Unexceptionally Exceptional: Time for Struggle, Time for Joy

This is part two of my talk Unexceptionally Exceptionally, which I presented at the Northeast Unschooling Conference a couple of weeks ago. I'd suggest reading part one, The Meaning of Success, first! Look for part three on Monday.

As much as I might often be seen as “successful” by unschoolers, this past year has not been one which looked very good from the outside, and one that often didn’t feel very good on the inside. This past year in my life has been rough. When I was writing the outline for this talk, I put down “the year of hell” as the heading for this section. For any Star Trek Voyager fans in the audience, you’ll remember the episode of that title, where in an alternate timeline, everything just keeps going wrong: aliens keep attacking; equipment breaks; people keep dying.

My own year of hell has been a time of great difficulty for my whole family. In December, a beloved cat who had been with my family for almost 14 years passed away unexpectedly. In January, my great aunt died. In february, my grandmother’s basement flooded, and shortly afterwards, she fell down the stairs, hitting her head on rough cement uncovered by flood repair work and getting a concussion. In March our other elderly cat, who had been with us just as long and been just as loved, got sick and died shortly after. In April, my father had surgery.

When I see people criticizing unschooling for its supposed sheltering of children from hard things, I laugh. My response to that concern, whenever it’s expressed to me, is that the world provides plenty of difficulty all on its own: no need for parents to artificially engineer misery in the lives of their children.

There’s a quote I really like by Alfie Kohn, who says:

“People don’t get better at coping with unhappiness because they were deliberately made unhappy when they were young. On the contrary, what best prepares children to deal with the challenges of the real world is to experience success and joy, to feel supported and respected, to receive loving guidance and unconditional care and the chance to have some say about what happens to them.”

I guess my parents did something right, because I seem to have ended up as an adult who can cope with adversity. This past year success has felt like being there for my mother when her aunt passed away. It’s meant rushing out of the house in record time to meet my grandmother at the hospital, and bringing my father in for his surgery along with my sister, hiding the terror we were both feeling so we could joke with him while he waited. Success meant bringing my cat’s body to the veterinarian's office to be cremated, even though I wanted to just curl up at home and grieve, because she was my cat and it was my responsibility.

Sometimes success means simply doing what you need to do.

And, through it all, learning keeps happening. Not even in a growing from adversity way, though that can’t help but be part of it, but just through everyday exploration. Books are still read, questions Googled, words written, Ninjutsu classes attended, skills honed and projects completed.

A large part of unschooling is seeking joy in learning: embracing learning as a playful, exciting process. But it seems that in all our discussion of that joy, some people seem to take to heart that that’s all unschooling should and can be. I see people concerned that their house isn’t constantly filled with light, or that life sometimes gets in the way of living in a way that looks how they think unschooling is supposed to look.

I think that cooperation and exploration and yes, joy, should always be the goal: of course we all want that. But there needs to be the recognition that circumstances will sometimes intervene in surprising and on occasion devastating ways, and what happens through that might not looks like the ideal of unschooling, but it will be real, and genuine, and the learning will still be happening, every step of the way.

My year of hell has included a whole lot of time spent not in crisis, but simply in living.

“When life is busy testing your endurance, it seems like the perfect time to bring a bit more magic into your days.”

I wrote that line back in January, and that thought, that idea has come to mean a lot to me in the past year. More than any other time in my life, I’ve been reminded over and over again of the importance of finding joy each day, in all it’s forms and in any way you can. Bringing little pieces of magic, of inspiration, into even the most difficult of days.

For one thing, I could spend hours picking berries. The only thing that generally drives me back indoors is when I’ve found every last ripe one in whatever patch of brambles I’m delicately working my way through. Sometimes I hum to myself. More often I’m silent, moving slowly, listening to the soft rustle of branches, hum of insects, and birdsong. Even the thorns on my favourite black raspberries seem more like a challenge than an inconvenience.

Black raspberries.

A lot of what bringing inspiration into my life has meant is self care rituals: picking berries; making myself and anyone else who’s around a fancy coffee; making a beautiful plate of food; cutting flowers from our yard and putting a bouquet on the table; baking a loaf of bread… Much of my self care involves food, because that’s what’s important to me, but everyone will have things that make them feel grounded and nourished.

