Off-Trail Learning

If you enjoyed Off-Trail Learning, check out my new podcast, Dirtbag Rich, where I dive deep with working adults who have managed to strike that elusive balance of time, money, and purpose—without giving up on their wildest dreams. Find Dirtbag Rich wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or visit dirtbagrich.com .

Guest host Zen Zenith returns to interview Blake about his obsession with adventure. What exactly makes an adventure? How is adventure connected to self-directed learning? Is adventure just for privileged people? Why can’t Blake just settle down and lead a normal life? How do Unschool Adventures trips create a sense of adventure for both teens and trip leaders? Does adventure become harder as one...

Chris Balme (chrisbalme.com) is the founding head of school of The Millennium School and the author of Finding the Magic in Middle School. After briefly flirting with public school teaching, Chris ran an apprenticeship program for middle schoolers for a decade before creating The Millennium School in San Francisco, where he served for seven years. We discuss Chris’ early infatuation with democrati...

Liam Nilsen (https://liam.media) is a designer and educator based in Åårhus, Denmark. He’s a former member of the LEGO Idea Studio, the founder of an Agile Learning Center, and a life-long unschooler who didn’t start reading until age 9 — at which point he fell in love with the written word. Liam and I discuss our lives as readers, including the books that have changed our lives, how we discover n...

Grace Llewellyn is the author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, the founder of Not Back to School Camp, a one-time middle school English teacher, and a luminary in the unschooling movement. In this episode we discuss the third (and final) edition of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, released in late 2021. Grace talks about writing the original book in 1991, how it became an underground classic, h...

Takeru “TK” Nagayoshi was an AP English and Research teacher for seven years. In 2020 he was named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year—yet after winning the award, he decided to leave the classroom in 2021. We discuss Takeru’s early school experiences in Japan and New Jersey, how he become an educator through Teach For America, the daily realities of teaching in a “turnaround school,” the amazing AP...

Shortly after college, Jack Schott hit the road for two years to visit over 200 summer camps across the United States. He then co-founded a children’s sleepaway camp in upstate New York, Camp Stomping Ground (campstompingground.org), designed to inspire “radical empathy.” After co-directing Stomping Ground for many years (with Laura Kriegel) and consulting for other camps, Jack possesses a wealth...

Nate Singer is the Managing Director of Mission Holdings, a father of two, and the guy who first got me interested in alternative education. We discuss his early struggles at boarding school, getting rejected to UC Berkeley (but successfully appealing the decision), working hard as a math major, second-guessing conventional teaching methods, creating a class about educational television (where he...

Michelle Bruce is a mother of 4 who (along with her husband John) has been “boatschooling” since 2013. We discuss the evolution of her eclectic homeschooling approach, the family’s slow travel philosophy, the boat’s life-support systems and operating expenses, her kids’ “rollercoaster” social life, her impressions of the worldschooling community, what happened during the pandemic, and the judgment...

Seth Frey (enfascination.com) is a professor of Communication at UC Davis who focuses on the science of self-governance. We discuss our shared history in the Berkeley Student Cooperatives, Seth’s experience living in communities ranging from 4 to 400 members, his research on Minecraft and World of Warcraft communities, why benevolent dictators are surprisingly common, why children (and adults!) ar...

Manue is a representative in the South of France of Les Enfants D’Abord (lesenfantsdabord.org), a home education advocacy association which is particularly committed to the rights of unschoolers. (The name translates to “Children First.”) We discuss the organization’s mission to promote children’s rights over parental domination, the history of homeschooling regulation in France, home inspections,...

Nick Bergson-Shilcock is the CEO and co-founder of the Recurse Center (recurse.com), a self-directed and community-driven educational retreat for computer programmers. Nick describes his background as a lifelong unschooler (he’s the son of Peter Bergson, a recent podcast guest), as well as his early interest in gaming and programming and his transition into college, career, and Y Combinator (the s...

