has invited so many of us in to excavate the ways that parents and caregivers act as agents of school to perpetuate schoolishness and all of its foolishness. She has shared many ways in which we can heal from school and liberate young people and ourselves from oppressive systems. This is about Akilah’s work, but this is also about the systemic erasure of work of people of the global majority, and in particular Black women.
Seeing a book with such a title and the author making no mention or credit to her was another reminder of the way Black women’s work is constantly erased. Whether intentional oversight or not, it is important to call attention to these patterns of erasure.
ASDE sees our place in this, and are looking at all the ways our community and groups show up for folks in these moments. We, unfortunately, missed an opportunity to point this out when the book was presented to the loosely affiliated ASDE research group. Since our core organizing team found out about this book and erasure of Akilah’s work several weeks ago, we have been working to make sure the groups who use our name are aligned in values, and we are more aware of what is going on in these spaces. We apologize for these mistakes and oversight, and are working carefully to make sure something like this does not happen again in one of our partnership spaces. We have also reached out to the author and asked her to confront her mistakes and erasure of Akilah’s work.
As Akilah pointed out in our conversations with her, this is also another reminder of how academia and other work around SDE is often not rooted in the very communities it seeks to write, research, and do work about.
We invite you to delve deeper into Akilah’s work, and join us in amplifying her work, specifically around schoolishness.
Websites:
Book:
Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work
The vast and deep ways she has contributed to and formed our collective learning around SDE, deschooling, oppressive parenting and collective liberation cannot be lost in an algorithm.
Please support Akilah’s work on a regular basis by becoming a patron aka a member of her Make It Happen Family at patreon.com/Akilah
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We realize that it’s hard to capture nuance and full context in a short written piece– to see a conversation that Bria and Meghan had about this, watch this Instagram video.
Friday, September 27, 2024 from 7 – 8:30 pm Eastern
Life without School-Youth in SDE, a Youth Panel
An opportunity to hear from + ask questions to a panel of Youth in Self-Directed Education
Join the Alliance for Self-Directed Education in our third Community Support Call – We will feature a panel of youth to speak about their experiences in Self-Directed Education and take questions from the community!
ASDE’s Organizational Member Features
Alcove Self-Directed Learning
Self-directed learning is an empowering alternative to traditional education.
At Alcove, you decide what you really want to study and explore.
Then we just pave your way.
This isn’t an after-school program, or extra work on top of everything else.
Alcove is a place to come instead of school.
A fundamentally different way through your second decade...
Generational Seeds
At Generational Seeds, we empower children to explore diverse educational topics, their purposes, and their relationship with nature through self-directed learning, nurturing a lifelong passion for learning, empathy, and environmental and social stewardship.
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For a full list of our Organizational Members, check out the bottom of our home page.
ASDE Facilitators Discord Community
We are thrilled to announce a new partnership with the facilitators discord community.
This community is a place to share, collaborate, and discuss your work with other SDE facilitators. It is co-created by the folks on the server, and always open for new ideas and feedback.
If you are an SDE facilitator looking for more online community, you can join the server here!
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Here are a few other resources to support SDE facilitators:
- A new Tipping Points article that combines knowledge from several SDE facilitators currently working in the field on resources that help them and ways they receive support: https://www.self-directed.org/tp/sde-facilitator-supports-and-resources/
- A 6-month support group for SDE facilitators starting on January 13th, 2025 with Radical Learning’s Becka & Sari: https://www.self-directed.org/resource/facilitation-support-2025/
September 21-23, 2024
Not Back to School Equinox Global Discord Day of Events
From September 21-23, a group of volunteers on an ASDE Community discord server will be putting on several events to mark the equinox and Not Back to School Day. Some of the events happening include a vegan virtual potluck, feel good music lounge, body doubling, poetry readings, drum circles, film viewing, discussion panels, global walk along, recipe swap, coffee chat, reading from the book, Braiding Sweetgrass, etc.
If you’ve been curious about this Community Discord Server, now is a great time to check it out!
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Tipping Points Magazine amplifies the diverse voices within the Self-Directed Education movement. The views expressed in our content belong solely to the author(s). The Alliance for Self-Directed Education disclaims responsibility for any interpretation or application of the information provided. Engage in dialogue by reaching out to the author(s) directly.