One stop shopping

There are now two Greybeards videos posted to YouTube. More will be coming soon. You can view all that are available at any given time by going to our channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheGreybeards

Note: Alex, our fab drummer, doesn't show up very well in these first two videos. Never fear, though, we have footage of Alex and will be posting that as soon as we can.

They got a lot of nice girls

Here is our first attempt at posting a Greybeards video to YouTube. We're still learning, so please bear with weird sizing and less than ideal image quality. Videos 1 through 19 and 20+ are TBD.

Without further ado, here are the Greybeards and their Hot Backup Chicks performing Zed-Zed Top's "La Grange" at the Good Vibrations Unschooling Conference.



View on YouTube directly

The Greybeards

From left to right: Jeff Sabo, Frank, Alex Hoeltzel (who needed a little augmentation to qualify as a Greybeard), and Russ Anguish.

Alex's mom, Nancy, has more photos from the show posted here:

http://tinyurl.com/o5lbyh

More posts about Good Vibrations

Good Vibrations 2009 - part 2

Okay, let's just get this out of the way:

Greybeards rocked the house!!!!!!!

Oh my god. What a fun night! We couldn't have asked for a more enthusiastic—and forgiving—audience. To look out over that crowd of smiling, dancing, hooting wild things was just the best thing ever. My hugest thank you to all of you for getting so very much into the spirit of things!

And Flo, I love you. Thank you beyond words for the space and opportunity to play. It was a singular experience.

As for our performance itself, well, I think we made most of our mistakes from practice plus a few whole new ones, but it didn't matter a whit. The whole night was perfection from start to finish! Kudos to Russ, Jeff, Alex, Mark, and Frank for all their hard work learning the songs and practicing together-apart from a span of about 1400 miles. (In case you aren't aware, the band members come from two different states and one province and had only about 4 hours' practice with everybody all in one place. Pulling it together with such skill and flair (and flare!) is a really impressive accomplishment.)

To my fellow Hot Backup Chicks, Robin and Shonna, all I can say is WOW! You made every minute of our practice and performance time pure joy. I can't think when I've had so much fun. Love you guys!

We have video of the whole night, from multiple cameras. We will start posting the highly entertaining evidence memories to YouTube just as soon as we can. Allow travel time! :-)

Phew! Even writing about it is has gotten me all pumped up again. But let's move on...

Teen and Grown Unschoolers Panel. I moderated my third teen panel here at Good Vibrations. Our panel consisted of MJ (16 and 364 days) and Chloe (15) Maier; not-so-Greybeard Alex Hoetzel (17); Kirby (24), Marty (21), and Holly (17) Dodd; Matthew Vilter (23), Matteo (14) and Gemma (12) Cerullo; Hazel Donovan (16); and Nathan Selfridge (16), with a guest appearance from Roxana Sorooshian (21). [Most of those ages are estimated. I apologize for any errors!]

I can tell you from personal experience, there is nothing more reassuring to unschooling parents of younger kids than exposure to teen and grown unschoolers. This panel proved that in spades. They were so lively and intelligent and informative, not to mention extremely entertaining. From Chloe's periodic chirping of "I'm cheerful and optimistic!" to some friendly ribbing between the Dodds, there were just a lot of laughs. In and around all the fun, they were an exceptionally open panel and answered questions with grace and clarity.

This was the most college-oriented panel I've seen, too. I don't care if my kids go to college or not, but I know it's something a lot of people worry about, so it must have been nice to hear from so many unschoolers who are either already in college or planning to attend.

There were a LOT of grown unschoolers at this conference, which provided a unique opportunity for the rest of us. I'm so glad so many were willing to participate in the Teen Panel, despite its name. :-)

Roya Repeating Herself by Roya Sorooshian. Roya is a 24-year-old grown unschooler. She is simply a stunning individual: vibrant, relaxed, optimistic, educated even by traditional standards, gorgeous, and an inspiring public speaker. I intended to duck in and out of her talk, but once I was in there, wild horses couldn't have dragged me away. She's pursuing a masters degree in Art Therapy and intends to start a camp for kids. If you have some spare acres where she could get started, you couldn't ask for a worthier recipient.

How We Roll by Beth Fuller. As always, I came away from Beth's talk with so much to think about. Beth offers a unique perspective on family relationships that encourages you to rethink how you respond in just about every situation. She is a natural speaker and unhesitatingly shares her own vulnerabilities all in a good cause.

