labels

My husband has the gift of being able to quickly and accurately see the essence of a person.  He is an engineer in his categorical thinking and that's true even when he deals with people.  It's especially helpful for him in his sales position.  Right away he understands a person's motivations and interests and then he can get right to the heart of their problem and needs.

I, too, can see how labels can be helpful.  If you share some common characteristics with others, you can self-identify with a group and find support.  Like I do with unschoolers and Attachment Parents and Vegetarians.  Also, services can be offered to a group of people for faster and for less money to groups with common characteristics.

Of course, labels have their drawbacks too.

A friend of mine recently made a comment that really stuck with me.  She was talking about her experience in being labelled by others.  She said, "I don't usually think about (my label).  I just walk around, living my life and in my daily life, (my label) doesn't define me."  I thought, how true!  Most of us fit into many labels but we don't make decisions about our lives based on whether or not our choices fit with the perceptions behind those labels.  We just make decisions based on who we are and what works for us. 

I think labels cause damage when the people being labelled have to fight for control over the perception of their label.  I am blessed with some really lovely people in my life, some of whom happen to be gay and lesbian.  Every once in a while, there will be a media spotlight on GLBT issues and watching some reactions from the public makes me think how hurtful this label can be when it's used by people to judge in ignorant or hateful ways.  The GLBT community has worked steadily to remove the stigma and hopefully one day it will be a non-issue for people, just a descriptor word instead of the heavy label it can still be today in Canada.

I think that labels can be most hurtful and harmful when the people being labelled are vulnerable and impressionable.  They are powerless to influence the perception of their label and may even be conditioned to believe they embody the negative perceptions of their label.  Some parents are wonderful advocates for their children who are labeled, changing society's perceptions and understandings.  Other parents fight the labelling process altogether, believing the downsides of the label are more harmful than the potential benefits.

As a public school teacher, I remember a strong mother who fought hard to protect her son from being labelled.  Her child was judged to be ADHD from the start of his school career.  By the time he reached me in his primary school years, there was a lot of pressure on his parents from staff and admin to get him tested, give him the official ADHD label, get him meds, and enroll him in special programming at school.  His mother FOUGHT the official labelling process, believing her son would be able to excel beyond our expectations, if he were given enough time to mature and the opportunity to learn how to manage himself.  I know that was a difficult decision for her and perhaps not the right decision for every family, but I sure learned a lot from her example.  That year, I trusted her, and she trusted him, and I had my first foray into true self-directed learning, unschooling style.  The results of his growth changed me.  He is an amazing kid, full of heart, ideas, and passion, but with a different set of parents, I wonder how things might have worked out for him?  His mom trusted the core of who he was more than she trusted the system he was in.  Would he have blossomed with the label following him everywhere and special programming that didn't understand his mom's larger vision of who he could become?  She was motivated by love and trust for him and she understood the power of a label.  In his situation, I think his mom made the right call.

Parenting is a challenge and no one understands this more than parents with children who are "labelled" at a young age.  A label on a child is essentially a label the parent carries too; for better or for worse.  So to all of the moms and dads of labelled children who have found We Learn Naturally, welcome.  We know you are here because you have a larger vision of who your child could be.  We are all bigger than our labels.  This organization was created with your kids in mind.

Invited Conversations

Have you ever thought about what or who you invite into your space?  The people you interact with, the things you read, watch, and listen to all have an impact on the way you think, perceive, and evolve as a person.

Recently a friend shared a story on Facebook.  As a child, she remembered her mother regularly invited inspiring women into her home.  Women that her mother admired, women that her mother believed in, women that opened her mother's eyes.  They talked about things that mattered to them, often from a feminist perspective, usually while their children played nearby.  My friend recounted that listening to pieces of those conversations with positive, creative, intelligent women inspired her to pursue a successful academic career in social work.  As an adult, she surrounded herself with people that were in the top of their studies, discussing the world around them in thoughtful and insightful ways...as her children played nearby no less.  Now that her children are reaching young adulthood, she is in awe of their level of activism, confidence, and intelligence.  This wasn't just a case of good genes.  This was an example of the "invited conversations" that children overheard, observed, and played in close proximity to.  Reading her post on Facebook, I thought, this is just the world that John Holt wished for children everywhere.  This is what John Holt thought was so beautiful about children in alternative learning communities.  This is truly natural learning.

I was reading a post by Business Insider about how successful people get things done in a day and one of the tips was to surround yourself with other high achievers.  Sometimes the conversations we "invite" into our home are not of our choosing; and it doesn't necessarily mean you cut these people out of your life.  Using Beyoncé as an example, they made a good point about how important it is to surround yourself with people that leave you feeling inspired.  Surrounding yourself with the type of people you want to be like will encourage you to rise to their level.  If you have limited time in your day to spend with others, it makes sense to be a "relationship minimalist" and try your best to spend time with people that leave you feeling energized. 

As my friend's multi-generational example illustrates, children can benefit from the conversations we invite into our lives too.  I remember reading interviews from Martin Luther King's children in which they talked about their memories of childhood.  I'm sure that having Martin Luther King as a father was inspiring enough, (can you imagine the bedtime stories?) but they also mentioned how, as children, playing around or near inspirational members of their community had an impact on their developing sense of self.  Several generations of the Kennedys had similar insights.  Mya Angelou, in her wisdom, would often invite the children in her neighborhood to play in and around her house, knowing that was the way wisdom was passed on. 

