#12 - Understanding Deschooling with Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan - The School Can't Experience

Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Hello and welcome to the SchoolCan't Experience Podcast.
I'm Leisa Reichelt, and thispodcast is brought to you by the
School Can't AustraliaCommunity.
Caring for a young person who isstruggling to attend school can
be a stressful and isolatingexperience by you are not alone.
Thousands of parents acrossAustralia and many more around
the world face similarchallenges and experiences every

(00:25):
day.
Today we are going on a deepdive into understanding
Deschooling.
Now many parents of School Can'tkids have at least contemplated
Home Education at some point.
Many of us start with a realmisunderstanding of what Home
Education can look like and howit might work for our families.
Deschooling is a reallyimportant part of how we can

(00:46):
ease the transition into HomeEducation, both for our kids and
for ourselves.
I am joined today by PavlinaMcMaster, who is a coordinator
with the Home Education Network,as well as Heidi Ryan, who is a
mom to three and has been homeeducating for about six years.

Leisa Reichelt (01:01):
Alright, let's get started.
Pav and Heidi, I would love foryou to, tell us a little bit
about yourself and yourbackground and why it is that we
are talking with you aboutDeschooling today.
Pav?
Do you wanna go first?

Pavlina (01:14):
sure.
Uh, so I pulled my kid out ofschool in prep 12 years ago.
He's in effectively year 12 thisyear.
We don't really do traditionalschool.
So we're not really following acurriculum of any kind.
I'm a volunteer for the Home EdNetwork and I run info sessions

(01:35):
and things on School Can't andHome Education And we've done a
podcast together before.

We have, we have.
We'll put a link to that so thatpeople can go and have a listen
to that one as well.
Heidi, give us some backstory.

Heidi Ryan (she/her) (01:49):
I'm Heidi.
I've got three kids.
We've been home educating forsix years now, but most of my
kids are at the tail end of thator are beyond school age.
My eldest child went rightthrough school to year 11 and we
had some not so greatexperiences there and that led
us to investigating Home Ed.

(02:09):
Our whole family'sneurodivergent and we've found
Home Ed to be a really good fitfor us.
I've got a background indisability and speech pathology.
My kids are 17, 21 and 25 now.

I should probably put my self interest on
the table as well, which is Ihave a son who is in year nine
and after many years of tryingto make school work in many
different ways, we have justgiven up on that pathway and are
heading into our Home Educationadventure as well.
So he is Deschooling right now,which is why I wanted to call

(02:49):
you ladies and get the nittygritty and then share that with
everybody else so that they canbenefit from it too.
As you start out on thisadventure, there are a lot of
different terms.
you come across.
It's like it is a massivelearning curve.
Starting to think about HomeEducation.
One of the things that I heardpretty early on was Deschooling,

(03:10):
but I heard that along thingslike unschooling and, all kinds
of different things.
So let's spend some time reallyfocusing on Deschooling.
What is it?
Why is it important?

Pavlina (03:22):
So what it is, is the process of letting go of our
ideas about what educationmeans, and that schooling is not
the same thing as education.
We don't have to be at school tolearn and to get an education.
Education doesn't have to lookanything like school in order to
be successful and engaging.

(03:46):
We don't need to follow thosestructures and strictures.
And in fact, trying to do thatis detrimental for a lot of
children and families and itdoesn't work.
Why it's beneficial is because,let's face it, a kid with School
Can't, they have struggled inthat system and in that

(04:08):
structure.
And if we try to replicate thatsystem and that structure when
we bring them home, which istheir safe space, a lot of the
time that equals trauma.
Anything that looks like schoolcan equal trauma.
And so there's kind of two realreasons.
One is so that we're notrevisiting that trauma and also

(04:28):
because we need to recognizethat perhaps these kids need
something different.
And they have a different way oflearning.
They have different needs and adifferent way of wanting to
engage with information.

Heidi, when you first heard about Deschooling as
you were starting your HomeEducation journey, what did that
look like for you as you weregetting started on this process?

