Learning Curve

Radical “unschooling” moms are changing the stay-at-home landscape

Written by Maya Schenwar

Illustrated by Aya Kakeda

Not long ago, homeschooling was thought of as the domain of hippie earth mothers letting their kids “do their own thing” or creationist Christians shielding their kids from monkey science and premarital sex. As recently as 1980, homeschooling was illegal in 30 states. Despite the fact that such figures as Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Atwood, Sandra Day O’Connor, and, um, Jennifer Love Hewitt were products of a home education, the practice is still often seen as strange and even detrimental.

These days, homeschooling is legal across the country, and parents are homeschooling for secular reasons as well as faith-based ones: quality of education, freedom to travel, their kids’ special needs, or simply a frustration with the educational system. Most significantly, many progressive parents are taking their kids’ education into their own hands to instill open-mindedness and social consciousness along with reading, science, and math.

For these parents, “unschooling” is an attractive option. In this approach to homeschooling, kids choose what they’ll study and investigate their questions outside the confines of a classroom. In traditional homeschooling, parents play the role of teachers, determining the curriculum, handing out assignments, and administering tests. Unschooling parents, on the other hand, act as facilitators, guiding their kids’ explorations. Even though the diyapproach may appeal to progressives who identify with the anti-establishment ethos of the punk movement, homeschooling still raises tricky questions for progressive mothers.

Namely, this one: Can women trade their careers for their families without sacrificing a few of their feminist values—the very values that inspired many of them to homeschool in the first place? It’s no wonder that punk feminist moms like Kim Campbell, who has homeschooled her kids for seven years, occasionally feel like walking oxymorons.

Despite her indie values, Campbell worries that her economic dependence on her husband could set a bad example for her daughter. “The first half year that we homeschooled, I had a complete identity crisis over the matter,” she says. “At the time I knew that I was making a great decision, but I couldn’t figure out how to square it with what I’d always considered my feminist sensibilities.” For Campbell and a growing contingent of other feminist unschoolers across the country, educating their kids has also been a process of figuring out how homeschooling jibes with their feminism.

Nina Packebush, a Washington state mom of three and self-described “radical parent,” started teaching her son at home because he was dyslexic and had ADHD, and his school wasn’t providing the personal attention he needed. As Packebush sought out teaching resources, she discovered a gaping hole in standard history textbooks.

“I noticed that women and people of color were virtually nonexistent,” Packebush says. “Don’t even try to find any mention of lgbt people in history. One thing led to another, and soon I was homeschooling because I was a feminist.” When her youngest child reached school age, Packebush chose to keep her out of the classroom solely because of its gender-biased curriculum.

Instead of using the standard Houghton Mifflin textbooks, Packebush provides a variety of mass-market books, like Freedom’s Children, for her kids. Beyond that, she follows where her kids’ interests lead; unschooling emphasizes that learning opportunities can pop up at any time. When Packebush’s older daughter became interested in zine-making, it became their curriculum. Packebush even started up her own zine, The Edgy-Catin’ Mama.

Sarah Schira, who maintains TheDenimJumper.com, a website for “sassy secular homeschoolers,” says that simply hanging out is one of the best routes to consciousness building. “One of the strengths of homeschooling is the incredible amount of time we spend together,” she says. “We listen to the news on the radio all the time, and they hear our reactions, the political discussions it raises. We talk a lot about societal institutions and the role that larger, almost invisible factors play in shaping events and free choice.”

Spending an “incredible amount of time” with your kids is great when they’re 8 and 10, like Schira’s. But what about when they’re 12…or 17? Can homeschoolers encourage the development of their kids’ social consciousness without dictating it? It seems that the answer comes back to unschooling and the notion of parents as facilitators, not commanders-in-chief. Granted, kids will always be influenced by their parents’ views, but if parents stress self-realization as a family value, kids may be more motivated to apply their lessons and grapple with important issues on their own terms.

That doesn’t mean that freedom can’t be a hard pill to swallow, even for a radical parent. At 18, Packebush’s son Jason announced that he planned to become a porn star and asked what she’d do to stop him. “Well, I won’t see your movies,” she replied, biting back cries of rage. Eventually, Jason lost interest in the porn-star dream, and Packebush chalked up a couple of coolness points. “It’s important to trust your kids,” she says, “even if they choose something that hits you right in the guts.”

