Lockdown Learning Alpine Valley School & East Kent Sudbury School

Our lockdown learning journey has come to an end with our final episode of our podcast this week, we hope that you’ve enjoyed listening as much as we enjoyed making it.  We’d like to also say thank you to all our wonderful guests that have given us their time and shared their thoughts with us over the last few months, we couldn’t have done it without you.
 
For our final episode we wanted to look to the future.  What will our education systems look like in a post COVID-19 world?  As we all rush to get back to ‘normal’ as lockdown measures are eased, many people are questioning what that normal should look like and many teachers, parents and children are voicing their desire to take this opportunity to change the way we learn for the better.  We asked a wide variety of guests what they hoped that future had in store, we hope you enjoy hearing their dreams for the future of education.



Guests: (Alphabetical by surname)
Artemis D. Bear
Kezia Cantwell-Wright
Sophie Christophy
Je’anna Clements
Kate Coleman
Kimberley Cooper
Marc Gallivan
Derry Hannam
Christel Hartkamp-Bakker
Anna Hobbs
Harriet Pattison
Antoinette Reid
Heidi Steel
Danny Whitehouse
 
Find out more:
Our guests from this week’s episode are involved with a wide variety of wonderful projects, here’s a brief summary of each one and the links to find out more.
 
Artemis D. Bear is the founder of The Garden, a self-directed learning community in Bristol, UK, for Home Educated children. 
 
Kezia Cantwell-Wright, Kate Coleman and Anna Hobbs are staff members at East Kent Sudbury School, a self-directed democratic setting for Home Educated children, aiming to become the UKs first Independent School based on the Sudbury model.  They all write regularly on the EKSS blog. 
 
Sophie Christophy is the CEO at The Phoenix Education Trust, a charity which supports both alternative learning spaces and mainstream education providers in providing learning programmes which support student’s voice.  Amongst other things, Phoenix prepared an education strategy pack to help school leaders through the COVID-19 pandemic.  Sophie also co-founded and works at the self-directed consent based setting The Cabin and regularly writes and about and runs workshops on consent based education and parenting, see her blog.
 
Je’anna Clements is the founder of Riverstone Village a self-directed learning community in South Africa, children’s rights campaigner and writes about self-directed education.
 
Kimberley Cooper is the founder of education consultancy Holistic Learning and a teacher at King Alfred School, London.
 
Marc Gallivan, as well as being the co-host of The Lockdown Learning Podcast is a staff member at Sudbury model school Alpine Valley School in Colorado, USA.
 
Derry Hannam is a retired deputy head teacher who consistently worked to bring democratic practices into the mainstream, which he has documented in his recent book ‘Becoming a Democratic Teacher in a State School’.  He has also worked as a school inspector and advisor to the government on citizenship in schools, writing the Hannam Report.
 
Christel Hartkamp-Bakker has founded and worked as part of the staff team at several democratic schools in The Netherlands, most recently SudburySchool Harderwijk, she also have the recent TEDx talk ‘Can we trust children to educate themselves?’
 
Dr. Harriet Pattison is a senior lecturer in Early Childhood Education and researcher at Liverpool Hope University.  She is the author of Rethinking Learning to Read and co-author of How children learn at home. You can also read her recent research here.
 
Antoinette Reid is an unschooling parent, her daughter attends EKSS part-time, you can follow her on Twitter @Antoinette_R_.
 
Heidi Steel is a former teacher, now unschooling parent, she writes about unschooling, learning and play on her blog Live, Play, Learn.

Danny Whitehouse Chief Execut

As alternative educational settings we often hear from parents of children struggling with the mainstream approach to learning. Children who need to move more than the school day allows for, find it hard to focus on work they aren’t interested in or simply learn in different ways than their peers.  It’s not surprising that parents look elsewhere for something that suits their child.  But yet we can’t help but think that something must be deeply wrong for so many children to find it so hard to thrive in our school system.  And that’s the topic of our podcast this week as we talk to clinical psychologist and mum of two, Dr. Naomi Fisher, about her experiences of children with special educational needs and the implications their behaviour has for our schools.
 
Find out more:
Troublemakers by Carla Shalaby
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1620972360
 
Articles by Naomi:
https://eastkentsudburyschool.org.uk/news/canaries/
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/march-2020/schools-out
https://eastkentsudburyschool.org.uk/learning/what-about-autism/
 
Guests:  Dr. Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist and mother of two who have always been self-directed.  Naomi writes about child development, psychology and self-directed education.  Look out for Naomi’s forthcoming book Changing Our Minds.
 
Get in touch with the show: lockdownlearning@gmail.com

“Play is really the work of children, play is how they understand the world and how they become adults. The importance of play cannot be overstated” remarked Larry Welshon in last week’s episode about Democratic Education.  
 
In Lockdown our children have had more time to get bored and figure out how to spend their time than ever before, and hopefully they’ve spent a large part of it playing.  This week we dive deeper into the topic of play with Henry Readhead, Deputy Head at Summerhill School, the oldest children’s democracy in the world.  Children at Summerhill are free to play as much as they like; a right which has always been central to the philosophy of the school.  We asked Henry why play is so important and about the role it has in children’s emotional and social development and why he believes it is so important not to place limits on play.
 