It actually took me time to fully
comprehend what that meant.
I think I'd probably heard theterm and I'd attended one of
Pav's intro to home ed,gathering where you got
information and she'd mentionedit, but there was a lot to take
in at the time.
There was a lot of, and newinformation about, wow, it could

(05:11):
really look like this.
Like this is the way we could dolearning in our family.
It took a while for me torecognize the need and
understand what Deschoolingreally meant.
And my understanding ofDeschooling is very much an
unlearning.
So it's shifting from what Ithought education had to be
exactly as Pav said, from theshoulds and the singular pathway

(05:37):
that we're all sort of taught isthe one and only way to get from
childhood to adulthoodsuccessfully.
Being able to step outside ofthat and, and see that
differently and view thatdifferently and therefore view
my kids differently and view ourfamily and our lifestyle
differently.
It's definitely a process.

(05:58):
It wasn't a, oh, cool, we'llDeschool now and then
everything's fine.
It took, it took a long time forme to get my head around and I
had a lot of time before my kidshad time to do that too.
So I had six months or so ofpreparation for Home Ed before
my kids then actually took thatstep out of school.

(06:19):
And then me supporting themthrough that and talking to them
about what that meant and, themfighting with the internalized
need to do what everyone else isdoing.
And feeling like they weremissing out or, not good enough
or doing it wrong because thoseare the messages that society

(06:40):
was giving them.
You know, we got there, but itwas a process for all of us.

I thought it was really interesting that you said
that you had a six month headstart on this.
I'd love to hear more aboutlike, your actual experience of
that and how that happened, whatthat looked like.

Uh, so the six month thing was, after me
discovering Home Ed as anoption, biggest kid had just
left year 11 and wasn't planningto do year 12.
We, we'd sort of made the shift,we can't do this, this is
actually going to harm them morethan the benefit that we will
get from doing that.
So we'd stepped away fromtraditional education for them,

(07:20):
but I could see my youngest twowere heading into year eight and
year five there were challengesI was worried about them facing
similar to their older sibling.
There were things I didn't wantto be part of their experience
of education.
While they were attendingschool, they weren't thriving

(07:42):
but they didn't know there wasanother option, right?
They didn't know there wereother ways of being and doing
this.
So I had made a shift at thatpoint my oldest had let go of
that for them.
I began the process of talkingto my younger kids about what
sort of options there were.
For us, they had to be involvedin that decision.
It had to be something they wereengaged in because it was about

(08:06):
them.
I just wanted them to give it atry.
So we actually ended up talkingabout it and coming up with a
right, we'll trial this, this isanother option.
We've gotta give it enough timeto know what that's really gonna
be like.
You know, a couple of weeksisn't enough and a term isn't
even enough.
And as it turns out, a couple ofyears might not have been enough

(08:27):
to get our heads around how weactually were going to home
educate.
But, after we landed on a sixmonth trial and said, if at the
end of that you really wanna goback to school, then the ball's
in your court, it's still up toyou.
They had had trouble attending,but it wasn't significant that,
they weren't already, weren't atschool.
So I know that's different to alot of people's experience.

I just wanted to reflect on something you were
saying because one of the thingsI hear some people say is, well,
of course kids are gonna stay athome if you give them the
option.
Like, if they're not gonna wannago to school, of course being at
home is the preferred thing.
I had a similar experience toyou with my son, where it took
months of me starting to putthis as an option to him and

(09:08):
make it palatable to him, eventhough he was finding school
extremely difficult.
Because we'd all spent so manyyears indoctrinating them about
how important school was fortheir future.
You don't just go, how about wedo it at home?
And they go, fantastic.
at first they're like, no,that's a terrible idea.
Why would we do that?
That was my experience and ittook me a long time to get him

(09:29):
to open his mind to the ideathat there might be a better
way.
In the same way that took agesfor me to open my mind as well.

Pavlina (09:36):
And I think too, there's so much pressure from
school and they get so manymessages from school and they
get messages from media, andthey get messages from society
and movies because you don't seemany home educated kids in
media, in movies.
When you do, they're often theweirdo the outcast or the high
school dropout.

There's real fear, isn't

Pavlina (09:55):
There's fear.

Heidi.
One of the other things thatcame out is that sense of
timeframe and I think as parentswho have been trying to get
their kids to attend school.
you have been given thismessage.
Every minute counts, every hourthat you're not at school
matters.
And so the idea of just going,well, we're not gonna take a
couple weeks out.
We're not gonna take a couplemonths out.
We might take multiple terms ora whole year.

(10:20):
That feels very brave at first,doesn't it?