As challenging and rewarding as homeschooling may be, some don’t see it as real work. A slew of recent books, including Leslie Bennetts’s bestseller The Feminine Mistake, argue that while stay-at-home moms, like homeschoolers, may believe they are choosing to leave the workforce, their decisions are actually influenced by insidious patriarchal forces. Many homeschooling moms counter that removing themselves from the marketplace means freeing themselves from its many sexist influences. If they have the financial means—or the ingenuity—to opt out, they’d rather live outside the workforce. Schira says that by rejecting the idea that success is all about money, she’s reconceptualizing what happiness means. “I have come to recognize that I don’t want the kind of life being offered by our culture,” she says. “I don’t want things. I don’t want status. I want interdependence, harmony, new solutions to old problems.”

Of course, resorting to one income brings out the five-ton mammoth in the room: most homeschoolers are women and most of their income providers are men. Packebush, who was married when she began homeschooling, says that even in her “hip, alternative, feminist marriage,” she was the one doing most of the childcare and teaching. “The vast majority of the people doing homeschooling are women,” she says.

Often, that’s because moms want to be their family’s primary teachers. But raising radical, revolutionary children isn’t feminist if the mom’s individuality is getting lost in the lives of her kids. It’s tough for homeschooling mothers to maintain their free time. Forums for homeschoolers abound with tips for dealing with burnout. The workload can be overwhelming, and even with a “fuck money” attitude, it’s natural to feel undercompensated at times. Homeschooling mothers must negotiate a fine line between protesting capitalism and becoming unpaid labor.

Considering progressive parents’ efforts to break with capitalism—spending less, living alternatively, working cooperatively—it makes sense that many homeschoolers don’t want their kids going anywhere near the mainstream school system. For Coleen Murphy, a New Orleans mom who was homeschooled herself, the negative social aspects of public education are a major reason she homeschools her two young boys.

“I see the school system as largely reinforcing the very worst aspects of societal norms, such as classism, racism, sexism, and good old mean-spiritedness, while limiting or removing access and opportunities to experience the best of what happens when human beings come together—acting with compassion; helping others because your help is needed, rather than to win some gold stars or other false rewards; asking questions because we want to know the answers rather than in order to display which of us knows the most how to please authority figures.”

Along with the question of self-expression comes gender expression and unschooled kids are prone to ignoring (or at least toning down) the gender distinctions that rule most schools. Take Diana, a homeschooled 17-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut, who swears by Kate Bornstein’s book Gender Outlaw and is very grateful to have missed out on the school social scene. “Not going to high school or middle school, I’ve never had that onslaught of pressure to do all sorts of pointless competitive things, like lose my virginity before I wanted to, or be sexy so men will like me, or be queer for the enjoyment of an audience,” she says.

Avoiding homophobia is central to many parents’ decision to homeschool. Packebush thinks queer, feminist homeschooling is on the rise because parents see it as an escape from the rampant sexism, homophobia, and transphobia of public schools. “Gender construction is one of the biggest reasons I keep my kids out of school.”

Unschoolers’ conceptions of gender are shaped not only by their open-minded parents, but also by their immediate environment. Having fewer kids around may mean less of a tendency to stereotype by gender or other handy labels. On the other hand, most schools also bring together individuals from different backgrounds, and although the routine clashes based on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation can make a mainstream school a shitty place to be, that diversity can also be instructive. It’s easy to be color-blind when you’re not exposed to racism; it’s easy to “ignore” gender when you’re not confronted with sexism. Getting to know a varied group of people at a young age—and seeing how discrimination impacts everyone—could build awareness of the conflicts inherent in our society.

For this reason, many feminist homeschoolers make a concerted effort to expose their kids to a diverse crowd. Though many homeschoolers roll their eyes at the most prominent pop-culture depiction of a homeschooled kid—Lindsay Lohan’s character in Mean Girls—Jesse Cordes Selbin, a 19-year-old who was homeschooled for seven years, says she identifies with her. Selbin spent a considerable portion of her teens in Sweden and says interacting with a wider world helped her put the often-brutal social scene of many schools in perspective. “My parents homeschooled me so that I could get more experience in the world, not so that I could shelter myself from it.”

As the feminist homeschooling movement gains momentum, mothers will increasingly be faced with tough, identity-defining questions: Does being a feminist mean you have to have a paid job? What does it mean to raise a feminist kid? Is there a feminist definition of success, and should there be? It’s important to keep in mind that a homeschooling mom is many things besides a homeschooling mom—even if she can’t stop talking about her kid’s latest papier-mâché dinosaur. Forging these more complex identities entails recognizing all the hats they wear besides “homeschooler.” Packebush is a zinester, Schira is a webmaster and writer, and so on. They’re Marxists, or anarchists, or punks, or please-don’t-define-me-the-reason-I-homeschool-is-to-get-away-from-this-label-slapping-bullshit human beings.

