Fare of the Free Child

I got an email in response to episode 115 (On White Privilege and Pleasure) that left me disappointed and upset about another experience with white fragility targeted at this podcast. Rather than stewing and ranting with my family (best believe we did it already), I’m using the email I got from a concerned white person about episode 115 as a teachable moment.   It’s my first time having Kris, Marl...

Inspired by her 9-year-old daughter, Leruo and determined not to let her 'shine' be dimmed, this mama decided to find a better way to educate her little light. Her do-better process affected how she worked, how she communicated, how she ended up at #LRC2018. Tebogo Modisane: Unschooler, Freelance Event Producer, Soweto born and raised.   Support the show Dig this show? Join our make-it-h...

Join Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta for the first episode of Let's Grow Podcast as he explores the Selfish vs. Self-actualized concept. He'll explore concepts we talk about on Fare of the Free Child--agency, consent, and a removal of the power-over dynamic. Dr. Sundiata is inviting you to challenge your idea of being an individual, and shift it to include and embrace symbiotic relationships so...

Gonna hone in on that mothering energy that's swirling around this month--they assigned a Mother's Day, I don't care about any of those days they assign, but I damn sure love to hop onto the waves of any good, gratitude-centered energies, and this is my contribution to that. It's also a great way to ease on into this month's focus, doing better! the Do Better Series. This...

A fitting close-out to The Pleasure Series, Ivy Felicia talks about body relationships, especially as a Black woman of size and of color. Ivy talks about embracing pleasure and play, as well as finding the confidence to show up as herself, assert her worth, and express her full self. Is this something we get in the way of for young people in bigger bodies? If so, how can we do better? We also touc...

As you are learning about privilege, is your practice being fortified by listening, engage, and changing? This is the question for white people in Self-Directed Education spaces that employ, offer volunteership, or otherwise work with BIPOC adults. In can feel really good to be informed, educated, “woke” and all, but what is happening in your actual SDE space? What would non-white adults who work...

"Our dance is so valid. So necessary and urgent."   Listen to this movement maker talk about connecting pleasure to parenting in life-affirming ways. "Mother Mother" and artist through various mediums. Binahkaye “Binah” Joy shares with us in this episode about the process of integrating creative movement into mothering, and the pleasure of dance. She has worked with women’s who...

Why do we push back against children’s pleasure? Because safety, right? Because boundaries, right? Even in the cases where both of those are true, what’s also true in many cases is that we, as adults, resent pleasure. We resent children, in particular, when they engage in pleasure because they haven’t earned that right just yet. It goes even further beyond that, and Thea Monyeé takes us into this...

Pleasure is an adult thing. It's not for children to see, experience, or even be curious about. This is a notion that even the most liberated of unschooled parents can find themselves acting upon. As is the case with so much of we've yet to deschool from, we rarely stop and ask, "Is this a me problem?" To start you on that journey, this is the Pleasure series, a collection of d...

In this final episode of the Parent Founder series, Nuola speaks about play, color, and self-expression via Jean-Michel Basquiat, also known as Radiant Child, and picking resources based on children's interests. Dr. Sundiata speaks about his journey to forming GROW, including college Aha moments, entrepreneurial trials and errors, and the gratitude he has toward supportive people and his orga...

This week's episode in the Parent Founder series features the “wise old woman” voice of Leslie Bray. Leslie is the space-holder for Kid Cultivators, a homeschooling collective that makes space for other learning styles, such as unschooling. She'll speak about how to start a learning group that fulfills emotional and educational desires while still prioritizing partnership-centred and tru...

This week’s episode in the Parent Founders series features the voice and experiences of Yolande Tomlinson. She co-founded Anna Julia Cooper Learning and Liberation Center (AJC), “a cooperative, learner-centered, and self-directed community, rooted in a radical Black queer feminist politic, and a multi-generational, decolonized community of care, healing, and intellectual exploration where learning...