You kind of have to be brave though, I
think.
You have to prioritize yourkids' mental health at the end
of the day, it was that simple.
I'm concerned about their mentalhealth ongoing in this
environment, in this system.
Here's another option where wehave the ability to protect and
preserve their mental health.

Pavlina (10:45):
But also it gives them agency.
They know that what they thinkwhat they need what they want
and what they value is valued byother people.
Their feelings are valued andvalid and people will pay
attention to how they needthings to go and that they
deserve that.
They deserve to be listened to.

(11:06):
They deserve to, to berespected.
They deserve to have theirmental health prioritized.
They deserve all these things.
So much of the time in oursociety we're told we just have
to put up and shut up.
to keep going.
we have that weaponized word,resilience.
Putting up, shutting up andkeeping going is not resilience.
Learning that you have acommunity around you, how to ask

(11:26):
for help and how to ask for helpsolving problems that is true
resilience.
And so when you pull that kidout and you feel like you're
being brave, you are actuallyhonoring that child.

That was beautiful.
Alright, so we're Deschooling,we've decided to do it.
What's going on?
What does it look like?
What are we doing as a parent,what am I doing as a child?
What are they doing?

Pavlina (11:56):
So what we often suggest to people is to think of
it like summer holidays.
You know, that period betweenyear levels where you don't have
anything you need to'learn' ininverted commas.
You don't have any work that youneed to do.
You can just let those kids belet them do their thing.

(12:16):
You know, rediscover, rediscoverthe things that they love.
Figure out who they are.
Figure out what they'repassionate about.
'Cause a lot of kids haveforgotten or don't know anymore
because they've been so busy onthat treadmill, keeping their
head above water.
A lot of them are so burnt outthat all they can do is hide
under their doona or game allday, or just sit in a very dark,

(12:36):
quiet space and just try and bethemselves, or try and forget
about their school experiences.
So, you know, just let them be,let them do what they want to do
and, value connection.
Make an effort to connect intiny little ways.
Hey, I'm baking some cookies.
Do you wanna come bake with meand be ready to hear No a lot

(12:58):
because you will hear no a lotfor, from a lot of kids, No,
wanna be here with my gameconsole because that's all I can
do right now.
And recognize that if kidswould, they could, you know.
Favorite Ross Green line.
If they could, they would.
And accept that that's what it'sgonna look like for as long as

(13:19):
it takes.

Well, I like to think for us it was very
much a period of rediscoveringthemselves.
I think the school system has away of boxing and comparing.
Putting people into boxes youknow, you have this kid and then
you're that kid and your oneswho are good at this.
Particularly for my teen,actually for both of the younger

(13:43):
ones, it was a time ofrediscovering what they actually
liked rather than what they saidthey liked or had gotten used to
pretending that they liked tofit in and be a part of those
social groups.
There's a lot of going alongwith stuff and not really
knowing, actually deep insidethat's not part of me and what I

(14:06):
enjoy and what I like.
Having said that, we weren'tamazing at Deschooling in the
beginning.
Even when I'd done my researchand I'd taken my six months and
I'd thought about how this wasgonna go, it wasn't just for me
though.
the kids had this kind of needto be doing something, right.
So they, If we are not gonna beat school, we should be doing

(14:27):
some kind of work.
We should be keeping up.
We should be doing, you know,the maths books and the, make it
fun and let's make it differentand let's, you know, go out and
be in the world.
But there were times at homewhen we were doing a particular
worksheet a day or, trying toget through chapters of a maths
book.
It was much more child led butalso was stressing out every

(14:48):
time we did it.
And I was like, well, you wannado this?
You're mad at me every time weare doing this.
We're really not enjoying,nobody's having fun here.
I know you wanna do it.
I know that you're actually, youknow, there's something that
you're gaining out of it, butit's not, it's not working for
us like this.
It took a while to let go oflooking at learning as

(15:13):
presentable, measurable elementsof work.
And I think, you know, somepeople do Home Ed like that, and
that works for them.
But we discovered fairly quicklyit didn't work for us.
Even though they were capable,it wasn't meeting their learning
needs.
When we let go and shifted to abit more, you know, what, what
is it that you wanna spend yourtime doing?