As for Kim Campbell, she’s still unschooling and still fighting critics of her decision with a vengeance. When others question whether her decision to “stop working” is feminist, she responds, “Honey, you don’t know from work!”

Maya Schenwar is a reporter for Truthout.org, and was a contributing editor for Punk Planet magazine until its recent demise. She lives in Chicago and still has nightmares about middle school.

A friend called me the other morning frantic and frustrated by a situation at a local public elementary school.  She was walking her 5 year old kindergarten son to his class when she saw a security guard get into a screaming match with a third grader and then proceed to physically restrain the child.  What is wrong with this picture?  Well, um for starters- EVERYTHING!!!! My friend rushed through the hallway praying that her son had not seen the incident as she had.  It then reminded me of a conversation that I had one day at soccer with a white homeschooling mother.  She thanked me for my candid remarks about being a mother of black boys- and by that I mean boys of color.  I told her that homeschooling was very different for me-  ” My sons are cute now…..(according to society), but they are the ones people clutch their purses around….”   How are our children criminalized?  Do I participate in the process by talking to my students about the police or planning how to approach the subject of police brutality with my young boys?  It is a sad thought, that all the hard work of parenting three beautiful, intelligent boys could be questioned by strangers because of our inability to deal with race and diversity in this country.    Is that how the security felt about black children- like they belong in cuffs? Like they were troublesome or deserving of certain titles…. This bothers me on so many levels!  I live and work in Brooklyn, a gentrifying Brooklyn where the brownstones of Bed Stuy go for $500,000 and up yet I still hear gunshots every other night.  I shelter my children from a lot of it, we go to parks in other neighborhoods, my partner meets us at the bus or train station if we are out past dark, but I can’t help but wonder how many of these kids hanging on the streets are wrongly accused each day of being a criminal.  While I do believe that we live in a society that glorifies gun culture- and no I don;t just mean hip hop, but american culture in general; I am still the hopeless romantic, the idealist at heart who wants to believe that we will rise up and change the systems that enslave our minds.   I want to continue to have these conversations with people, I want to continue to enlighten folks and let them know that it is NOT fair that I need to have certain conversations because I have black boys.  I want mental freedom too!  I want to walk to my local park or drive by my neighborhood school and see the children in my neighborhood treating others with respect and being treated with respect- otherwise aren’t we all just contributing to the Prison Industrial Complex and tracking our third grade boys into prison?  Do we truly recognize prison culture when we see it on the streets or do we dismiss it as pop culture or the cliche of hip hop culture?  

Homeschoolers’ setback sends shock waves through state  Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, March 7, 2008    (03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES -

