Adult Unschooling

Definition of Unschooling: An educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning.

By Diala Brisly

One cold, January morning earlier this year, I told my partner, “let’s take this year to get our finances in order, no big trips, just focus on work that will pay off our debt and get us in a better place to do more of the things we want.” It sounded good to both of us. I was a little sad to put off seeing family and friends we love far away, but felt I was making the proper kind of adult decision a family with small children should make. Then life happened. My job became something I didn't want to do anymore. I got so inspired by the book I was listening to, "Last Child in the Woods," that I decided I couldn't wait any longer to follow my life path of teaching the skills of sustainability and living in connection with the earth.

I struck out, I quit my job and went rogue. I started my own business: Under The Canopy.  I am in month four of being a small business owner and it is going well. Currently, Under The Canopy consists of two after school programs and a series of workshops. I hold all my classes outside teaching about nature and how to connect to a deeper sense of place. It is a lot of work, but my passions in the driver’s seat and my family is supporting me. 

I can see how a life of unschooling has led me to this point. As a teenager I dropped out of mainstream education. I was thirteen and my mom and I decided I could take a "break" for 8th grade. I was unhappy at school. I always struggled with the way school was taught and I also was having trouble with the social dynamics of the middle school we chose. I went from a sweet public elementary down the street from my house, to a stiff upper-lipped prep school in another town where I knew no one. In elementary I was co-editor of the school newspaper; I was known as the writer and had a close group of girlfriends. In middle school I was an outcast, from the tough streets of my hometown, a much more urban environment then those posh suburbs.  I started getting low grades even in English, my favorite subject. There was less and less creative writing and more essays focused on correct grammar rather than the flowery, poetic, language my romantic heart loved to use.

We viewed taking a break as a chance for me to homeschool for a year before I entered high school. After leaving the prep school I was down trodden and spent a lot of my time watching TV.  I wanted to check out from the world. As I started to shed the layers of self-consciousness and slowly rebuild my self-esteem I saw the whole beautiful world that lay before me for the taking. I met a bunch of "unschooled" teenagers, youth that had never gone to traditional school, forging their own paths, working in the world and following their interests not based off of what they should be learning. I found a community in these “unschoolers”.  I decided on a plan, and I was not going back to school.

Fast-forward many years later to my adulthood. I worked many jobs as a young adult, lots of nanny gigs and clerk jobs in small shops. I knew I could pull off the unschooling as a teen because I had my parents backing me. As a young adult I wondered how unschooling would look now that I was grown up. I got a sense of what adulthood would look like and figured out a myriad of ways to side step all the boring BS I saw other young adults going through. I got a high paying, low hours, very precarious, job as a nanny. Being a nanny you never knew when the family would change their mind and not need you anymore. I made good money but rarely had the job security other more regular jobs come with. I worked as a nanny till I had enough money to travel for a few months. I would go off on an adventure, come back and repeat the process. I became interested in going to art school in my early 20's and did what I had always done when I had a new goal. I broke down the steps it would take to get me there. I got my GED and applied to college. I got in to my first choice school that did not use traditional grades and had an interdisciplinary liberal arts focus. I was also eligible for in-state tuition and being twenty four, not reliant on anyone else’s income, I was eligible for more money to make it all do-able financially. 

While in school I met my life partner. We decided to be committed to each other and then we got the surprise of our lives, our first child. I was uncertain how to pull off this parenting/unschooling life. One obvious choice would be to leave the financial part of our lives to my partner and be a stay at home mom (SAHM). SAHM's got all the freedom to do what they pleased with kids, play while others worked and it seemed like a good package. I started off SAHMing but two big things hit me with a thud. First, SAHM only truly works if your partner makes enough money that you are not constantly worried about making ends meet. Second, being an unschooler for most of my life I had so much creative ambition, so much zest for life. I wanted to make a bigger dent in the world then just parenting my children. I wanted to carry them along with my vision and parent them while affecting change on a grander scale. I had also been a nanny for many years, caring for young people was grand but I wanted more, I also wanted to work with adults and not always be in the care giver role.

I started looking for work with strict criteria. Being a recent college grad, in Austin, a new city, with a young child, and without the exorbitant amounts of money it costs to put a child in day care, it was slim pickings. I was thinking,  “this job better be worth leaving my kid, it better make enough money to pay for her childcare, and it better be fun and engaging”. It took me two years to find a job of this nature. Still, precarity followed. I got a job working at an after school program teaching art and social justice. It was perfect for me creatively. I got paid enough, I got to make art, write fun curriculum, work with interesting artists and activists, and be a leader. It was all the things I could want in a job. It was also part time work that changed seasonally. I was moved to different schools and had long stretches during school breaks where I made no money at all. Finding childcare for just the afternoons to make it all financially do-able was super challenging. Still the pros out weighed the cons and I stuck with it, picking up holiday shop work when I was off for too long. I found a flexible in-home day care Sweetpea loved that would have her just in the afternoons. It felt like I sort of had it made. I had a really fun job and I got to be with my family a lot. The uncertainty was hard going though, never knowing when the next job would be and where. We also started desiring other things, like a home we could set roots in, a weekly connection with family. We were ready to settle and Austin didn't feel like the place to do it.

We moved to Tulsa two and a half years ago. Upon arriving I got a job doing visitor services and programming at a public garden. The garden was dreamy work, flexible with my child care schedule, not too many hours, and the biggest plus: stability. My hours were set. This was a great thing until it became not a great thing. After 2 ½ years of being locked into a low pay non-profit job I was feeling the urge to move on. I still felt like we were scraping by and the only ways to move up in my organization was doing more stuff I didn't want to do. It was time to follow my bigger vision for teaching sustainability. Under The Canopy was born.

So here I am, a full-fledged adult in my mid-30's with two kids, a life partner, a mortgage and a degree. I am also now officially an adult unschooler.  I am living authentically, financially soundly, presently for the important work of parenting my dear children and sharing my vision for a sustainable future through the work of nature awareness at Under The Canopy. The next step is helping daddy get a chance to be an adult unschooler.  Our vision is to form a beautiful life doing the things we love with our family at the heart of it. We might be in debt for a while, we might not be able to travel for a while, but you can be sure we are following our dreams. Wish us luck!