Children are like little seeds, planted in our care.  We give them the basics, but the environment we surround them with and the conversations we invite into our homes, have such an influential role to play in the people they are becoming. 

Are you surrounding yourself with people that inspire you to be the best you possible?  Who do you need to "cut back on" to be a better you?  Who would you like to add to your circle to help you grow?  What sort of conversations would you like your children to overhear? 

Learning the Basics

The other night I had a quick chat with a mom who was inquiring about a We Learn Naturally Program for her son.  I have met this mom outside of We Learn Naturally and I have a lot of respect for her.  After chatting, I realized that her questions are what every parent is wondering before taking a self-directed learning leap; how do they learn the basics?

You've read it before; babies learn to walk, talk, etc. without direct instruction from a parent or "expert".  So it shouldn't be surprising that kids can also learn all they need to without specifically being "taught".  However, if you are like me, you still struggle with hang-ups. 


As an adult, a parent, and a teacher, I believe in self-directed learning.  I fully understand how kids can be self-taught readers and writers.  In fact, as a kindergarten teacher, I saw it first hand and it was beautiful!  And yet, I still have days that leave me wondering...yes but "what about math?"   I truly have a math hang-up in the context of self-directed learning and self-willed curriculum.  That's OK.  It just means that I have done a lot of thinking about it and I'm happy to share my conclusions with you. 

The work force our children will be a part of is expected to be even more dynamic than it has been thus far for our generation. Sir Ken Robinson does a nice job of explaining how this change necessitates the shift from industrial revolution style education to our modern educational needs in his talk Changing Education Paradigms.  To relate this back to math, people who like following the steps to get a nice neat answer are just not sought after in today's economy. 



Math, as we learned it, is not really all that useful anymore.  In fact, even our public schools understand that (at least in the province of Ontario); they are teaching "new math" to students.  The focus is on problem-solving and discussion based learning that highlight the multiple solution paths to get the answer (and sometimes even multiple solutions!)  Do you remember your math homework as a kid?  Completing the textbook problems and then working on the assigned word problem questions at the end?  Well, kids today are spending much of their time in discovery mode; working on those difficult math word problems, but in groups.  As someone who loved math the old way, it took me a while to get my head around this "new math".  Once I understood it, I realized how it was actually far superior to the ways in which we had been taught.  The rote memorization was replaced by depth of understanding. 


Taking it back to Sir Ken Robinson's Changing Education Paradigms, I think we can all agree that today's world doesn't need human calculators.  We have an app for that.  What we need are people who understand math at a deeper level.  People who can create the apps or solve other big problems in our world.  Hmmm...Now that is an interesting concept to me.  Not everyone needs to have the same math exposure to be useful or successful in our world.  In fact, the ones who pursue math the most are probably the ones that are most interested in math anyway and those kids need depth of understanding of the key concepts that interest them most, not following memorized steps.  Humph.  My math education is obsolete.


Despite the positive changes, I think there is still room for improvement in the way students are learning math in the public system and the only way to address it, from my perspective, is to actually make it more self-directed.  By allowing children to follow their interests and natural skill sets, the kids who are naturally curious about math will spend more time contemplating those big math questions and the kids better suited to other lines of work will be free to pursue that learning.  All kids will pick up the necessary math they need to function in the world, and they will have a better chance of picking up what they need and retaining it if they pursue it naturally as opposed to having the concepts artificially placed in front of them.  In fact, Benezet's work with Math Training indicates that allowing students to develop their brain in areas that are more interesting to them appears to have better results than teaching math to students, at least from grade 1-5. If you are curious, check out this blog by Peter Gray   Peter Gray does a nice job of describing how giving kids space to discover how to learn effectively instead of telling them what to learn has better results for achieving success.


I'd like to end with a personal reflection. When I look at my kids learning, I am inspired to stay on this path.  Never having been taught a stitch of math, my two year old has started counting to 20.  Rote counting at first, but now she is understanding that there is meaning behind each number name.  Counting to 10 has never been so exciting.  My five year old regularly adds and subtracts, creative sorting by attributes, and he has started playing with the beginning concepts of multiplication and division.  He's a math guy in the making I think.  He is currently obsessed with Lego Mixels and that has lead to him counting money and working to understand the fractions involved in coins so that he can buy more of these creatures with his allowance.  My kids are absorbing math because the world they live in is simply more interesting when you understand the numbers.  I just show them the world and give them opportunities to explore in the directions they are most interested in, and then they just learn what they need to learn to get them where they want to go.


I have a math hang-up because it is scary to let go of old paradigms!  We think that covering all the bases with traditional instruction will help kids get to where *we think* they should go.  But if you can let go, and I hope you can, they will go so much further.  They will be spending their time doing the things that matter most to them.  Oh, and one more tidbit; for those of you who disliked math growing up, self-directed kids don't really have those hang-ups.  When they have freely taken charge of their own learning, kids are naturally confident in what they can achieve.  How beautiful is that?  No matter the task or it's perceived difficulty, they are resourceful and bright and use their strengths and skills to get the job done. 


So I'm going to try my best to not give my kids any of my hang-ups.  They can pursue whatever captures their mind, on their own timeline.  Whether they choose to spend their day focused on reading, writing, math, or catching a seagull, I'm going to trust them.

Yes, this kid actually caught a seagull after his mom dared him.  I think this is hilarious.