EU254: Finding Unschooling with Daniela Bramwell

Daniela Bramwell joins me this week, an unschooling mom living in Ecuador. Daniela’s journey is fascinating! As a child, she was a student at an alternative free school, but, as an adult, found herself wondering if there was a better way to approach learning. She dove deep into learning about educational philosophies, including pursuing her PhD in the field. And then, as a mother, she found unschooling. We talked about her varied experiences in education, what she’s figured out along the way, and the joy she’s finding now, living and learning with her family.

Questions for Daniela

Can you share with us a bit about you and your family? What is everybody interested in right now?

Your journey to finding unschooling is really interesting and I’d love to walk through some of the pieces with you. To start, you went to an alternative Montessori free school growing up. Can you share a bit about your experience?

Then you went to university and became very interested in studying education, completing your Masters, teaching courses, and now working on your PhD. What have been your big takeaways so far from that experience?

How did all that—your alternative ed experience growing up and your post grad education studies—weave together into you finding and choosing unschooling for your family? What pieces did unschooling bring that you felt were missing?

You mentioned to me earlier that your deschooling journey around “screens” was a big one because you grew up with so many negative messages around them. Can you share what that process looked like for you?

What’s something fun you guys have done recently that you don’t think you’d have done before finding unschooling?

Things mentioned in the episode

Playful Parenting by Lawrence Cohen

Bernie De Koven’s work on play

No Contest by Alfie Kohn

Unconditional Parenting by Alfie Kohn

Rachel Rainbolt’s podcast, Sage Family

Lucy AitkenRead’s article, 10 Things that are Worse for Your Child than Playing on the iPad

Pam Sorooshian’s article, Economics of Restricting TV Watching of Children

Holly Johnson’s podcast episode

Akilah Richard’s podcast episode

Zakiyya Ismail’s podcast episode

Transcript

Read the transcript

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