EU418: When Teachers Become Unschoolers

Pam and Anna interviewed three former teachers who are all unschooling parents and members of the Living Joyfully Network. Erika Ellis, Jen Hollis, and Michelle Kren shared their experiences becoming teachers as well as their thought processes as they chose unschooling for their own families. They talked about their changing views of education and how their roles as teachers helped shape their ideas of parenting. It was a fascinating window into a very common phenomenon &#8211; teachers becoming unschoolers! We hope the conversation sparks some insights for you. Watch the video on YouTube. THINGS WE MENTION IN THIS EPISODE We invite you to join us in the Living Joyfully Network, a warm and welcoming online community of like-hearted parents. It’s a non-judgmental space where you can steep in these unconventional ideas around parenting, relationships, and learning, and explore what they might look like day-to-day in your uniquely wonderful family. We offer a free month trial so you can see if it’s a good fit for you. Click here to join us. Sign up to our mailing list on Substack to receive our email newsletters as well as new articles about learning, parenting, and so much more! Check out our website, livingjoyfully.ca for more information about exploring unschooling and navigating relationships. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT PAM: Hello everyone, I am Pam Laricchia from Living Joyfully and today I&#8217;m joined by my co-hosts Erika Ellis and Anna Brown, as well as our guests Michelle Kren and Jen Hollis. Hello to you all. So, today&#8217;s episode is a panel style featuring teachers who became unschoolers. And Erika is joining Michelle and Jen as we explore aspects of their journey and reflect on this very interesting perspective. So, I&#8217;m very much looking forward to our conversation. Anna, would you like to get us started? ANNA: I would. So, first, thanks for joining us. I&#8217;m kind of excited about this one. I think it&#8217;ll be an interesting conversation because it is actually really wild how many teachers turned unschoolers I&#8217;ve met over the course of these last 25 years. And it makes sense, right? Because teachers deeply know what&#8217;s happening in education. They&#8217;re passionate about it. It&#8217;s something that&#8217;s important to them. So, it really makes sense. But I can&#8217;t wait to hear about each of your unique journeys. So, this first question will just be, tell us briefly about your journey to becoming a teacher. What drew you to the field? How did it unfold for you? What did that part look like? And I&#8217;m going to start, Erika, with you and then we&#8217;ll kind of move around to the rest. ERIKA: I&#8217;m excited about this too. It&#8217;s something that honestly at this point I don&#8217;t think about that often, but I also have met a lot of teachers. And so, yeah, it&#8217;s just very curious. I was only a teacher in public school for two years before I had children. When I left school, I was planning to be in film production, which I did for several years. But that field out in LA is mostly project by project. And when we were thinking about having children, it seemed a little bit risky for both me and my husband to be finding job by job what we were going to do next. And so, I was looking for things that I could do that would be more steady and just know what I was going to get paid for the year, basically. And so, that was kind of where I started. <p class="wp