And a lot of what “magic” has meant to me has been learning. I haven’t taken any classes since last fall: nothing has been formal, and little has been with other people. Even turned inwards, as I’ve been, towards family and healing, I’ve found myself still learning constantly, in countless simple ways.

Gardening has been a big thing for me and my sister this Spring and Summer. My sister Emilie has spearheaded things, at times dragging me along, short on motivation, behind her. Conversations on car rides have been about the ideal soil composition for beans versus tomatoes, and how best to treat powdery mildew on zucchinis. There have been sweaty days spent building a large trellis out of branches and reclaimed posts for our winter squash, building raised beds, and transplanting small growing things. In more recent days, time spent in the garden has waned, as more and more that’s left to do is simply harvest, take stock of what we did wrong and right, and discuss how we want to do things next year.

The tomatoes did especially well this year.

Besides the garden, bringing two new cats into our home, in a desperate attempt to fill the holes left by our recently deceased furry family members, has lead to plenty of breed research and new discoveries about cat behaviour, as each new animal always presents new challenges and new joys both. I canned some jelly semi-successfully for the first time this summer--the canning part was successful, though the “jelly” was more syrup than anything else. I’ve learned more about areas of history I previously knew little about; I’ve learned to cook new foods; I’ve learned that I can step up when needed even when I’m personally struggling.

A whole host of learning, from how to handle an overstimulated kitten and how to create an ingenious tomato watering system, to deep personal growth.

Remaining aware of all the learning that keeps happening, no matter what, can be encouraging and soothing. When it feels like you’re “doing nothing,” it might be a good idea to pay more attention to all the things that you, and your family, ARE doing.

We live in a culture obsessed with productivity. Whether you want to blame it on capitalism or on the puritanical work ethic, the fact remains that busy-ness, doing something, is generally considered good, and not doing anything “productive” is seen as laziness, as wasted time.

The idea that time can even be wasted, that every moment should somehow be accounted for seems like a deeply toxic idea. It’s definitely proved a harmful one in my own life. I’ve struggled with mental illness for years, and this year has been a particularly trying one with all that’s happened, and I struggle with the idea that I’ve “wasted” so much time in struggle.

In a culture that sees a lack of productivity as one of the seven deadly sins, people who are struggling are often seen as lazy. They just need to get over it, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

The reality is that big life struggles are sometimes inevitable, and there isn’t an exact recipe for how people are “supposed” to deal with adversity. Sometimes you just need time and space to heal, and to get back on your feet.

Our two new black cats, Silver and Bea.

Both children and adults need time to struggle with those big life events, to make sense of them.

One of the core tenets of unschooling is recognizing that everyone has their own timeline when it comes to learning. The same is true of emotional difficulties and growth. When we take constant productiveness as a measure of success, we’re doing a great disservice to ourselves and the people around us. Time is a great gift: time to figure things out, to grow, to process, to hibernate. Periods of downtime are essential, especially when life has been extra hard.

Part of learning to be kind to myself is learning not to beat myself up over a lack of productivity, not to punish myself for struggling. Sometimes picking a full container of raspberries is success enough.

As a grown unschooler, I might feel the pressure to excel in obvious ways especially keenly, but recognizing that the only timeline I’m on is my own allows me that space to breath, and when I’m kinder to myself, I’m more able to do and learn and grow.

How Do We Value Ourselves?

Originally published in the November/December 2014 issue of Home Education Magazine.

In our culture, it’s very obvious that we value certain knowledge and skills more highly than others. Namely skills that are academic and intellectual, communication skills, and social skills (somewhat less tangibly, seeing as those are harder to test). It seems everything else comes a distant second.

Schools are all about teaching academic skills to the exclusion of all else (though how good a job they do at imparting those skills is very debatable).

When we take school out of the equation in our own lives and families, we have the option, the opportunity, to take a hard look at what skills are valued, and decide to broaden what we personally value and encourage.

But are we taking that opportunity? Too often, I don’t think we are.