Guests:  Henry Readhead, Deputy Head at Summerhill School and Kezia Cantwell-Wright, staff and founder at East Kent Sudbury School.  Find out more about Summerhill School and its rich history as the school approaches its centenary year next year with their celebratory website.
 
Find out more:
Many books have been written about Summerhill School and by its founder A.S. Neill over the years here are a selection currently available:
 
Summerhill School by A.S. Neill - Neill’s original book updated and revised.
A.S. Neill’s Summerhill - A new celebratory book with pictures of the school past and present.
We also highly recommend Free to Learn by Peter Gray for learning more about the power of play in children’s learning.
Get in touch with the show lockdownlearning@gmail.com

If, like Alex O’Neill who we spoke to in our last episode, lockdown has caused to you to pause and reconsider what learning looks like for your children you might be wondering what your options are.  We’ve talked a lot about home education in this series - as that’s what we’ve all kind of been thrown into - but home education is just one alternative available.  
 
This week we delve deeper into one of the alternative school models available - Democratic Education - we asked founders of the schools hosting this podcast Kezia Cantwell Wright and Larry Welshon about their journey to discovering Democratic Education and why it is to empowering to give students a vote on all things that affect them and their community.
 
Guests:  Larry Welshon, founder and staff member at Alpine Valley School and Kezia Cantwell-Wright, founder and staff member at East Kent Sudbury School.
 
Find out more: 
Larry discussed his experience of watching students grow up freely in a democratic school in his post Years of Doing on the Alpine Valley School blog.
Kezia explores what self-directed democratic education looks like in practice in the video An Intentional Community.
Find out more about the Sudbury model: Sudbury Valley School
List of Self-Directed Democratic Schools world-wide: Democratic Schools Directory
Find out more about Self-Directed Education at: Alliance for Self-Directed Education
Other democratic schools in the UK include: Summerhill School and Sands School

Millions of children around the world will have had a completely different learning experience over the past 12 weeks.  For many it will have been a difficult experience missing the company of their friends, unable to play outside and still others may have been living with the virus and helping to care for loved ones.  But for many the break from school has been a relief, and has provided the opportunity, perhaps for the first time, to explore their own interests and learn at their own pace.  As we heard from Harriet Pattison in episode 3, there are so many ways to home educate and styles even vary within families from child to child and over time.  For many families the lockdown has offered the opportunity to personalise their child’s learning experience in ways they probably never previously imagined.
 
So, as we all prepare to take our first tentative steps out of lockdown, what will you be taking away from this experience?  Some families are using this moment as the time to break from conventional schooling and to find a way for their children to continue to have a more personalised learning journey.  This week we talked to Alex O’Neill, a parent who having long since dreamt about home educating her daughter is seizing this opportunity and will be continuing when schools go back.  We asked her about her journey and what the reality of finally home educating has been like.
 
Whilst home education for many families is the easiest and simplest way to give their children the freedom to direct their own education it doesn’t work for all.  We asked alternative education advocate and campaigner Danny Whitehouse what other options are available for families wanting to follow an alternative path and what he hopes schools, teachers and parents will take away from their lockdown learning experience.
 
Guests: Alex O’Neill, parent, IT manager and long-time advocate of freedom in education and Danny Whitehouse Chief Executive at the Charles Burrell Centre, guardian member and company secretary of Phoenix Education and co-founder of Reimagining Education Norfolk.  Read more about Alex’s first forays into Home Education in lockdown and Danny’s thoughts on why now is the time to rethink education for our children on the Medium Blog Learning in the time of Corona.
 
Find out more:  If you’re considering making a change to your families educational journey following lockdown and want to find out more about the educational choices available to you here are some good places to start:
Advice on Home Education in the UK: Education Otherwise Network of alternative educational settings in the UK: Freedom to Learn Network Directory of alternative schools and settings: Progressive Education More about Self-Directed Education: ASDE European Democratic Education Community: EUDEC International Democratic Education Community: IDEC Alternative Education Resource Organization: AERO List of Self-Directed Democratic Schools world-wide: Democratic Schools Directory

Finding yourself suddenly without the structure of school you are used to can be liberating for some and scary for others.  We all remember the moment we realised we were leaving formal education behind and wondered “what now?”
 
Learning to learn without school is a journey and children will all react to the experience differently, so will their parents.  This week we talked to Je’anna Clements founder and staff member of a self-directed learning community in South Africa and asked her about this process of letting go and relearning often referred to as deschooling.  What can we expect as parents and what can we do afterwards as we emerge from lockdown?  Can this experience lead us towards a new way of being and learning?
 
Guest: Je’anna Clements, founder of Riverstone Village a self-directed learning community in South Africa and children’s rights campaigner.
Learn more about this podcast's sponsors Alpine Valley School and East Kent Sudbury School