Anna Smith and Mara Donahoe are the co-founders (with Natasha Morisawa) of the National Association of Home & Hybrid Education (homeandhybrideducation.org), a new advocacy organization that hopes to bring together all members of the alternative education movement in the United States. We discuss why Home & Hybrid Education (HHE) was created, whether the U.S. needs another homeschool organization,...

While biking through the south of France, I met Lilli and Elena, two 19-year-old German women who are also on a cycling adventure. (We shared the same Couchsurfing host.) We discuss their bike trip, their path through formal education in Germany, why they’re taking a gap year, how they spend less than $10/day, how they stay safe, and what the trip has taught them so far. (Lilli and Elena have no w...

Joel Malkoff (joelkmalkoffcircusartist.com) is a contemporary circus artist and 27-year-old grown unschooler from Indiana. We discuss Joel’s recent experience at the National Circus School of Montreal (“the Harvard of circus”), the job market for circus artists, and his new 3-person circus collective, La Quadrature (instagram.com/laquadrature). We also talk about Joel’s upbringing as an unschooler...

Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn.org) is the author of fourteen books and a well-known advocate of progressive education. Mr. Kohn discusses the purpose behind his 30+ years of advocacy, his critique of “grit” and “growth mindset”, and his take on the classic progressive school models (Montessori/Waldorf/Reggio) as well as homeschooling, unschooling, and highly self-directed schools & centers. He expresses c...

Catherine Fraise is the founder of Workspace Education (workspaceeducation.org) and 100 Roads (100roads.org). We discuss Catherine’s background as a Montessori educator, the pivotal trip to Japan she took as a 12-year-old, the Workspace co-learning and co-working center she created in Connecticut, and her newest venture, WorkspaceSky Teens: an online community for teenage self-directed learners. W...

Peter Bergson is the co-founder of two self-directed learning centers in the Philadelphia area: Open Connections (openconnections.org) and Natural Creativity Center (naturalcreativity.org). We discuss Peter’s journey from creativity consultant to early childhood educator, his collaboration with John Holt, fighting for better homeschooling laws in the 80s, growing a tiny self-directed learning cent...

Pat Farenga returns to talk about the second half of Harvard’s “Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling” conference, after which we discuss a different, secret, *invite-only* Harvard summit (hosted by Elizabeth Bartholet and James Dwyer) that proposed extremely restrictive reforms to homeschooling laws. If you care about the future of homeschooling in the United States — and the reasons that some we...

In this special two-part discussion, Pat Farenga and I discuss Harvard University’s ongoing 7-week conference, the “Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling.” This free online conference brings together researchers and academics in the field of homeschooling, and Pat and I are here to share what they’re talking about, the arguments they’re making, and what we think of all this. In this first episode...

Debbie Reber (debbiereber.com) is the author of Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World and the founder of TiLT Parenting (tiltparenting.com), a podcast and online community. We discuss how Debbie coaches parents on issues of neurodivergence, the challenges that school systems present for “differently wired” kids, her response to the critics, what it was like raisin...

Olivia Barnes (blacklifeblueworld.wixsite.com/blbwofficialwebsite) has always had a somewhat unconventional education, but after a frustrating year at a well-regarded performing arts school, she decided to take the reins of her education. We discuss Olivia’s decision to spend her 10th grade year doing a hodgepodge of activities she called “self-design school”—including biology classes at a local u...

Rivers and bike trips and workshops, oh my! A quick update from my somewhat-successful-sabbatical. Also: new podcast episodes coming soon!

Off-Trail Learning is on hiatus! In this brief personal update, I discuss my decision to go on sabbatical in 2021. Learn more at (newly redesigned) blakeboles.com.

Kevin Currie-Knight (kevinck.net) is a philosopher, historian of education, and Teaching Associate Professor at East Carolina University’s College of Education. Following a stint as a high school special educator, Kevin began training future public school teachers at the college level and experimented with giving them high levels of autonomy. We discuss the results of Kevin’s experiments, his uniq...