My family didn’t, or at least didn’t to as much of an extent as we could have. This isn’t meant to place blame on my parents; we’re each of us constantly learning and growing, and unlearning ideas that have a negative impact on ourselves and others. My parents did the best they could in the places they were at, and I’m grateful for it. But looking back, it’s very obvious that the skills they were most concerned with me and my sister acquiring were those taught in school. It was subtle, because it was unintentional, but that preferencing of academic skills, at least to some extent, was very much present.

It’s easy to find ourselves trapped in an invisible framework built out of concerned queries from friends and families about how kids who don’t go to school will learn math, and PSA’s about the importance of graduating high school, and parental insecurities born of what they themselves were good and bad at in school.

I think it’s important to look beyond that framework, though, to recognize the variety of important and amazing skills and strengths people can have, including skills that are definitely not taught in school.

___________

My sister is a caretaker. She washes dishes and dusts and tidies, she likes doing yard work, and has increasingly been taking on odd jobs around the house that my father used to do (cleaning out the gutters and sweeping the chimney, snowblowing and mowing the lawn). She likes organizing things, works as the quartermaster in her Highland band, making sure every member is properly outfitted with everything they need. Her dream is to build her own house, a hobbit hole as she refers to it. She likes to take care of spaces, organizing and making things work.

This type of domestic work, work related to home care, is not exactly highly valued. I don’t think it’s an accident that this type of work (besides a couple of ‘manly’ chores) is generally coded as feminine, either, though that’s a whole ‘nother story.

It’s work that’s deeply necessary, often difficult, and that lives at the core of each and every one of our lives. We all need to eat, need to have clean clothes to wear, need to stay healthy by living in a clean environment. Even when we move past what’s strictly necessary in our current modern way of living, domestic skills often provide real enrichment: fresh food from a garden in your own yard, or homemade soap with your favourite scents. As soon as you move past the strictly necessary aspects of domestic skills, you move into the “artisanal.” Which, to a growing extent, is in. It’s trendy and popular to knit and make pie, at least for women.

We like cooking together.

But while the general movement towards a back-to-the-land and back-to-our-grandmother’s-skills can’t be a bad thing, I don’t think the movement is nearly broad enough in scope, as the majority of domestic skills are still being learned by girls and women only, and the trendiness only goes so far. These skills are still just considered hobbies, things women can do in their spare time. When it comes to the more mundane skills, they remain simply invisible: if they’re noticed at all, it’s probably just in an outdated sense of approval that the time honoured housekeeping skills are alive and well with some women, at least.

I believe the undervaluing of domestic work is reflected in how much money is usually made in such work outside your own home, and in who’s doing it (almost entirely women, and the majority immigrant and otherwise marginalized women). You can also see that attitude in what’s conspicuously not thought important enough to include in a modern school curriculum.

While certain select domestic skills might be valued when practiced by certain select people, they’re certainly not valued overall.

_____________

It seems strange that in many ways the most basic and integral skills needed to provide shelter and food are those valued least. Domestic skills, as mentioned above, but also trades, construction, and farming (which, even with the increased desire for organic and specialty foods, can be difficult to succeed at financially no matter what type of farming you're doing)... Some of these jobs, like select trades, do earn a lot of money (I don’t find it surprising that trades are also male dominated fields(1) as opposed to female dominated low-paying domestic work), yet they still lack a lot of prestige.

Money isn’t the only sign of value, of course, but in a capitalist society that values money over pretty much everything else (like the wellbeing of the Earth and the majority of people), how much money any given skill or knowledge set can make says a lot about what things--and which people--are valued most.

_____________

My sister is a caretaker. She takes care of people. Friends ask her for relationship advice, and go to her when they just need someone to listen. She told me the other day how much she likes helping out the newer people at her Ninjutsu dojo, and I’ve seen the amount of patience she has whenever she’s in a position of helping people to learn something. There’s been numerous times she’s stayed up late into the night and early morning talking to a friend or acquaintance who’s suicidal. She cares about the people around her, and is quick to step in and stand up to someone when she believes they’re being hurtful or inconsiderate. One of the reasons she wants to have her own land and build that hobbit hole is so that she has a place where loved ones can go when they need a place to be, no matter their financial situation. She cares about people.

And as you can probably tell by now, I really admire the skills my sister has a great deal. I admire her a great deal.

