Deeper Learning Goals Require a Supportive Infrastructure

“A life worth living, and work worth doing—that is what I want for children (and all people), not just, or not even, something called 'a better education'.”—John Holt

It isn't easy to walk the fine line between mentoring and meddling, between offering support and insisting on "helping." Over the years, as I have been experimenting with a curriculum-free approach to education, three things have helped me more than anything else:

1. Permission to make mistakes. I had to give up the notion that I would get it right the first time. I had to be able to admit—to myself and my kids—when I had erred on the side of providing too much guidance (or too little). I had to experience a sinking ship a few times before I could turn things around. 
2. Trust. Patience, faith, trust—whatever it takes to step back and observe instead of interfering when things aren't progressing exactly as one might like them to be. When it comes to helping another person become who they are meant to be, there's so much we can't possibly know. There's a temptation to deal with the uncertainty by trying to control everything, but that seldom succeeds. 
3. Support. I could not have stayed the course if I had not had a community of people who were willing to listen, empathize, and share their own stories with me. 

When my kids were learning according to the expected or traditional timetable, and they chose academic subjects that educators have typically valued (reading, writing, math, science), it was easy for me to trust that everything would work out fine, regardless of the teaching method I used. The hard part was having faith when their interests were unconventional, bordering on obsessive, or proceeding at an unusual pace. I had to ask myself, "How resolved am I, really, to allowing my children to learn according to their own, unique internal plans?" If one of my children was" falling behind," what did that mean? Did I need to be concerned, or could I trust that he or she would eventually "catch up"?

Knowing when to intervene and when to trust the process is difficult but extremely important.

Most of the time, I simply had to learn to trust my kids and myself. It was not particularly helpful when concerned strangers would ask what I was doing, or how I was doing it, or "exactly what my kids were learning from playing all afternoon."If I had been required to report regularly to an oversight committee or school official, the days when it seemed like nothing was being learned (or everything was falling apart!) would have been much harder for me to recover from. I imagine the same might be true for teachers who are trying to encourage deeper learning in their classrooms. 

It takes courage to do something unconventional, and educating children without knowing for sure whether or not you are going to be successful is terrifying, especially when the stakes are so high. No adult wants to be responsible for messing up a child's future, so the pressure to do the job well is immense. Having others you respect say, "It's going to be OK, you are doing fine," or "Here, this is what I did, and it seemed to work," can make all the difference.