I just wish I'd brought my box of tissue.

In general. It's been a lovely, lovely weekend. We're tired and wired and happy and all filled up on unschooling goodness. Thank you to Flo and Ginger and all the speakers and all the other people who made this happen.

Next up for us is the trip home. We'll stop in Northern California somewhere tonight and then continue on up to Corvallis tomorrow, where we'll drop off Holly at her new digs at Diana's house. Then home again and a return to our usual lack of routine.

Good Vibrations 2009

The bright side of a little mid-conference insomnia: I have a chance to get down some of my thoughts and memories from Good Vibrations so far.

Spoiler alert! My notes below about specific talks reference bits that will be ever so much better if you listen to the whole talk, available for download a while after the conference. You can give them a listen and then come back and read the fragments I chose to highlight.

Update: I just discovered that Jeff posted his talk here. Yay!

Unschooling and Math by Pam Sorooshian. Lots of good stuff in this talk, but there were a couple of things that especially grabbed my brain. One was the reminder of how disconnected from reality is the math they teach in class. Pam led us through a little exercise that illustrated this pretty clearly: Make a little list of situations in your real life where you use math. (We came up with tipping, figuring gas mileage, figuring value at the grocery store, doubling or halving recipes, and budgeting.) Ask yourself (1) what method you use to do those calculations (paper and pencil, calculator/computer, or in your head), and (2) how important precision is in the result of each calculation. Compare your answers to what school requires.

Pam also told a very cool little story in which her daughter Rosie was working (playing) her way through an activity book one day while they were driving in the car. Rosie became frustrated with a page that asked how many kids were in each classroom if a school with ten classrooms had 80 students. Rosie complained that it didn't provide enough information. When Pam explained she should just divide 80 by 10, Rosie said (and I love this), "It's not a division problem!" Having never been in a math classroom, Rosie could see all the variables (ages or grade levels of the students, content of the classes being taught, and so on) that formal math instruction requires kids to simply ignore, thereby ensuring that kids know that math (or rather, the math that they are being taught) has little to do with reality.

In Pursuit of a Passionate Life by Jeff Sabo. Lots of good stuff in this one, too, but the highlight for me—the moment that had me teary-eyed—was when Jeff talked about showing inner-city kids three numbers and encouraging them to guess what the numbers represented. The numbers were (I think) 1.7, 75, and 8. He said the kids never got all three. They are, respectively, a specific person's high school GPA, the number of jobs the individual has had, and the number of times this person was suspended from school. Got a picture of this person? Lovely. Throw it out the window. The individual is Jeff. He has a masters degree and a successful career in the corporate world, he is an amazing dad married to an amazing woman who clearly likes him a whole lot, and he is a talented and inspiring writer and speaker. He's also one hell of a bass player!

So, just imagine those kids discovering how little their own numbers could predict what their future held in store.

My own numbers were "better" (unless you count each contract as a job—then I might have Jeff beat), but they carried just as many expectations for my future. It was a heavy burden, and one I might have set down for the first time yesterday.

Strangers in a Strange Land chat. Shonna and I hosted this circle chat yesterday. We went in hoping to encourage and benefit from some brainstorming about how to help other people's kids when we see them being victimized by harsh parenting. I think it went pretty well. Here are the tools we discussed. Which of these is the best to pull out in any given situation will depend on the situation and your resources at the moment.

• Empathize with the parent. We've all been there in that overwhelmed moment, and we all know snapshot moments do not necessarily reflect the whole of the parent-child relationship. Also, those of us (yours truly) who started out as traditional parents can (should be able to) empathize more than most.
• Validate the child's experience. A small verbal expression of your understanding of the child's perspective can provide a lot of comfort to the child, and it just might help the parent make a shift, too. For example, suppose you see a child in a store crying because he's been denied candy or a toy. You can say, "It's hard to see all these cool things and not be able to take them home, isn't it?"
• Say "I've been there. Here are some resources that have helped me a lot," and then hand over a card that lists a few of your favorite parenting Web sites. This one lets you immediately withdraw from the situation; the parent doesn't have/get to respond.
• Say (even if it's not true), "You know, the exact same thing happened with us. Here's what worked for us..." and then describe the parenting that you wish you were seeing.
• Interject with a little comment that might jolt the parent into taking a breath. My example was Count to a million, Mom.

I might be missing a couple, but I'm getting sleepy finally. Thanks to all the women and men who helped with that list! More later.