  A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming. “At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.”    The shock spread all across the United States in my opinion, I spoke to many of my public school high schoolers in NYC about this topic and most of them agree that they wish they had access to their parents and people in their community in this way.  We are in need of not only education reform, but educational revolution and the technological age has done just that!  We are now seeing people seek telecommuting positions or online jobs more and more.  With outsourcing people are able to accomplish so much more online then in the past, is it not safe to say that with online universities and colleges that home schooling is not only viable, but practical solution and spin off of online education?  It is important that we as a nation outline goals and benchmarks for our youth, how do we expect them to be truly competitive in a global economy with updated educational buildings, teachers, curricula, and philosophies.  “Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children.” The question of parents as appropriate educators has surfaced among New York City home schooling parents.  Most homeschooling parents especially those that unschool pay attention to parental rights about homeschooling, vaccinations, college entry and abuse.  It is imperative that we keep our eyes peeled and our ears to the ground so to speak in order to know what may come.  I have always considered California a very progressive place to homeschool, and now it frightens me that I could be so wrong, many of us create cooperative learning situations or groups in order to offer our children various opportunities based on their specific needs.  One of the reasons I chose to homeschool ( especially after being in a homeschooled environment at home) is that I wanted my boys to have access to many different professionals and adults who had skills and information to offer.  Do we no longer believe that adults can impart knowledge unless they have a degree?  Are all those people who have created a “village” for my children’s education insignificant and useless?    Check out the Full article below!  Homeschoolers’ setback sends shock waves through state  Bob Egelko, Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writers Friday, March 7, 2008    (03-07) 04:00 PST LOS ANGELES — A California appeals court ruling clamping down on homeschooling by parents without teaching credentials sent shock waves across the state this week, leaving an estimated 166,000 children as possible truants and their parents at risk of prosecution. The homeschooling movement never saw the case coming. “At first, there was a sense of, ‘No way,’ ” said homeschool parent Loren Mavromati, a resident of Redondo Beach (Los Angeles County) who is active with a homeschool association. “Then there was a little bit of fear. I think it has moved now into indignation.” The ruling arose from a child welfare dispute between the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services and Philip and Mary Long of Lynwood, who have been homeschooling their eight children. Mary Long is their teacher, but holds no teaching credential. The parents said they also enrolled their children in Sunland Christian School, a private religious academy in Sylmar (Los Angeles County), which considers the Long children part of its independent study program and visits the home about four times a year. The Second District Court of Appeal ruled that California law requires parents to send their children to full-time public or private schools or have them taught by credentialed tutors at home. Some homeschoolers are affiliated with private or charter schools, like the Longs, but others fly under the radar completely. Many homeschooling families avoid truancy laws by registering with the state as a private school and then enroll only their own children. Yet the appeals court said state law has been clear since at least 1953, when another appellate court rejected a challenge by homeschooling parents to California’s compulsory education statutes. Those statutes require children ages 6 to 18 to attend a full-time day school, either public or private, or to be instructed by a tutor who holds a state credential for the child’s grade level. “California courts have held that … parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children,” Justice H. Walter Croskey said in the 3-0 ruling issued on Feb. 28. “Parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling under the provisions of these laws.” Parents can be criminally prosecuted for failing to comply, Croskey said. “A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare,” the judge wrote, quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue. Union pleased with ruling  The ruling was applauded by a director for the state’s largest teachers union. “We’re happy,” said Lloyd Porter, who is on the California Teachers Association board of directors. “We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers, no matter what the setting.” A spokesman for the state Department of Education said the agency is reviewing the decision to determine its impact on current policies and procedures. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell issued a statement saying he supports “parental choice when it comes to homeschooling.” Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, which agreed earlier this week to represent Sunland Christian School and legally advise the Long family on a likely appeal to the state Supreme Court, said the appellate court ruling has set a precedent that can now be used to go after homeschoolers. “With this case law, anyone in California who is homeschooling without a teaching credential is subject to prosecution for truancy violation, which could require community service, heavy fines and possibly removal of their children under allegations of educational neglect,” Dacus said. Parents say they choose homeschooling for a variety of reasons, from religious beliefs to disillusionment with the local public schools. Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she’s ready for a fight. Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree. “I’m kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep,” she said. “I’m ready. I have damn good arguments.” She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs. The ruling, Schwarzer said, “stinks.” Began as child welfare case  The Long family legal battle didn’t start out as a test case on the validity of homeschooling. It was a child welfare case. A juvenile court judge looking into one child’s complaint of mistreatment by Philip Long found that the children were being poorly educated but refused to order two of the children, ages 7 and 9, to be enrolled in a full-time school. He said parents in California have a right to educate their children at home. The appeals court told the juvenile court judge to require the parents to comply with the law by enrolling their children in a school, but excluded the Sunland Christian School from enrolling the children because that institution “was willing to participate in the deprivation of the children’s right to a legal education.” The decision could also affect other kinds of homeschooled children, including those enrolled in independent study or distance learning through public charter schools - a setup similar to the one the Longs have, Dacus said. Charter school advocates disagreed, saying Thursday that charter schools are public and are required to employ only credentialed teachers to supervise students - whether in class or through independent study. Ruling will apply statewide  Michael Smith, president of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said the ruling would effectively ban homeschooling in the state. “California is now on the path to being the only state to deny the vast majority of homeschooling parents their fundamental right to teach their own children at home,” he said in a statement. But Leslie Heimov, executive director of the Children’s Law Center of Los Angeles, which represented the Longs’ two children in the case, said the ruling did not change the law. “They just affirmed that the current California law, which has been unchanged since the last time it was ruled on in the 1950s, is that children have to be educated in a public school, an accredited private school, or with an accredited tutor,” she said. “If they want to send them to a private Christian school, they can, but they have to actually go to the school and be taught by teachers.” Heimov said her organization’s chief concern was not the quality of the children’s education, but their “being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.” 

