Interviews with innovative educators, self-directed young people, and others who think differently about learning, teaching, and schooling. Hosted by Blake Boles (blakeboles.com), author of "Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?" and founder of Unschool Adventures.
If you enjoyed Off-Trail Learning, check out my new podcast, Dirtbag Rich, where I dive deep with working adults who have managed to strike that elusive balance of time, money, and purpose—without giving up on their wildest dreams. Find Dirtbag Rich wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or visit dirtbagrich.com .
Guest host Zen Zenith returns to interview Blake about his obsession with adventure. What exactly makes an adventure? How is adventure connected to self-directed learning? Is adventure just for privileged people? Why can’t Blake just settle down and lead a normal life? How do Unschool Adventures trips create a sense of adventure for both teens and trip leaders? Does adventure become harder as one grows older? Does Blake even have a retirement plan?! And what comes next? Read Blake’s “Notes on Ad...
Chris Balme (chrisbalme.com) is the founding head of school of The Millennium School and the author of Finding the Magic in Middle School. After briefly flirting with public school teaching, Chris ran an apprenticeship program for middle schoolers for a decade before creating The Millennium School in San Francisco, where he served for seven years. We discuss Chris’ early infatuation with democratic free schools, how the Millennium School takes the developmental needs of middle schoolers seriousl...
Liam Nilsen (https://liam.media) is a designer and educator based in Åårhus, Denmark. He’s a former member of the LEGO Idea Studio, the founder of an Agile Learning Center, and a life-long unschooler who didn’t start reading until age 9 — at which point he fell in love with the written word. Liam and I discuss our lives as readers, including the books that have changed our lives, how we discover new things to read, books vs. articles vs. newspapers vs. social media, old favorites that now embarr...
Grace Llewellyn is the author of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, the founder of Not Back to School Camp, a one-time middle school English teacher, and a luminary in the unschooling movement. In this episode we discuss the third (and final) edition of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, released in late 2021. Grace talks about writing the original book in 1991, how it became an underground classic, how her views on education (and her relationship to her 26-year-old voice) evolved over three decades...
Takeru “TK” Nagayoshi was an AP English and Research teacher for seven years. In 2020 he was named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year—yet after winning the award, he decided to leave the classroom in 2021. We discuss Takeru’s early school experiences in Japan and New Jersey, how he become an educator through Teach For America, the daily realities of teaching in a “turnaround school,” the amazing AP classes he offered, the Teacher of the Year nomination, pandemic burnout, and the decision to leave...
Shortly after college, Jack Schott hit the road for two years to visit over 200 summer camps across the United States. He then co-founded a children’s sleepaway camp in upstate New York, Camp Stomping Ground (campstompingground.org), designed to inspire “radical empathy.” After co-directing Stomping Ground for many years (with Laura Kriegel) and consulting for other camps, Jack possesses a wealth of knowledge about the power and possibility of sleepaway camps. We discuss the unique magic that ca...
Nate Singer is the Managing Director of Mission Holdings, a father of two, and the guy who first got me interested in alternative education. We discuss his early struggles at boarding school, getting rejected to UC Berkeley (but successfully appealing the decision), working hard as a math major, second-guessing conventional teaching methods, creating a class about educational television (where he and I met), John Taylor Gatto, and encouraging Berkeley students to question mainstream pedagogy. Af...
Michelle Bruce is a mother of 4 who (along with her husband John) has been “boatschooling” since 2013. We discuss the evolution of her eclectic homeschooling approach, the family’s slow travel philosophy, the boat’s life-support systems and operating expenses, her kids’ “rollercoaster” social life, her impressions of the worldschooling community, what happened during the pandemic, and the judgment she received from other parents for raising her family at sea. Recorded on the boat in Sant Carles ...
Seth Frey (enfascination.com) is a professor of Communication at UC Davis who focuses on the science of self-governance. We discuss our shared history in the Berkeley Student Cooperatives, Seth’s experience living in communities ranging from 4 to 400 members, his research on Minecraft and World of Warcraft communities, why benevolent dictators are surprisingly common, why children (and adults!) are surprisingly bad at self-governance, the Lord of the Flies stereotype, and how we might grant youn...
Manue is a representative in the South of France of Les Enfants D’Abord (lesenfantsdabord.org), a home education advocacy association which is particularly committed to the rights of unschoolers. (The name translates to “Children First.”) We discuss the organization’s mission to promote children’s rights over parental domination, the history of homeschooling regulation in France, home inspections, the growing power of French social services, and the new French homeschooling law that takes effect...
