Retirement, spiritual retreat, cocooning...

I'm saving this in a more public place, because it won't be available to everyone when that group is archived. I've added names, and corrected typos.

If you were a member of Unschooling Discussion 2021, you will still be able to see it there, where links make images and you can see the responses. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2021readtherules, May 23

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Sandra Dodd, May 23, 5:23 pm

My #2 son [Marty] just posted this:

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My 3yo son called The Batmobile his "Spider-Man car" and I let it slide.
#growth #chivalry #pickyourbattles #namaste

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The hashtags are the best part.
My #1 son [Kirby] will turning 35 this summer. When he was four, about to be five, we decided to unschool. Here Is his middle of three, at my house, just a bit ago, and there are other photos on my page, today, if you click my name.

I'm tired now. I wrote a long post explaining my plans, and lost it. That makes me even more tired. 🙂

I'll leave the part about grown kids and grandkids, for now.

Sandra Dodd, May 23, 2021, 5:38

I'm grateful to every person who has ever helped with any group, by being a moderator or admin, or a regular poster, or a quiet person who writes and points out a bad link or typo. It takes a lot of people to make a group strong and good. Anyone here who isn't already a member of this group might want to go and join:
Radical Unschooling Q & A

This group (Unschooling Discussion 2021) won't last until the end of 2021. I'm going to close up at the end of May. There will still be resources, though! This group will be archived, so you'll still be able to come in and see what you wrote, but non-members won't find it or see it. Another week, and I would like to rest more, and feel less obligated to strangers.

Sandra Dodd, May 23, 5:43

Those who don't own my books should consider getting them. The Information is solid, and books are more substantial and long-lasting than any collections of pixels.

Many online meeting places, where people shared stories and ideas, are just gone. I will continue to spend time cleaning up and improving my website, but it could still disappear someday against anyone's wishes, because it is code on machines, and so is fragile.

Moving a Puddle and other essays

NEW EDITION of The Big Book of Unschooling

Sandra Dodd, May 23, 5:49

I will keep Always Learning available, because some of the best unschooling writings anywhere, ever, are in there. My website has hundreds of links to longer writings, there.

If you join that group, you can read archives, or post questions, and see responses either at the site or by e-mail.

It is NOT the newest technology, but it's also 20 years old, nearly (later this year).

https://groups.io/g/AlwaysLearning

12,904 Topics, Last Post: May 13
The most recent post is #78,747 and there is VERY little fluff or nonsense.

Sandra Dodd, May 23, 6:13

I will post nearly every day, until that fades to most days. Lots of days. There are 3800 posts there today, and I hope to get to 4000 before I lose steam.

https://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/

The SUMMARY

I can't think of the best way to state my plan. I want to...

—retire, but not completely;
—retreat from daily life into the figurative mountains, but still have the internet;
—cocoon myself;
—hibernate a while.

I won't stop everything, but I will be less directly accessible. Perhaps later this year I will set up something for announcements, good bits, and maybe to answer questions if there are any new and original questions that come along. 🙂 (And maybe not. 🤗)

Teachers

May 5, 2020, this was posted on facebook. I was tagged. I'll share my responses.

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There's only a couple of teachers that I can say influenced me in a good way. My 7th grade English teacher Sandra Dodd was an amazing teacher. Mr. Albert Fernandez wasn't my teacher but he was a teacher at my school and he was also amazing. Thank you both for giving me confidence 😊😊

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That was written by she-who-was Tracey Perraglio. That's for identification without outing her by her current name. Hometown friends will know; that's fine.

I wrote:

Thank you. 🙂
It was so long ago, and it's nice to hear there are good memories and that confidence was part of the effect! GOOD!

I was Sandra Gill then, probably, or Adams (part of my first year). I have lots of fond memories of those days, too.

I learned a lot, teaching.