But it’s hard, as she confided to me recently, that the skills and strengths she values and cultivates in herself are not ones that are generally valued. They don’t make money, or at least not easily, which is all most people seem concerned about, and she’s left feeling like those skills, as much as her contributions have meant to so many friends and acquaintances, just aren’t good enough.
______________

"There were no sex classes. No friendship classes. No classes on how to navigate a bureaucracy, build an organization, raise money, create a database, buy a house, love a child, spot a scam, talk someone out of suicide, or figure out what was important to me. Not knowing how to do these things is what messes people up in life, not whether they know algebra or can analyze literature." William Upski Wimsatt

This quote has always felt grounding to me, reminding me when I start to panic about my (lack of) math skills or feel that my knowledge of certain parts of history seem less than a schooled friend. A reminder that the most important skills are those that actually help us function in the world we find ourselves in. This can mean knowing how to make healthy and tasty food for yourself or for a crowd, handling friendships when they get difficult, doing taxes, raising money, supporting a depressed partner while not losing yourself, or how to get soap rings off of the sides of your tub.

All the things, big and small, that truly make up the day to day art of living.

As unschoolers, we have a tremendous opportunity to rethink what’s valued and what’s important. It’s hard to let go (or maybe more accurately throw off) deeply ingrained ideas about what learning looks like, what important learning looks like, and what should be most encouraged in children.

I think encouraging life skills can be as simple as de-emphasizing academic skills a little bit (messages everywhere are telling us that they’re important. Kids are going to get that idea no matter what!), and working to expand our personal definitions of what learning looks like and what skills it’s important for children to learn. If we actually believe that all those important real life skills are valuable, I think everyone around us, kids included, are going to see that belief reflected in the way we talk and the things we do. I also think it’s important to, in an age appropriate way, involve kids of all genders in every aspect of running and maintaining a household: cooking and cleaning and fixing and yard work and finances and pet care. Making things into “chores” is often unhelpful; instead, I believe it’s important to just live and work together as a family, including everyone in both day-to-day tasks and big decisions. Easier said than done, I’m sure (and I’ll likely be even more sure of that once I have kids myself), but striving for that cooperative state seems important, and when you can achieve it it really feels great. I know it’s what I’ll be striving for when I’m a parent.

It’s great if a kid finds manipulating numbers comes naturally, or starts reading at age three. But it’s just as wonderful if a child has a real sense of when things are out-of-place and likes organizing the house, or loves working with wood, or has a knack for growing things, or a seemingly innate sense of the right thing to say when someone is sad.

Emilie tending to the garden last summer. Our garden is much bigger this year!

These skills and strengths are every bit as important as academic skills, and if we can stop the knee-jerk reaction of thinking that intellectual work is somehow superior, if we valued the unique strengths of every individual around us, both children and adults, I can’t help but think it would be a better world.

Unschooling gives us an excellent opportunity to value those unique strengths, and encourage kids to develop all kinds of important, exciting, and nourishing life skills.
_________

My sister is 20. I'm 23. We're both still figuring out a lot of things, still struggling sometimes. I'm deeply passionate about food and cooking, and though right now I'm just working hard to get my health to a place where I feel I'm able to work a "real" job, I remain excited about working in that field.

My sister Emilie was asked to be the manager and caretaker of a fledgling intentional community being dreamed up by her Ninjutsu teacher (as well as friend and sometimes employer) and others. Though the land isn't bought yet, her near-future "duties" would be to do a lot of the learning and skill-gaining related to sustainable building and gardening practices, something that a lot of the older working people involved with the community don't have the time to do. In the longer run, some of the things she'd do would be organize who was there when, bringing in and managing volunteers to help build it, and living on the land during the week when those who still worked in the city couldn't be there. Basically an opportunity that perfectly suits her desires and skills! I'm excited for her, and I'm hoping it all works out. Even if it doesn't, she's still striving towards her dream of homesteading and sustainable community living.

Which I guess just shows to me that there is a place for those skills, for people whose strengths and passions are less of the academic persuasion and more about the domestic, hands on, emotional, and "life skills" realms, even if they can be difficult to find sometimes.