(15:34):
Oh, okay, we're gonna spend twoweeks sitting in a cloud sack
reading Percy Jackson.
Okay, cool.
Right.
that's two weeks of deep divinginto Greek mythology.
Which has led to an ongoinglifelong obsession and learning
and ridiculous amounts ofknowledge around Greek
mythology, which actually, youknow, intertwines with so much

(15:59):
in our everyday life.
And there's so much learning andlanguage and, folklore and,
richness in that learning.
But it was self-driven.
Every time I tried to do acheck-in or do a, you know,
should we do a little quiz aboutthis and see what you know, or
can we watch this about it aswell?
And the kid would be like, Ugh.

(16:20):
All right.
Pause.
Let me tell you all about thisbefore you start.
And then would info dump all thestuff they knew about this one
particular thing I was gonna askthem?
They blew me away with theirknowledge, they have so much
knowledge just through whatlooked like sitting down,
reading books and scrollingthrough some interesting YouTube

(16:41):
channels.

Pavlina (16:42):
Another part of Deschooling that we haven't
talked about yet is observingyour kid.
Because learning whileDeschooling is inevitable.
Learning to see the learning inall those things is really
valuable and it actually helpsalleviate our fears and our
concerns because instead ofthinking, oh, this kid's not
getting anything done, they'renot learning anything valuable,

(17:04):
just observing them and going,you know what?
Content is actually notimportant.
There's this thing calledGoogle, right?
What's important is watchingthem learn how to explore the
subjects that they love.
Watching them, finding their ownmentors or finding courses to
do, or finding a YouTube videoor, some books that they wanna

(17:26):
borrow from the library or justsitting and rediscovering who
they are and how they like tolearn.

So look, I wanna pull it back to the early
stages, right?
'cause I know it's very easy togo, well, this is the pathway
that we're heading to.
But I am weeks into Deschooling,I had visions of baking cookies
and playing board games andgoing on excursions and looking
for resources and all that kindof stuff.
The reality is, my son has spentthe vast majority of his time in

(17:58):
front of his screen.
I make offers and he declines ona very regular basis.
At what point do I start topanic and go, I must be doing it
wrong, because he is not...

Pavlina (18:10):
You are doing it right, because you are offering
opportunities.
Don't bombard withopportunities.
Just every now and again, justoffer opportunities and look for
the tiny moments of connection.
If he comes out to get a drinkof water and speaks to you,
that's connection rather thancoming out, not looking at
anyone getting a drink of waterand scurrying back to his room.

(18:31):
That's progress.
There's tiny little moments thatyou will start to see, whether
it's sitting out there and,telling you a joke or telling
you about something he's played,watched or done while in his
room by himself.
Those are the little moments ofconnection that you really need
to grab hold of.
Whatever you are doing, whenthose happen, put it down and

(18:51):
listen and connect.
Because they're offering bits ofthemselves in those moments,
they're being brave it's hardfor them to put themselves out
there'cause they are so burntout.
And all they can manage rightnow is the screen because it
doesn't judge, it doesn'tdemand, it doesn't do anything.
It just is.
That's why they're so glued toit, because it's manageable and

(19:17):
it's providing them anopportunity to do something
while they decompress and it's adistraction.
They're not gonna be ready todeal with all those emotions
right now.
That's down the track.
That's when you're gonna getthose emotions out and unpack
them talk about them and dealwith the trauma.
Right now it's just time forsitting and being, and just

(19:38):
sitting with what's happened.
It's a lot to process.

Yeah.
I think it's hard not tocatastrophize or to future
project

Pavlina (19:47):
Yeah.

well, if I don't do something about this,
this is gonna be the new future.
You know,

Pavlina (19:53):
Yeah.

Oh, well this seems easy for them.
they're not having to do hardthings.
they're leaning into what worksand makes life cushy, I suppose
you might look at it, right?
but that's because that's whatthey need.
Nobody actually wants to spend24/7 in their room gaming with
no contact.
If they're doing that forextended lengths of time, their
mental health is not great.

(20:15):
Right.
So we've gotta give them time torecover that mental health.
So it is really hard not tocatastrophize if you've ever
been stick in bed or disabled inbed or unable to do daily
things, even just, getting upand making your own food, if
you've ever been unable to dothat, it's not a nice place to
be long term.

