Unschooling with Two Young Learners of Color (w/ Akilah Richards)

n this episode, Gina and Kevin sit down with author, podcaster, and unschooler of two, Akilah Richards. We have a wide-ranging conversation about what motivated Akilah and her family to unschool, what learning looks like when decoupled from compulsory school, the promise of unschooling for people-of-color communities, and much more.



2:58 - How Akilah and her Family Discovered Unschooling: “Over time, Chris and I decided that what the girls kept pushing for was relevant and worth looking into.”
9:25 - Learning Languages Without Curriculum: “Marley and Sage began to learn languages that certainly I wasn’t teaching them.”
14:17 - Learning Things Like Reading and Math Without School: “He went from ‘Mom, can you slow down?’ to ‘Can you just sit here and can I ask you when I don’t know a word?” to “I don’t need you here anymore.’”
17:31 - Learning Rapidly When You Have Interest: “They glomb onto a thing and they partner with it.”
23:40 - Unschooling's Potential for Persons of Color: “ I can raise two black girls who can feel free to study anime and manga and language and history in a world that tells them specifically who they should be and who they aren’t”
28:25 - Unschooling and Decentering Whiteness: “You’re not not seeing color; you’re saying this exists. So, now I’m not centering it and conforming to it.”
34:54 - Akilah’s Experience and Work in the Unschooling Movement: “I’m such an unschooler…. I get to everything just really from curiosity and discovery and emergent structure.”
38:33 - Unschooling and Formal Instruction: “She found a tutor on Skype who was going to take her through a curriculum.”