There are many skills that help us function and succeed in this world, whatever success looks like to the individual. Some of them are academic and some are not. They're all valuable, helping us in different aspects of our lives, some of which will help with earning money and some not. Regardless, they're all important. They all contribute to making life better, making life richer, and helping us to take care of ourselves and those around us.

In valuing all skills, not just the school ones, we're helping kids do well in all different parts of their life, and opening up doors to a wider range of possibilities.

I think that's one of the most important, and personally exciting, things we can do as unschoolers!

(1) I say this based on the findings in Women in Non-Traditional Occupations and Fields of Study by Kathryn McMullen, Jason Gilmore and Christel Le Petit from statistics Canada, and Women and Education by Martin Turcotte, the latter of which commented that, out of six trade groups (building construction, electrical, electronic and related trades, food and services, industrial and related mechanical trades, metal fabricating, and motor vehicle and heavy equipment), the only one in which women are a majority was food and services.

Guest Post: My Suburban, Backyard, Food Revolution...Sort Of

I'm thrilled to present the first ever guest post on this blog!!  In this post, Genevieve shares her adventures in being part of the Food Revolution, also known more simply as having your own veggie garden! ;-) I give you:

My Suburban, Backyard, Food Revolution...Sort Of

I think the fact that I live in the suburbs (of Montreal) still surprises me, even though I’ve been here for almost 6 years. I’ve always felt strongly about issues regarding the environment and peace, but most recently, and perhaps most of all, food. I mention this because suburbia never seemed like the place I could live with a clean conscience with regards to the environment and food. But after university and living in and around downtown for four years, I needed green space (read: yard), clean air and wanted to be closer to the schools where I would be teaching (another story altogether).

So after buying a house and spending time making it our own, we (my partner and I) thought we should spend some time on the yard. So how do you ‘green’ suburbia? Slowly we got rid of some of our lawn, planted perennials and built, drum roll please...raised vegetable beds! For me, it felt like a revolution was happening in my own backyard. I felt empowered and I was really going to stick it to the proverbial ‘man’. However, that first year, the vegetable garden wasn’t quite the picture of success we had imagined (we really didn’t know what we were doing), though we did harvest tomatoes, beans and lots of various lettuces. In subsequent years, we varied the types of seeds we sowed and focused mainly on heirloom and organic ones. Thankfully, our harvest has been slightly better every year since.

Then, almost 2 years ago, I got pregnant with not one, but two wee ones. So, as you can imagine, last summer’s garden was virtually non-existent (the kids being about 6 mths old at the time), though I did plant an apple tree to commemorate the birth of our lovely babes. Having kids has reaffirmed our need for good organic home-grown food, and the need to get rid of more lawn to grow that home-grown food (not to mention the positive environmental implications of growing your own stuff). We have plans to build a cold-frame using reclaimed (we are proud trash-pickers) to extend the growing season. There is also the dream of owning some chickens and goats and moving to a larger piece of land one day, to expand on this dream of ours to be more self-sufficient. This year we’ve planted or started indoors, so far, 7 varieties of tomatoes, lettuces, sunflowers, melon, peas, broccoli, onions, okra, cabbage and eggplant. If all goes well (and space allows for it) there will be many more seeds planted when the soil warms up.

I wish I had the time to dig up the entire yard and care for it in such a way that I could grow food year-round and feed all of us almost exclusively on what I grew, but that is not realistic. The temperature doesn’t allow for that and neither does time. So, we grow what we can, on the land we have time to till. At this point, we’re not saving that much money by growing some of our own food, but anyway, I don’t think that’s the point. Honestly, I think what I love most of all, is that I know HOW to grow food. That, to me, is just amazing. Maybe the second best thing is that, one day, my kids will know that potatoes grow in the ground and cucumbers on vines, not trees J

So, what is everyone else planting and what are your reasons for claiming parts of your yards for food? Are your motivations political, environmental or romantic perhaps? What does your food revolution look like?

Thank you for this, Genevieve!

If YOU have something you'd love to write about (or make art about!), something cool you want to share, I strongly encourage you to submit it to the DIY Life Zine.  It's a project I'm really excited about, and I'm so looking forward to seeing all the great stuff people come up with for it!

Peace,
Idzie