(20:35):
You might need it at that time,but it's not actually doing good
for your soul and your body.
So the fact that they're in thatspace is, because that's all
they're capable of at themoment.
And there is light at the end ofthe tunnel.
And we have seen so manyfamilies start where you are at
and get to that end of thetunnel.
When I learned aboutDeschooling, there was, there

(20:58):
was this sort of time tablinggoing around that for every year
of school they need at least amonth to Deschool.
So that full decompression.
And I think that's actuallyreally, a little bit limiting.
Like I think it's gives you anidea of the scale of it, but I
actually think it's quitelimiting, particularly in this
day and age when a lot of kidswho are coming out of school are

(21:20):
not just coming out of schoolwith, you know, oh, we're just
gonna do something different.
They're coming out with traumaand lots of really difficult
experiences and they're

Pavlina (21:30):
Mm-hmm.

burnout or they're having, lots of other
things going on for them.
So I think it's scary as aparent to go, oh, you mean my
kid might be in his room for twoyears before he's able to engage
in the world in a way that Ifeel okay about.
But again, he's not feeling okayabout it until he is, so....

It is super scary though, right?
Because this is such a parentalprocess as much as it is a child
process, right?

Pavlina (21:54):
It is.

I remember going into the school and saying,
look, here's what we can do.
Here's what I think we might becapable of doing for this term.
And they'd go, well let's dothat for three weeks and then
we'll see.
Right?
And so you're used to suchcompressed time periods of how
quickly you need to be seeingimprovement.
And, you've got the rest of theworld telling you screens are
bad and all of this.

(22:15):
How do you hold your nerve as aparent?

Pavlina (22:17):
How do you feel ok?
Okay,

Yeah.
How do I not feel like I'm aabsolutely crappy parent?

Pavlina (22:24):
So surround yourself with people who have been
through it before.
You surround yourself withpeople who regularly tell you
it's okay.
You call us and you say, I'mfreaking out over here.
And we say, it's all right, Takea breath,'cause this is gonna
take as long as it takes.
It is okay.
Keep going.
And you remember some things.
You remember that you're notgonna throw your kid out into

(22:47):
the street when he is 18.
He has time to heal.
He has time to figure out whathe wants to do with his life.
He has time to get there.
A lot of people are so worried,Because they think, oh, 18, they
have to be done with thesethings by 18.
In school you do.
Because if you don't do allthose things in school, by the
time you are 18, you've missedyour chance, That's how they

(23:08):
keep parents pressured intokeeping those kids going to
school by telling us that story,right?
It's a story.
It's one way of doing things.
It works for some people.
It doesn't work for all people,and is okay for it not to work
because there's a thousand otherways of doing these things.
When he finally is able toreengage and his mental health

(23:33):
is good, and that is his firstpriority, right?
We have so many adults withmental health issues, stopping
them from living fulfillinglives.
Once his mental health is good,then you can worry about what's
next.
Then you can worry about what doyou wanna do, buddy?
What do you wanna do with yourlife?
You wanna be a pilot?
Great.
Let's catch you up on your maths'cause you need that to be a

(23:53):
pilot.
You can do your entire P to 12curriculum for maths in six
weeks or six months when you aredevelopmentally ready, when
you're invested, when you'regood to go, right?
You can do bridging courses, youcan go to TAFE, you can do open
uni subjects, you can do MOOCs.
There's an infinite world ofpossibilities out there that

(24:14):
don't involve the school systemand don't involve a timeline of
any kind.
Just get onto some Home Edforums.
You have your little panicattack out there in the Home Ed
world, and then people come andreassure you.
I promise, because so many of ushave been through that.
I sometimes get choked up when Italk about this stuff because

(24:37):
I'm 12 years down the road andI'm still traumatized from our
School Can't experience and allthe things that happened to us.
But you know, this stuff's hard,but a lot of us have been
through it, so you just reachout.

I just wanna go back and give some
experience of how I navigatedthat self-doubt and that worry
because that's huge.
And that is, I think we talkabout Deschooling, that's part
of the biggest mind shift thatyou have to make.
Right?
But there were people that Icouldn't talk to about it
because it was hard to haverespectful conversations with

(25:15):
them because they weren't reallyhearing what I was saying about
it.
They were just projecting thosenorms onto us and suggesting
that what we were doing wasgonna be harmful to my kids.
And, and one of the, one of thethings that I just kept thinking
to myself, but also saying topeople sometimes, do you think

(25:38):
that I would be making a choicein order to harm my children?
is there any time in my kids'lives or as a parent that I've
ever made a choice that hasn'tbeen with their best interests
at heart?
I think, sometimes that madepeople stop and think, but
sometimes they just thought, oh,well you're deluded.
You know, you're still doing itwrong.

