The Unschool Space Esther Jones

I’m chatting today with Stacey Yates Sellar, a Conscious Parenting Coach and author of Conscious Parenting Your ADHD Child. Stacey and her husband have two boys, who are 13 and 10. Until four years ago, they lived and worked in California, but had many misgivings about the highly competitive schooling system. Eventually they decided to sell their house and travel, and have been worldschooling ever since, and are now in Scotland. Among many other things, we talk about how to let go of our soci...

Today, my guest is Melissa Miles McCarter, who lives in Missouri with her husband and her 8-year-old daughter Willakate. Melissa worked as a college professor and chose not to put her daughter in school, realising that it wasn’t a system she would thrive in. She talks about what her own deschooling looked like and how she partners with her daughter to help facilitate her interests. And Melissa describes how her daughter’s passion for acting led her to explore script writing and then to produc...

My guest today is Linsey, who lives in the UK with her partner and three children who are 10, 6 and 1 and a half. Her family’s journey to unschooling started when they decided to take their eldest son out of school after two years extremely difficult years. Linsey soon realised that a schooled approach wouldn’t work at home either, so began to lean in to what her son needed and how he was really learning. Amongst lots of other things, we talk about the deschooling journey and how powerful it ...

Today I’m chatting with Claire Windmill who lives in Devon in the UK with her husband and two children, who are seven and nine. Claire was a social worker and early years teacher and is now a parenting mentor and coach. She shares how her family came to unschooling after taking some time out to travel and they realised how much happier and less stressed their children were out of school. We talk about the impact that messages around fitting in and what’s right and what’s wrong can have on chi...

My guest today is Robyn Tamlin-Lea. Robyn is South African but now lives in the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, with her husband and two children who are seven and three and a half. Robyn took her daughter out of school when she saw that already at a very early age, there was a strong narrative around academic expectations and her daughter not doing well enough. We talk about how when we sit back and observe, there is so much learning happening all the time, and how beyond the academic learning...

This episode, I’m chatting with Danii Oliver, who lives in Texas with her husband and two children who are almost 6 and 11. Danii shares her story of leaving New York City behind in search of something new for and her and family, and to live a more gentle and connected life, which they now do on their permaculture farm in Texas. We talk about the deschooling process and how, even though Danii was clear from the start that they would unschool, it still took her a lot of work to unravel the dee...