Fare of the Free Child

We’re interrupting our Deschooling Release Party flow to focus on the energy of Mother’s Day. In this episode, Akilah and Aja will talk about the four mothers whose new are coming to join Fare of the Free Child on Raising Free People Network : Val Sinclair, Katrina Monique, Lou Hollis, and Aja herself. Aja chats with us about her relationship with motherhood and how it can impact our leadership an...

At the top of this episode, I share the pre-order status for my book, Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work ! If you enjoy this podcast, this is your kinda reading party right here. Pre-order your copy today. In this second deschooling release party session, we will be sharing thoughts with college professor and unschooler mother of five, Kelly Limes Taylor about the effe...

This is the first episode of the Deschooling Release Party, Volume II for 2020. Today we will focus on the pivot, what is deschooling causing to pivot away from, especially during these particularly disruptive times. We’ll hear from Moji Yai , my sisterfriend from Benin, West Africa, who was raised in north Florida, and is now raising herself and her 10 year old daughter, Sena, in between the US a...

This episode was supposed to be the first of the Deschooling Release Party, Volume II.  However, today’s episode features Marley and Sage, in response to an article from Good Morning America, and how their unschooling coverage got it all wrong. Earlier this month, the ABC Television produced a show and published a blog post  about unschooling titled “I tried unschooling and here’s what happened.”...

This episode is a combination of resources and links to invitations that will help you as we are raising free people: My dear friend Trelani Michelle , writer, storyteller, and founder author of Krak Teet, shares her experience with her 10-year-old daughter, Kobe, in response to my question about some of the wonderful, deschoolish things we might be noticing nowadays. If you pay attention, you’ll...

We’ve got three important invitations for you: Deschooling Release Party :: This year's theme is The Pivot Two Locations: Right here on FOFC Podcast and inside FOFC FB Group for post-episode conversations. I'll drop the dates on social media and share them with you here when I confirm them, but we're definitely starting this month, April, 2020, so stay tuned.        2.  A Request fo...

Dr. Sundiata is an Independent Educator, Anti-Oppression Activist, & Social Sustainability Facilitator. He is the co-creator of GROW, a network of people and initiatives designed to promote and create social, economic, and political systems centered on Liberation, Sustainability, and Unconditional Love. He is passionate about helping people discover the power of Authentic Dialogue , a communic...

This is is an opportunity to raise up out of what we are used to doing and that the practice of unschooling can help with that. A chance to put a few self-directed practices in place because this is where we can get super schoolish and just react to things around us, tossing healthy personal leadership aside.   Times like these remind us of the importance of collectivism and community, to be able...

A few weeks ago, on Episode 160 we talked with Aja about the pain of being raised with trauma through the vessel of Black mothers, and her new podcast She Said We Shed . In that episode, we talked about “why” she’s doing this podcast and “what” the problem was...in detail. Those of you who listened to that episode (if you didn’t, please go back and do so) because in this episode, we’re going to co...

SOME OF THE TOPICS DISCUSSED: -  What do we mean by “raising free people”? -  What does it mean when disabilities intersect with Self-Directed Education?  -  How do students with disabilities thrive in this educational philosophy?  -  In what ways are needs unmet?   -  How do we define disability in a society where ability is the default? And, who gets to define this term?  - How might we be uncon...

We’re excited about Aja, whom you’ve heard on previous podcasts and one of the things she’s now doing is her own out-loud deschooling.  This is work that is near and dear to us and is healing work, like all deschooling is.   It’s moving outside of all of the different ways that we have been steeped in and informed by trauma. Much of the work we talk about here on Fare of The Free Child is to try n...

Akilah Richards: hosts this widely celebrated podcast, Fare of the Free Child , that features more than 150 episodes on Self-Directed Education among Black, Non-Black Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. She is the author of the forthcoming book Raising Free People, and she and her partner are raising two self-directed daughters. What Was Discussed: Last week’s episode is also incl...