(25:58):
And so we just stopped havingsome of those conversations.
So it did isolate me fromcertain people in the way that I
couldn't talk to them freelyabout our experience and how
that was going.
But what I did do differently, Isought out other Home Ed
parents, groups within my localarea.
My kids hated going to thegroups.
They struggled to do that.

(26:18):
But it was so good for me.
I gained so much from that.
There was so much connection andcommunity and so much head
nodding when I would say, oh,you know, isn't it weird that
people think like this and thenthere's this way?
And they'd be like, yeah dude,of course there is.
Of course you could do it thisway.
And there was a lot ofvalidation for the really hard

(26:41):
feelings I was having.
There was a lot of validationfor, yes, this is okay, this is
good, this is great.
You know, there's going to bepositives.
But there was also validationfor all the hard parts of it as
well.
And I think that was really keyto it being successful for us.
It's hard to go against thegrain, but the benefits are so

(27:02):
huge.

Pavlina (27:03):
I should very quickly mention, we did a big survey and
had over 600 responses And whatthe data showed very clearly was
that the people who hadconnected in with the Home Ed
community, even just online, hadfar better support and stuck
with Home Ed and had far betterexperiences.

(27:26):
When the wheels were fallingoff, they were able to connect
with the community and say, Hey,can you help me with this?
You know, we're having thisproblem.
And so having that would be oneof the most important things.
If you take the plunge into HomeEd connect, even just online,
find your tribe.
They're out there, whoever youare, there are gonna be people

(27:48):
out there that you connect with.

Yeah.
As somebody who's moving towardshome education, you know, like
you, you could go, like yousaid, down the Unschooling path.
If I'm going down a morestructured approach that is more
kind of schooley- at-homey,

Pavlina (28:02):
mm-hmm.

do I still need to Deschool or can I just get
straight into that?

Pavlina (28:07):
you definitely do, because if the wheels fall off,
it would be great to haveunderstanding about what
learning can look like.
To be able to accept thatsometimes the wheels are gonna
fall off no matter what you aredoing.
And to see the learningopportunities in all sorts of

(28:27):
different things.
And also to recognize that ifthings aren't working, you need
a change and then you canreimagine that change.

So that's to help broaden our minds as to the
scope of different ways that wecan be approaching that if our
Plan A doesn't work necessarilyas we'd want it to

Pavlina (28:48):
Precisely.

Also because you can do a very
schooly approach, but alsofollow the child's interests
much more than at school, right?
So unless you've actually movedaway from the, an hour of
English, an hour of maths, anhour of science, unless you've
moved away from that sort ofreally structured, this is the
only way to do it, or thoughtabout it differently, you might

(29:12):
still have a lot of negativityand a lot of difficulty engaging
with the learning, but you cando very, very structured schooly
stuff You know, it could be twoweeks of focus on Henry VIII or
it might be, every morning wewanna do some poetry reading or
whatever it is, right?
You can still do that, but Istill think that you need that

(29:35):
Deschooling, that ability todetach from the shoulds, right?
The Deschooling is detachingfrom the shoulds.

Just on a slightly bureaucratic topic, the
way we've talked about it, itfeels as though this is a really
vital part of the transition.
Does the Department of Educationsee it that way as well?
If I have Department ofEducation come around asking me
what I'm doing and I say, I'mspending six months or more
Deschooling, do they go?
Yeah, that's fine.
No worries.

Pavlina (29:59):
it's gonna depend on what state you're in,
unfortunately.
So some states, like Victoria,where we are, they absolutely
go.
Awesome.
You just concentrate on thatmental health.
in other states, it's not thatstraightforward.
But what I would alwaysrecommend is join your local
state group.
and ask in there, just say, youknow, I am really struggling

(30:22):
with how do I meet requirements?
My kids in burnout, they can'tengage with any form of
schoolwork right now.
We need to prioritize theirmental health.
They're really struggling.
How do I go about meetingrequirements in our state while
still being able to do that?
I would get some help especiallyif you're in New South Wales,

(30:43):
get some help on how to wordyour reports so that you are
able to demonstrate that you aremeeting requirements.
So that you can get yourcontinuation.
It is doable.
It is absolutely doable.
in some states, you just gottabe very proactive about it.