This week, as part of a series on parent founders of Self-Directed Education spaces, you’ll share in one woman’s journey. Sonia Fernandez Leblanc , a White woman who was born and raised in Dominican Republic, and her husband—a Black man from Puerto Rico (who was raised in St. Croix and in Dominica where his family is from)—are raising two brown girls in the American South, and wants to be part of...

This week, I feature the voice and sentiment of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the writer, storyteller, feminist mama who inspired our travels to Soweto from Johannesburg last December. We went for a Black authors’ book festival, but this isn’t a recap of Abantu. Thanks to Chimamanda, Soweto, and Abantu, I can share this example of partnership-centered parenting. This is an example of what the work of...

This episode, we're recapping the Liberation and Education Summit that happened this month in metro Atlanta (Clarkston) Georgia. Maleka Diggs, Tamika Middleton, and Patty Zavala all discussed aspects of racial equity in Self-Directed Education. The panel was moderated by Kelly Henderson, Ph. D., and the related conversations during the conference were co-facilitated by the staff of the summit...

Love, Trust, Identity – that’s the flow of the conversation Kelly Henderson will guide us on for the duration of this episode. She is a college professor, and an unschooling mama of five children. She is brilliant and funny and hella focused on Black Love, and I’m talking beyond romantic love. I’m talking love that liberates individuals and communities. Love that reshapes classrooms and class stru...

Let’s have a conversation about spirituality in parenting. So much of what we do and affirm and get validated by is schoolish in nature, and toxic for us. It’s a prove it, show your work, impress someone in authority, push past this, show up like this, be normal in this way, and be exceptional in this way—lot’s of external stimuli motivated by outside ideas of what one should be, how to perform, h...

'A conversation on the freedom of education through the lenses of Self-Directed Education, what freedom in education looks like, and how we can create liberatory practices in ourselves and our communities.” Support the show Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you! The Raising Free People Practice Card Deck...

"We need to have a conversation about developing a set of tools and a solidarity around raising free people who are also aware people. This is vital especially since we’re not using tools of oppression in attempts force our children into an awareness of our deeply unjust society. We need to normalize the conversation and safe space-making in takes to explore this, and this is one effort in th...

Is mindful parenting sustainable? Can Caribbean people, for example, with all our deep familiarity in the art of loving yet intimidation-based parenting, actually learn how to consistently be in respect-based, partnership-centered relationships with our children? Can our children call us on our b.s. and still feel not only safe, but heard and respected for expressing their truths? Hell yes, and in...

This is a supporting resource for adults to go through the rationale, the benefits, the urgency, and the solutions inside of, a life that gives a child the room to own their educational journey, and to understand themselves as lifelong learners, and not merely temporary students who need to impress adults in order to feel validated and purposeful. In How to Focus on Learning (also called HFL the W...

In this final episode of Season 3, Kris and I talk about the training and travels we've done in the past few months, and how they've helped us strengthen our practice of partnership-centered parenting. We talk about what it means to not have a master in the contemporary sense, and I share a more community-oriented approach to facilitating conversation and training around raising free peo...

“Transitioning to homeschooling was eye opening. This method uncovered how much my own conditioning about learning impacted my daughters. The system was a well-oiled and self-sustaining machine burnt into the recesses of my conscious and unconscious; marionette to the system. A natural learner myself, all that was left was to let go. But unschooling? Initially the term was off putting, but unschoo...

Jennifer "Astarte Rising" Lane is the mother of two grown unschoolers. She, along with the wisdom of Itiel McVay, another long-time unschooling mama, are our guides for this episode. Itiel (purveyor of amazing self-care body-and-soul resources over at smellgoodspa.com) reads our second-to-last letter of support for the season, and it deals with fight or flight reactions in parenting. Ast...

In this final episode of Surviving Survival Mode, Monique had the pleasure of talking to Darcel of The Mahogany Way Blog. They talked about what Survival Mode looked like for Darcel as a single mother unschooling with her kids. We get into what she did to maintain a sense of self, the reality of feeling hopeless and at the same time how having a glimpse of hope helped her emerged out of survival m...