Helping The Butterfly Hatch: Book Two - How Can We Support Young People in Self-Directed Education?

By Je'anna L Clements

You have already realised that Self-Directed Education is an optimal way for young people to pursue their education - but what does that look like day-to-day? Without a curriculum to design, lessons to plan, and marking to do - what does the adult do? Whether you are an unschooling parent, a teacher-in-transformation, Sudbury or ALC staff person, learning-center facilitator, camp counselor, librarian, adventure-playground team member, a coach or mentor or apprentice supervisor, or any other adult who chooses to support young people in SDE - what are you supposed to do, and how?

If you have wondered how you can become a Self-Directed Education optimiser rather than a well-meaning saboteur - this book is what you have been waiting for. Expand your understanding of SDE facilitation and strengthen your confidence on this wonderful journey that is also a powerful path of personal development.

Je'anna L Clements helps readers understand what it takes and how to get there - including tips for starting up your own SDE facility. This is the second book in the Helping The Butterfly Hatch series, and acts as a key text for the HtBH international Self-Directed Education facilitator development program.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Je'anna L Clements
• Release date: Jun 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463925683

Je'anna L Clements

Je'anna L Clements is an advocate for young people's rights, a writer, a mother of a teen and a tween who have both self-educated since birth, and a founding member of Riverstone Village, Africa's first Sudbury-inspired learning community. She writes articles and e-books on alternative education including Help! My Kid Hates School! and the Helping The Butterfly Hatch series of books on Self-Directed Education facilitation. Book One - How Does Self-Directed Education Work, and Why? and Book Two - How Can We Best Support Young People In SDE are available as e-books, and more volumes in the series as well as print versions are forthcoming .

Book preview

Helping The Butterfly Hatch BOOK 2

How Can We Support Young People in Self-Directed Education?

By Je’anna L Clements

Copyright 2020 Je’anna L Clements

Published by Je’anna L Clements at Smashwords

In association with ALLI asbl (www.alliasbl.lu) and FHREE (www.fhree.org)

Cover illustration by RageTheArtist

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit your favorite ebook retailer to purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

"...the teacher becomes a friend. It’s as though a group of you are going somewhere unknown and you have a trustworthy friend, who also doesn’t know where you are going, but who could be useful. A comforting person to have around." - Sugata Mitra

"And what I am really trying to say is that, the potential of the individual will only really occur in the context of safety." - Stephen Porges

"You can’t really love someone else unless you really love yourself first." Fred Rogers

***

About the Author

Mother, writer, and rights advocate Je'anna Clements (Psych.Hons) stepped away from completing her conventional M.Ed when she realised that no existing institution could support her in what she needed to learn. The young people who call her mother (now aged 10 and 15) have self-educated since birth. From 2007-2016 she initiated a series of experimental alternative education startups, culminating in the founding of Riverstone Village, South Africa's first Sudbury-inspired SDE community, in 2017. For over a decade she has explored, curated and distilled Self-Directed Education literature, live discourse and practice, more recently sharing her insights with other adults intent on becoming SDE facilitators. The Helping The Butterfly Hatch series of books has grown out of material she created to support the learning journeys of more than 50 SDE facilitators hailing from 5 continents. Her work has been published by Save The Children (Sweden), the Children,Youth and Environments (CYE) journal (Univ. Colorado, USA), and Tipping Points magazine (Alliance for Self-Directed Education) as well as a variety of online and print newspapers and magazines. She is also the author of Help! My Kid Hates School (2017) also available through most e-book retailers.

CONTENTS

Part 1 – Calling All Willing Caterpillars

This is A resource

There are as many ways to live SDE as there are humans

Why do we need this book?