I've been messing around a little bit with
AI as well, and discovering allof the learning outcomes that
you can get from spending 12hours a day playing Geometry
Dash, which, you know, there'smore there than I thought.

Pavlina (31:15):
Yeah, definitely.
there's physics, you know, allsorts of things in there.

All sorts of things.

Leisa, early on, and more for me than
for worry about reporting, Ijust kept a diary of what we'd
done the previous day.
So it might have been as simpleas, we went to the park, took
the dog for a walk, someone reada book for an hour and we had a
discussion about the solareclipse that was happening, it

(31:41):
might've been just a bunch ofsimple things or someone took
the bins out, you know, likehousehold

I wish.

right?
any little thing, just so Icould keep some.
Because at the end of the week,otherwise I'd look back and go,
shit, we didn't do anythingright.
What have we achieved this week?
Whereas if I had kept littlenotes and gone, well actually,
there's some English there andthis kid chose and followed a
recipe for something.
There was a lot to look back on.
And just having a visualrepresentation of that eased my

(32:12):
mind a little bit because I waslike, well, if someone does ask,
I can put all this together.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Does that give you a sense too,a progress of how you can look
back three months ago and go,oh, look, we're doing different
things, more things.

Pavlina (32:26):
Yeah.

I.

and it's not even necessarily that we're
doing more, but that I'mrecognizing more of the learning
that's happening in the stuffthat we were doing.
I might not have kept note ofsome of the conversations in
early days, but as we gotfurther down the line, the
conversations were where so muchof the learning was happening
and that was sparking...
we had a conversation this dayabout a musical that one of the

(32:48):
kids was interested in, and thenfor the next six months, they
were off on a tangent

Mm-hmm.

some kind of historical figure or,
researching.
One of my kids did a degree, incinematic screen makeup, so
special effects, makeup andstuff,

Wow.

was something that sparked interest
for them.
They started off with, makingscars and things on their arms
and turned into, they now have aqualification in that and could
work in the film industry doingreally awesome stuff

How do we know when we're done?
how do I know when I've finishedDeschooling and now I am going
into proper home education?

There's not a distinction.

Pavlina (33:26):
So when we started, I'll quickly say, when I first
pulled my kid out, I didn't evenknow what I thought it was going
to be like.
But I did recognize that weneeded Deschooling.
I didn't know what it was calledbecause I hadn't, hadn't had
time to learn about Deschooling.
so we just started doing thisthing where I was like, okay,
Just let him be, let himdecompress.

(33:48):
Let him find joy again.
And one day I turned around andlooked at him and went, Hmm,
you're actually doing all thislearning despite me, you are
learning so much.
And so we just kept doing it.
as he's gotten older, it'slooked the same.
it's learning interspersed withlife taking opportunities where
we find them and findingopportunities.

(34:08):
It doesn't have to be a definingmoment, You just kind of
naturally segue into it.

I'm challenged by you saying, and
I'm not having a go at you.
I'm just challenged by that'proper' homeschooling, right?
Like we go from this to properhomeschooling.
I found that's a challenging wayof thinking because.
as Pav said it doesn'tnecessarily look any particular
way.
But there's not a time when yougo, okay, we've done this.
Now we do that.
So, it's hard as a parent to goball's completely in your court

(34:40):
kid, but essentially that'swhere it needs to be because
they're not actually reallygonna engage until they're ready
to really engage.
And they don't wanna not do anyof it forever, as much as we
worry that that's what theywanna do, they don't really want
to.
And we've seen it time and timeagain.
So, you know, I just want to,validate that that's the feeling
that you're having, but also atthe same time, go, it's not

(35:02):
gonna be

Pavlina (35:03):
Yeah.

No, I think I'm exposing my early stages of
Deschooling in myself at everyquestion that I ask probably.
But that's fine.

Pavlina (35:10):
It's a normal part of the process.
We all go through it, and let'sface it, all of us have been
through the school system.
It's what we know.
It's what we're familiar with.
It's what we understand.