My family, like most home schooling families I know, arrange, orchestrate and re-arrange their schedules to make time for everything they deem important- my family is no different.  However, I am excited to share my parenting and home schooling experience as a working mother of three. We are otherwise known as the Power Rock Family- while I have been sworn to secrecy about the true nature of our roles in the universe, I can tell you that each member takes on the super powers of certain rocks and crystals.  Allow me to introduce my clan- Gia (mother and ruler of all-A.K.A. Amethyst), Hassan (Baba extraordinaire- A.K.A. Hematite), Apsu, six and a half (son to the first power- A.K.A. Jade), Kush Amen, four years old (the spunky middle child A.K.A. Tiger’s Eye) and last, but certainly not least Isael who is five months now (the ancestor who has returned A.K.A. Lapis).  It is extremely important that when one of us is in need of support that we shape shift into our aliases.   

My partner and I start each day as plain ole parents roll out of bed amazed at just how short the nighttime seems to be.  Our five month old is still curled up in between two pillows on our bed.  We stare at him for a few moments perplexed by the fact that he takes up forty percent of the space in our bed.  “He seems rested,” I often think to myself.  We then secretly shift in our Power Rock Family alter egos (that is if we are going to make it through the day) and go about our business of checking email, packing lunch, writing to do lists, looking at the monthly calendar we have set up in the kitchen, setting breakfast out on the table or some mixture of items that resembles a meal, for instance we might have a platter of carrot sticks, apples, pears, granola, yogurt, and almonds.  The two older boys Apsu and Kush Amen spring out of bed with enough energy to run a small nuclear power plant. After climbing, running through the house, and trying as hard as they can to wake their younger baby brother, they sit at the table and munch while I start their bath water.  I would love to say that we give them a bath every night and read them a bedtime story, but this simply is not the case- that’s not to say that these things don’t get done, they do- just in a slightly different fashion.  I usually include essential oils of lavender or sandalwood into the morning bath.  The boys love soaking- it seems to center them for the rest of the day.  My partner, Hassan, rushes around asking me where things are and grabbing last minute items for day while popping in and out of the bathroom with tidbits of  information and vocabulary words for each boy.  Then he is off to his job at a high school campus in Bushwhick where he will work with over 300 youth training them in various character education lessons. 

By this time the smallest Power Rock Family member is awake.  He usually gets changed and nurses ( at this point I have nothing to do with these tasks- no really!) while I read to the boys and go over Apsu’s spelling words.  Kush draws something about Star Wars (his present obsession) and we think of words that begin with the letter of the week for Apsu this activity is about vocabulary building and sparking questions.  For Kush Amen this lesson is about writing the letter and thinking of words that start with this letter.   Each week we try to focus on Revolutionaries such as “A,”  Assata Shakur that leads to conversations about Cuba, activism and our changing community in Bedford Stuyvesant etc.  We then munch on snacks and head outside, maybe to the park, library or to run the many errands that have to get done, but not without sending off emails, returning phone calls and picking up some of the things we’ve taken out.  The boys pack their bags with reading material, pens, notebooks, or games and always a toy of some sort- lately its Star Wars figurines.  Occasionally I take the boys to meetings with clients I am extremely familiar with, if not I have a caregiver for them at the house.  This generally happens twice a week for a 2-3 hours.

 We return ready for lunch, the boys “baby sit” their little brother and/or help prepare lunch- usually something hot and we sit down to eat together doing MadLibs, learning a lesson on the Time4learning website and plan the afternoon activities.  After lunch Isael and Kush Amen lay down to take their naps.  This is my most valuable time to talk to Apsu about projects he is working on and conduct business.  Apsu is very into projects as opposed to short fragmented lessons so we may spend a month or longer on a particular interest.  Currently, he is working on “bridges.”  One night while I was facilitating a workshop in Queens (you know my normal super hero gig) the babysitter let Apsu stay up past his bedtime to watch a PBS special on bridges.  Well, he watched the entire two-hour special and woke up well um-FIXATED!  So we decided he would work on researching different types of bridges, famous bridges and so on and so on.  We sit and discuss what happening with his interest, read, talk, research and finally work on a few things together like geography related map making stuff, science or multiplication which he has become excited with because of his allowance and wants to calculate how much money he will have when…x,y,or z happens.

I then squeeze in time to write my entry to my blog- radical educators of color, follow-up with clients about up coming professional development workshops, track invoices, write proposals and breathe and become overwhelmed and breathe again.  Our days vary based on what activities the children have going on like piano, lego robotics, chess, African Scouts, Art at Pratt, drumming, soccer or errand days.   After the two younger superheroes awake from their afternoon slumber, we play a game- Chutes and Ladders or UNO is Kush Amen’s favorite and leave the day open for teachable moments.  In the afternoon, if we are home they like to play make believe, play dress up, or build with legos and blocks.  We take pictures of the creations; Apsu emails photos to his grandparents using his own email address.   I am blessed to have two boys that really like to play with each other except for the occasional, “ I’m not playing with you!” or “Actually, Apsu that’s not fair” or my personal favorite “ I’m telling!”

