Fare of the Free Child

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Latest Episodes:

Ep. 3: The LIFE School - Atlanta Aug 11, 2016

Show notes

"Our school is really to empower students to have more ownership over their education. High school is usually this mad dash of checking off boxes to create a great portfolio. Because of that they lack of sense of who they are and how they can add value to the world. To identify needs in the community, and know how to problem-solve, to organize, and to bring about sustainable change inside their communities." Mikala Streeter, MIT and Stanford graduate who founded The LIFE School in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

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Ep. 2: South Africa & India Reimagined Aug 01, 2016

Show notes

"That shift from beloved, all-black schools to white schools where black students were always seen as interlopers, as not really belonging, taught me the difference between education as the practice of freedom and education that merely strives to reinforce domination." -bell hooks In this episode, we’re breaking the stereotype that unschooling is a white, male, middle-class thing. I’m so excited to share a peek into Zakiyya Ismail’s life and work. She is a longtime self-directed education advocate and mother of two young adults and a 9-year old, all of whom are life-long unschoolers. Zakiyya and her husband wanted their children to have the space to define themselves outside of predominant ideologies, and they saw that school was not where that would happen. “Why should we restrict ourselves to our geographic location, when we can find people we can connect with anywhere in the world?” -Zakiyya Ismael, The Learning Reimagined Conference, South AfricaSupport the show

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Ep. 1: Unschooling Explained Jul 27, 2016

Show notes

As unschoolers, we don’t see school as the primary place to learn and everywhere else as places to take breaks from learning. We don’t suffer from summer learning loss and those types of ideas. Unschoolers use all resources available to explore and build upon anything of interest to them, so plenty of my time and my husband Kris’s time, is spend observing what our girls are really into, and helping them find resources to go deeper into whatever their interests are. Unschooling is about relevant, highly-customized learning experiences that become a normal part of living. So much like we adults when we start a new project or even at our jobs, have to be resourceful and we have to understand what specific things each project will need and how we in particular will need to approach it to maximize the chances of getting the outcome we want, unschoolers take the same approach. Something feels relevant in their life, whether for personal reasons or to make money, or to be part of something, and they go down a path to get more versed about that thing. And children do that, just as adults do, because that’s not an adult thing, that’s a human thing. Children in particular are extremely curious beings, and they go after what they want to know. Babies do it—try to get a crawling baby to not go toward the shiny thing or the noisy thing—you’re gonna get a fight. Try to get a toddler to stop looking at something that piques their interest—you’re gonna get a fight. We, as humans, from infancy, are curious beings who want to engage in things around us, and who will inevitably, quite naturally, learn about the things we’re curious about, and in the process, learn about other things that we may not have even known existed, or that were connected to the original thing that caught our attention. Unschooling is learning-centered in that it focuses on how each child learns, instead of what to teach children, or instead of what adults believe children should be learning. It looks at a child’s approach to the world through her interactions with the people in her life, and also through her interactions with things-toys, animals, TV, radio, the computer, a phone — all of those things. So because unschooling is learning-centered, parents spend a lot of time observing their child and really getting to understand how they navigate the world around them, and how they tend to approach things. Which leads to the other thing that unschooling is, which is learner-centered. All these observations help unschooling parents to partner with their child, instead of decide for their child, what learning will look like for them. So, it’s learner-centered because all that observations help parents to faciSupport the show

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Ep. 0: Welcome and Why This Show Jul 10, 2016

Show notes

This fall, I’m launching a podcast for Black and Brown parents who practice alternative parenting options to the traditional education model that is school. Options like unschooling, worldschooling, roadschooling, slowschooling, eclectic homeschooling, and the myriad other ways that we and our children embrace curiosity-driven, lifelong learning. The podcast is called Fare of the Free Child, and its purpose is to help me amplify the underrepresented voices and unique concerns of people of color looking for real viable options to the oppressive systems that our children are expected to live and learn within. I want to use this space to create community for adults engaged in unconventional black and brown parenting and caregiving to be heard, and to find and support each other. And since I’m an unschooling, location independent, non-christian, Caribbean, intersectional feminist, mermaid identifying, radical self-expression practicing, blackity-black woman and mother, raising two superdope black girls with my Kingman—I am just the one to invite you into this conversation. And to be clear, I have an agenda. I want us to start treating our children with more dignity and giving them more autonomy over their own futures. And I want us to shift out of the thinking that this work of freeing children from oppressive structures, is a white thing, as many black folks keep telling me about unschooling in particular. The format of the podcast is simple: we start with a fear (f-e-a-r), and then we explore the fare (f-a-r-e the cost). So, twice a month, I—sometimes accompanied by a special guest co-host—will talk about the layers of unconventional black parenthood, and how we can use that mindset as a way to get free. We’re aiming to solve things together, not just talk about them. Fare of the Free Child will not just be for folks already immersed in self-directed education, it will also be accessible and relatable to newbie unschoolers, undecided but curious parents, and eventual parents who want to start exploring ways to live and learn with their children now. Sign up for updates and the first few episodes at akilahsrichards.com/podcast. And while you’re doing that, tell a few friends to sign up too. That link again is akilahsrichards.com/podcast.Support the show

Dig this show? Join our make-it-happen family at patreon.com/akilah to make sure we can keep this thang going strong. Thank you!