1.1 Butterfly Dreams

1.2 Surely we all Know what SDE is?

1.3 The Difference Between a Teacher and a Facilitator of SDE

The Difference Between Facilitating SDE and PE

Offering Information in SDE

Unschooling

Deschooling

Strewing

Teachable moments

Part 2 – Cocooning and Transforming - How to Become an SDE Facilitator

2.1 SDE as a path of personal growth

Who I am and my way of being impacts the learning environment

2.2 Roles of the SDE Facilitator

2.3 Jobs of the SDE facilitator

2.3.1 Keeping the Physical Space: Sustainability

2.3.2 Keeping the Physical Space: Physical Safety

2.3.3 Keeping Community Culture

2.3.4 The SDE Facilitator’s Role With Regards to Play

2.4 Discipline

2.4.1 Regular Discipline

2.4.2 Challenging Behaviours

"HS, and Spirited" kids

Enneagram

PDA

CPS

Thinking Through Ways to Tackle Challenging Behaviours

To Discuss and Debate

Psychopaths/Sociopaths

2.5 Being a Helper through Teaching and Coaching

Discipline structures

2.5.1 General Tips for Facilitating SDE

2.5.2 The 3 R’s

2.5.3 Math/s

Helping Ourselves Let Go of Old Ideas

Facilitating Math/s

Helping Children Let Go of Old Ideas

Helping with Formal Math/s

Telling the Time

2.5.4 Reading

Letting Go of Old Ideas

Facilitating Literacy

Helping With Reading

A Few Specifics

2.5.5 Writing

Handwriting

Typing

Spelling

Helping with Spelling

2.5.6 Dangerous Circumstances

2.5.7 Traditional Knowledge

2.6 Giving Feedback

2.6.1 A few resources you might like to explore further

"Children, Learning, and the Evaluative Gaze os School" by Carol Black

"Unsolicited Evaluation is the Enemy of Creativity" by Peter Gray

"5 Reasons to Stop Saying ‘Good Job’" by Alfie Kohn

Components of ‘Thinking Environments’ as defined by Nancy Kline

Clean Language/Symbolic Modelling by David Grove

2.6.2 General Tips for Giving Feedback in SDE

2.7 Being an SDE Facilitator Wrapup: Being a Provider of the Other Optimising Conditions

The social expectation (and reality) that education is children’s responsibility

Unlimited time to play, explore, and pursue one’s own interests

The opportunity to play with the tools of the culture

Access to a variety of caring adults, who are helpers, not judges

Free age mixing among children and adolescents

Immersion in a stable, supportive, respectful community

Part 3 – Hatching Into BEING an SDE Facilitator

3.1 Being the New You

The Five Agreements

3.1.1 Be Impeccable With Your Word

3.1.2 Don’t Take Anything Personally

3.1.3 Don’t Make Assumptions

3.1.4 Always Do Your Best

3.1.5 Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen

3.2 Summing up the SDE Facilitator’s Engagement

Disengage

Engage

Last but not least

Part 4 – Flying Free - Starting or Choosing an SDE Facility

4.1 What an SDE facility is and is not

4.2 Factors Most SDE Facilities Will Need To Consider

MODEL

MANAGEMENT

ENVIRONMENT

EMPOWERMENT

PEOPLE: STAFF, STUDENTS, AND CULTURE

SAFETY

BUSINESS

4.3 Adapting a Facility to SDE

Part 5 – The Wind Around Your Wings - Government Interfaces with SDE

5.1 Show Due Diligence

5.1.1 Educate yourself on SDE and how to optimise it

5.1.2 Ensure children’s education is Optimised

Important note

5.2 Know Your SDE Rights

5.2.1 The Child’s Best Interests Are Paramount

5.2.2 The Child Has the Right to be Heard, and to Participate in Decisions that Affect Them

5.2.3 Each and Every Child Has the Right to an Education That...

5.2.4 The Child has the Right to Privacy

5.2.5 The Parent’s Obligation

5.3 Solidarity is Strength

In Closing – Fields Full Of Butterflies

Appendix

Appendix 1 The A.C. - an Alternative to the J.C. for FHREE SDE Communities

Appendix 2 Glossary

Part 1 – Calling All Willing Caterpillars

"I think this is it! Our calling depends on who we are. So to discover our calling we really need to know or find out or make who we are. The whole being and becoming thing...and SDE is awesome for it." - Tasha Gosset, (while busy with the Helping The Butterfly Hatch online facilitator’s self-development course that led to this resource) having an A-HA moment.

This is A resource

This book is offered as a resource for adults who actively support and act as assistants to young people in Self-Directed Education (SDE). (To get a clarification on what SDE is, please refer to Book 1 in this series). Throughout this text, I will call that role ‘Facilitator’. This is for lack of a better term. If you can think of a better one, that will cover Unschooling parents, 'Sudbury' staff and every other adult who acts as an SDE Helper, please let me know.

This book series is offered as a resource. There are already many available SDE resources packed with rich qualitative information, as well as research reviews, and explanations of SDE theory. There are currently very few that specifically focus on facilitation as such. For this reason, I’m going to work hard to make this book exactly what it needs to be, with as little duplication as possible.

Instead of repeating all the evidence that supports SDE, I will assume you already know that Self-Directed Education is a reliable and effective way for young people to self-educate.

Free to Learn by Peter Gray should be considered a companion book, and this text will assume you have already read it - I won't be summarising it here.

Likewise, the first book in this series, Helping The Butterfly Hatch, Book 1: Understanding How FHREE SDE Works and Why contains information that will help you to understand why we facilitate in the way that we do. It will also fully explain the acronyms FHREE, and SDE. (Brief definitions are included in the Glossary of this book.)

Helping The Butterfly Hatch, Book 3: Horizontal Communication, will deal with practical communication skills for effective FHREE SDE facilitation, conflict resolution/mediation and problem-solving.

If you are transitioning from teaching in a CE facility, (public schools, progressive schools, Montessori, Waldorf etc) Helping The Butterfly Hatch, Book 4: Transitioning to FHREE SDE From Coercive Education is planned to focus on some specific issues not covered in this text.

It will also make a lot of sense for you to have read the four articles on the self-directed.org website that comprise the Intro to Self-Directed Education section.

I also strongly recommend What it Means to be Staff at a Sudbury School from the Sudbury Valley School bookstore, even if your own approach is not specifically Sudbury-Inspired. If you are involved in founding a Sudbury-inspired facility then the whole ‘Starter Pack’ is excellent value.

SVS, Hudson Valley, Tallgrass, Kapriole and numerous other SDE facilities have wonderful blogs and videos available online.

For deschooling - adjusting your thoughts and habits to SDE - and support in SDE-compatible parenting you could try Akhila Richards’ Fare of the Free Child podcasts, Maleka Digg's Eclectic Learning Network offerings on Patreon, and the archives of Scott Noelle at enjoyparenting.com.

And, you could join one of my courses for SDE facilitator self-development, my Horizontal Communication group, or my Ongoing Support group for facilitators, all of which run in virtual space with participants from around the world.

There are many other resources available, too many to list – depending on where in the world you are it’s a good idea to subscribe to newsletters at Alternative Education Resource Organisation (AERO), explore the European Democratic Education Community (EUDEC), join the Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE) forums at self-directed.org and see what you are drawn to; and surf, surf, surf the web - SDE is an adventure!

So, as I said, this text is a resource among resources - I hope you find it useful, but that you also reach out to the SDE community around you for a rich and whole growth experience. SDE, after all, is ‘life’, and your own learning will be optimised by immersion in a stable, respectful, supportive community.

In the end, the people who can teach you the most about SDE facilitation are young people. Until you offer yourself, and open yourself to feedback from those who agree to receive your service, everything will remain just theory.

There are as many ways to live