I also think as parents, we're so used to people
telling us that we need to domore,

Pavlina (35:25):
Yes,

The problem is that you are not doing enough,
that you're not doing wellenough that you need to do
better, you need to try harder,if you were doing this, then it
would all be okay.
And I think you carry that withyou into this process where
you're like, am I doing enough?
if I'm not feeling stressed andharried, if I'm not pushing, if
I'm not doing stuff, then I mustnot be.
exactly.
Because we've been told that forsuch a long time.

(35:46):
It is very hard to put thatdown.
And like you were saying before,don't offer opportunities every
five minutes.
stay away, leave them alone.

Pavlina (35:54):
Yep.

what do I do?
What do I do?

Pavlina (35:56):
What's my job?

Yeah, exactly.

Pavlina (35:58):
Your job is to love them, support them, tell them
they're enough as they are.
It's simple and hard at the sametime.
And also work through your griefand work through your guilt.
'cause you'll have both.

All right.
This is, a good time for us tomove into wrapping up.
this has been very therapeuticfor me.
Thank you very much, ladies.

Pavlina (36:18):
Glad to hear it.

If you think back to when you were first
starting this, something thatyou wish somebody had tapped you
on the shoulder and said to youin the early days, what would it
be?
What do you wish somebody hadtold you early on?

Pavlina (36:30):
It's gonna be okay man.
It's gonna be okay.

Heidi Ryan (she/her (36:35):
Definitely.
I mean that at its at its core.
That's the main thing I neededwas the It's gonna be okay.
Your kids are gonna be okay.
You're doing the right thing.
Because, those are the fears,

Pavlina (36:49):
yep.

that were holding me back.
Those were the things that hadme try things that didn't work
for my kids, you know?

Pavlina (36:57):
and also, it's not working, then just change it.
If there's conflict, useconflict as a marker for it's
not working.
If there's conflict, then youneed to have a conversation,
simple as that.

You talked before about how important it is
to have people who are on thesame journey or have been on the
same journey around you, whetherthat's in in-person groups that
are local to you or findingonline spaces.
So that's probably the numberone most important resource, I'm
guessing.

Pavlina (37:26):
Yeah.

Have you got any other recommendations, things
people should watch, read, do,that might be helpful as well?

Pavlina (37:33):
I think leaning into the work of people like Ross
Green and really, reallyinternalizing that message that
kids and adults will do well, ifthey can.
Really lean into that, changethose lenses, If they could,
they would.
if you're gonna marinate inanything, marinate in that

(37:54):
philosophy.
If you can start to see not justyour kids, but other human
beings that way too, you cantreat other people with grace
and yourself too.
Yeah.
And I would say another thing ifyou find yourself thinking they
'should' be doing something, assoon as that word should comes
into your brain, examine yourbiases.
Examine your underlyingperceptions, because if you're

(38:17):
thinking someone should be doingsomething there is an indicator
that you've internalized ideasabout what the world should look
like, that perhaps may not haveany basis in reality or what
people need.

Amazing.
Okay.
Thanks so much, Pav.
Thanks Heidi.
Talk to you.
Take care.
Bye bye-Bye.
Well, I hope you found that deepdive into Deschooling as helpful
as I did.
If for no other reason than asreassurance that there is always
time, there are always optionsand our kids will do well if
they can.
And our job is just to love themand do the best we can to

(38:57):
support their mental health andwellbeing.
If you have other topics thatyou'd like us to cover, or if
you have a School Can't LivedExperience story you'd be
willing to share, please emailus at
schoolcantpodcast@gmail.com.
If you're concerned that we'reoverwhelmed by people
volunteering to share theirstories, that is not the case.
We would very much like to hearfrom you.
I've put links to the variousAustralian State Home Education

(39:20):
groups that Pav referred to inthe episode notes, as well as,
once again links to Dr.
Ross Green's website.
He's a popular recommendation.
I've also put a link to theSchool Can't Australia website
and a link to donate to SchoolCan't Australia.
Your tax deductible donationsassist us to raise community
awareness, partner withresearchers, produce resources
like webinars and this podcast,which all assist people who are

(39:43):
supporting children and youngpeople experiencing School
Can't.
If you are a parent or carer inAustralia and you are feeling
distressed, remember you canalways call the Parent Helpline
in your state.
A link with the number to callis in the episode notes.
Thank you again for listening.
We will talk again soon.
Take care.

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#12 - Understanding Deschooling with Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#12 - Understanding Deschooling with Pavlina McMaster and Heidi Ryan