I begin fixing dinner and playing with Isael as I try to discover what his exact super powers will be, I make mental notes of how he stares at people very intensely and how he likes very colorful art work, his brothers’ work is his favorite followed by my work.   I call the boys in and out asking for help setting the table or rinsing dishes and make follow-up phone calls.    The boys and I have  “chore time” when we scramble around the house with Soulful House music or Newark’s Jazz station 88.9 on- somehow listening to Dizzy Gillespie or Horace Silver makes the last minute cleaning go by faster.  I sit down to think about the next day- maybe my partner will be at home with the boys while I work a few hours, maybe its time for my weekly yoga class, or for a meeting at Kush Amen’s Home schooling Cooperative Little Maroons, or maybe it is a day just to explore, go to the park or museum to see the Kara Walker exhibit. 

We do have a few basic things that happen everyday in terms of home schooling that make life predictable for us all.  Reading independently and reading as a family, spelling or vocabulary words, urban sustainability (through composting, joining the Bed-Stuy CSA, etc.), and  math either in the form of money, time or abstract concepts brought into reality and discussing current events.  One current event that I remember is Apsu’s confusion about how Barak Obama can be the governor of New York and the presidential candidate- I smile, well at least he’s thinking about politics. 

And while we do not generally watch TV during the day, we do love Project Runway (our whole family watches!), National Geographic Channel (gotta know the latest on global warming), PBS (just watched a series on the genealogy of well known African Americans like Maya Angelou) the boys play a bit, we talk about our day, Hassan and I catch up- vent and celebrate ( this is a very important part of the day).   Then it is off to bed for Apsu and Kush Amen- maybe we read a story or if the night was like last night (Isael screaming because of an incoming tooth) we cuddle and hug until they drift off to sleep.

Our job as super hero parents is not done after we tuck in the super hero boys in, we bathe the babe who surprisingly  has gotten a second wind and watch a movie, work on my business, talk to family and friends and finally just before passing out on the sofa we smile and tell each other that we love our family and each other.  We awake to the baby reminding us to get him from his crib and fly over to the bed where at least one of us will get a good night sleep.   Of course during the night, we leave our regular parent bodies and travel New York City as super heroes fighting the injustices that lurk around every corner- or at least that’s what I tell myself about why I am so tired each morning.   Oh, and I left out the part where I talk about typing this up while nursing a baby using only one hand- nice trick hugh?

I have always been a person with strong opinions and ambitious goals. At times my idealism has sparked philosophical conversations in my peer groups, at other times it has a been a source of frustration. Having experienced many different types of educational settings as a student/learner/ and teacher/facilitator, one thing has remained in tact: Education needs a Revolution! My intensity for the cause became more pronounced when I became a parent myself, and now as a mother of three boys of color the need couldn’t be stronger. As an interesting dichotomy, I am an unschooling parent and an educational consultant for public and charter schools- the seemingly ironic marriage gives way to some rather interesting insights. #1 Those children that are highest at risk are children of color in particular black boys ( I use the term black to include all people who identify with the diaspora) #2 Special needs and Special Education do not enhance learning opportunities in boys of color, prevent them from being tracked into the Prison Industrial Complex , create critical thinkers or educate the “whole” child. As a radical educator, I believ that education and learning are two synergistic parts of a whole. We are indeed life learners, my generation has proven that school is not for everyone through the rebellion of generation X. We have children now , we are educators, activists, artists, business women/men. These are new children and their education is based on a global if not galactic society. If the educational paradigms do not shift to include mobilization, questioning current educational authorities who are mostly white afluent people, redefining and restructuring a new paradigm then we are destined to recreate powerful yet culturally and socially irresponsible institutions that maintain the current status quo of and churn out another generation people who have I term I coined “worker bee syndrome”. It is not that I think that those great thinkers of the past have nothing to offer, it is simply that I do not want the authority to come from the main oppressive group- western male dominated culture. I want to begin the discussion as a crisis of education, the crisis of black and brown children, and call my generation of forward thinkers so that we may take our role as the “authority” however we define that role. check out www.creedcenter.org for more information on resources