Libraries are learning centers too, so let’s make sure our deschooling aka decolonization work, includes our interactions in our local libraries. There is energy and effort, through The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) to help make libraries all over the US havens for self-directed families. Unschooling mother, organizer, and equity trainer, Maleka Diggs has also been giving energy and...

Support is one of the biggest hurdles in developing the confidence needed in nurturing and raising free people. Does your socioeconomic background affect your capacity to recognize and receive support? What does support need to look like for you, specifically? How can you find YOUR people, not just SOME people, as you seek out support and community? How can you communicate your support needs to yo...

Liberation work - is reclamation and transitional work. It is the shifting away from something harmful for many years and not our norm, because the norm is NOT oppressive tactics disguised as education, parenting, inter-generational living. Deschooling is shedding the programming and habits that resulted from other people’s agency over your time, body, thoughts, or actions. Designing and practicin...

In episode 154, Sage, a 13-year-old unschooler, talked about her frustration with the ways that there is this allegedly measurable, observable boxed in idea of how learning happens that is prioritized over an individual person’s process for understanding how they learn, pursuing their interests, and creating their own courses of study, and their own schedules and to a large extent, without the pre...

What is the best unschooling structure? How do unschoolers learn structure if adults aren’t telling how to manage their time? How will unschoolers learn how to manage time and tasks if they just do what they want, when they want? The answer is that they don’t *find* structure, they create it, and then they develop the personal leadership skills, IN PARTNERSHIP with willing adults, to refine that s...

Are children inherently untrustworthy? Where does the evidence point to children being untrustworthy? Do children need time to be taught trustworthiness? Does Freedom and trustworthiness come with being a human being? Are adults afraid of their children growing up untrustworthy ur unsuccessful? What is our approach in raising trustworthy children? How do we trust young people? What is the connecti...

Dr. Rocio Rosales Meza is a Xicana intuitive, energy worker, healer, and coach. She has a Ph. D. in Counseling Psychology and is a Reiki Master. She comes from a long line of healers from both her maternal and paternal lineages. Dr. Rosales Meza’s mission is to facilitate mental, emotional, and spiritual healing for Black, Indigenous, women of color from an ancestral and decolonial perspective. Sh...

Val Anderson is in her sixties, yet she is practicing conscious parenting. Turns out that connection, respect, listening, and regard for boundaries are not just for toddlers and their doting parents. Parents who have raised their children into adults and are now developing language and norms that see that person as an adult, and not a perpetual child. In this episode, Val, who happens to be Akilah...

In this final episode of the Deschooling Your Leadership Lens Series, our very own co-producer, South African born, self-directed mama, and student of life, Fatima Mookadam, talks about how her family’s decision to slow-travel through several countries with little money and plenty of trust in the process, turned out to be the most life-changing experience she has had so far. The plot twists and po...

By trade, Danii Oliver manufacturers whole food based beverages having founded several brands including Island to Island Brewery, House of Juice and Brooklyn Jun Brew. Formally, Danii applied her Creative Technology skills in the digital spaces of the advertising and marketing industry. Danii now applies her skills to her businesses and the education of her family and customers constantly learning...

Howard Palmer is deschooling from old habits by intentionally being an example of peace (through meditation) and of creative action (through parkour and fitness) and in his relationships with people. He’s feeling out the particulars of his move to California right now and sharing a little about how he manages himself while this is happening. What does he do each day to stay aligned with what he wa...

They say if you need to see just how well your healing is going, go be with your family for a week. The triggers, the baggage, the habits, all of it comes racing back, forcing us to reckon with the reality that healing work can be done, but most times, it’s never really done, it’s in progress. This week, repeat guest Aja Rutledge, joins us to speak with candor and unquieted assertion that Black fo...

This week, Chevanni Davids takes us through a reasoning that connects regeneration to liberation and deschooling in brilliant, thought-provoking ways. If you are the type to geek out on the ways that personal leadership and community organizing collaborate and create a person’s drive and shifts their thinking, this is an episode just for you! Enjoy!  “This is an intention that is constructed on co...