I learned a lot teaching where I went to school, and having former teachers as co-workers! 🙂

She responded:

You went by Gill back then. You were a great teacher and always had a smile and encouraged us 🙂 You did good 🙂

Mine:

I'll name some of my own favorites.

Sally Gonzales (4th, and I helped in her classroom a time or two a week, one year when I was in high school, as a "future teachers" project. I kept up with her after I left school, up until my own daughter was 9 years old, and Holly and I visited her for a few hours at a restaurant and then her house.)

R.A. Martinez (8th and 9th grade English; actually 9th grade twice—long story, but most of what I know about punctuation and word choices came from him and from Sally Gonzales, and that's some of what I passed on, with their voices in my head, when I taught English.)

Robert Felix (band grades 5-9, choir 7-8)

Sam Jamison (choir in high school; I made all-state once)

Jacquie Littlejohn (English in high school)

That is the order I met them, AND the order of their value to my life. They treated me like a person, more than "just a kid." When they knew that I really wanted to learn, they shared what they had, and what they loved. They all gave me information and ideas above and beyond what they "had to" do.

Others I remember warmly for one reason or another:

Mr. Cipriano Trujillo (6th grade)
Mrs. Bency (I don't even know her given name 🙂, 2nd)
Miss Tomlinson (1st)
Mr. Lujan (French, two years, and sponsored a class they let me design, on current events, one six-week session)

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That's the end of what was written in 2020. Now I'm off on my own, 5/5/21:

The class Mr. Lujan sponsored but didn't teach was "History '69." Each student gave a presentation on something from current events, and led a discussion. That year, the electives were switched every six weeks, and I LOVED that year for that! I wish they had kept it, but the scheduling must've been difficult.

From Sam Jamison (my choir teacher), during that experiment in lots-of-little-electives, I took a humanities class. He was the first to help me see that everything is connected—science, art, technology, communications... That has been the way my mind has worked since then, and I'm grateful for having had that opening at the age of fifteen.

I don't remember the other four I took.

Miss Bency provided the ivy, and I still have some, thanks to a string of relatives passing it on, and eventually back. Now my daughter, Holly, is the main caretaker. I'm down to one plant here, and for many years I had none.

Miss Bency is here, and most of my 2nd grade class. Click it to enlarge.

I'm the first on the bottom row. My mom always managed to do something bizarre with my hair for photo day.

Why we unschooled

I really loved school. When Kirby was three or four, I was at a La Leche League playgroup and some of the moms were talking about homeschooling. My friend Rhiannon said she would NEVER send her kids to school. I said "but what if they loved school as much as I did?"

Rhiannon said, "What if Kirby hates school as much as I did? What are the odds?"

That's the moment I started considering homeschooling. I knew two unschooling families (in that same group) and two school-at-home families (ditto). I thought about it for the next year.

Flash forward 20 years. Her kids DID go to school, and they did not like it. Kirby never went to school.

The odds of which she spoke were well known to me. I taught Jr. High for six years, after paying close attention to what school was for various people, because I knew from the time I was six that I wanted to be a teacher, and I started teaching when I was twenty-one years old.

The odds that someone will love school are smaller and smaller as the years go by, and one element of loving school seems to be an unhappy homelife. I wasn't planning on providing my kids an unhappy homelife. Attachment parenting, in combination with my working on recovery from growing up with an alcoholic mom, was changing my life.

I could tell good and fun school stories at length, but in each story, there are people who "lost" because someone else won, or kids who were watching but not involved in whatever cool thing was happening.

The kids who have fun at school aren't ecstatic about school.
The kids who are unhappy at school are sometimes so unhappy they kill themselves or others. School wounds people for life, if they live.

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I found the writing above today, in a folder of things I had saved for a book. But it isn't in the book. It's likely I didn't find it when I was working on The Big Book, but I'm glad I found it today.

It was probably written on a forum that no longer exists. I cleaned up some spelling and word order.

The photos are from that time, when I only had two children and figured they would be in school someday.

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