What I Do
I call myself a born and raised unschooler. (See below) My experience in directing my own learning persuaded me to become an advocate for Self-Directed Education (SDE), youth liberation, and partnership-based parenting. I am an unschooling mama of a toddler and a teen; a writer; a facilitator and founder of PDX Flying Squads, a community for self-directed young people in Portland, OR; co-founder of Flying Squads. I also offer parent coaching, facilitator/educator coaching, workshops on deschooling and facilitating Self-Directed Education, and host group coaching for parents who want to focus on partnership-based relationships with their kids.
I’ve also worked with the international advocacy group, the Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE), for the past 9 years. I manage communication, volunteers, community-building, and strategic planning. In addition, I coordinate projects and lead specific ASDE initiatives.
About Me
From early childhood, I negotiated how I would approach my formal and informal education. As a homeschooled child, I played a lot with my friends in our neighborhood, read books (mostly fiction and books about Cheetahs), kept dozens of journals, took frequent trips to the library, played Dungeons and Dragons, spent many hours on the computer, and chose which classes to take at our homeschool resource center and elsewhere. Classes I elected included world languages (Spanish and American Sign Language), marital arts (Aikido and karate), piano, and musical theatre.
At 16, I enrolled in college through the local Running Start program. Continuing my unconventional approach to learning, I entered the Fairhaven program at Western Washington University, where I was allowed to create my own major: Envisioning the Creative Classroom. In college, I spent a lot of time writing and looking into education alternatives. I then worked five years in early childhood education teaching at a play-based center that was trusting of children. Finally, in an experiment to learn what I might be missing from a conventional approach to learning, I entered the graduate school at Portland State University, where I earned an M.S. in early childhood education. What do I think about that decision? That’s a story for another time.
Want to know more about my story? Check out this interview I did with the Alliance for Self-Directed Education.
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Bria Bloom 