Nick Bergson-Shilcock is the CEO and co-founder of the Recurse Center (recurse.com), a self-directed and community-driven educational retreat for computer programmers. Nick describes his background as a lifelong unschooler (he’s the son of Peter Bergson, a recent podcast guest), as well as his early interest in gaming and programming and his transition into college, career, and Y Combinator (the startup incubator). We discuss how RC differs from “coding bootcamps,” who applies, who gets in, how ...
Anna Smith and Mara Donahoe are the co-founders (with Natasha Morisawa) of the National Association of Home & Hybrid Education (homeandhybrideducation.org), a new advocacy organization that hopes to bring together all members of the alternative education movement in the United States. We discuss why Home & Hybrid Education (HHE) was created, whether the U.S. needs another homeschool organization, how HHE differs from other large organizations (AERO, ASDE, HSLDA), and why public hybrid op...
While biking through the south of France, I met Lilli and Elena, two 19-year-old German women who are also on a cycling adventure. (We shared the same Couchsurfing host.) We discuss their bike trip, their path through formal education in Germany, why they’re taking a gap year, how they spend less than $10/day, how they stay safe, and what the trip has taught them so far. (Lilli and Elena have no website or social media -- kudos to them!)
Joel Malkoff (joelkmalkoffcircusartist.com) is a contemporary circus artist and 27-year-old grown unschooler from Indiana. We discuss Joel’s recent experience at the National Circus School of Montreal (“the Harvard of circus”), the job market for circus artists, and his new 3-person circus collective, La Quadrature (instagram.com/laquadrature). We also talk about Joel’s upbringing as an unschooler, his mother's influence, his childhood passions (skateboarding, parkour, guitar), his experiences a...
Alfie Kohn (alfiekohn.org) is the author of fourteen books and a well-known advocate of progressive education. Mr. Kohn discusses the purpose behind his 30+ years of advocacy, his critique of “grit” and “growth mindset”, and his take on the classic progressive school models (Montessori/Waldorf/Reggio) as well as homeschooling, unschooling, and highly self-directed schools & centers. He expresses concern over the extreme varieties of self-directed education and argues for the vital role of te...
Catherine Fraise is the founder of Workspace Education (workspaceeducation.org) and 100 Roads (100roads.org). We discuss Catherine’s background as a Montessori educator, the pivotal trip to Japan she took as a 12-year-old, the Workspace co-learning and co-working center she created in Connecticut, and her newest venture, WorkspaceSky Teens: an online community for teenage self-directed learners. We touch on the trade-off between virtual and in-person communities, the logistical and financial cha...
Peter Bergson is the co-founder of two self-directed learning centers in the Philadelphia area: Open Connections (openconnections.org) and Natural Creativity Center (naturalcreativity.org). We discuss Peter’s journey from creativity consultant to early childhood educator, his collaboration with John Holt, fighting for better homeschooling laws in the 80s, growing a tiny self-directed learning center in a bigger and better-funded one, the importance of “sense of belonging” for young people, and h...
Pat Farenga returns to talk about the second half of Harvard’s “Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling” conference, after which we discuss a different, secret, *invite-only* Harvard summit (hosted by Elizabeth Bartholet and James Dwyer) that proposed extremely restrictive reforms to homeschooling laws. If you care about the future of homeschooling in the United States — and the reasons that some well-intentioned people may try to shut it down — don’t miss this episode! Blake’s notes from the Harv...
In this special two-part discussion, Pat Farenga and I discuss Harvard University’s ongoing 7-week conference, the “Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling.” This free online conference brings together researchers and academics in the field of homeschooling, and Pat and I are here to share what they’re talking about, the arguments they’re making, and what we think of all this. In this first episode we discuss weeks 1-4 of the conference: Should homeschooling laws change? Who is homeschooling today...
Debbie Reber (debbiereber.com) is the author of Differently Wired: Raising an Exceptional Child in a Conventional World and the founder of TiLT Parenting (tiltparenting.com), a podcast and online community. We discuss how Debbie coaches parents on issues of neurodivergence, the challenges that school systems present for “differently wired” kids, her response to the critics, what it was like raising her son in the Netherlands for 5 years, and how she ended up here in the first place. (Blake also ...
Olivia Barnes (blacklifeblueworld.wixsite.com/blbwofficialwebsite) has always had a somewhat unconventional education, but after a frustrating year at a well-regarded performing arts school, she decided to take the reins of her education. We discuss Olivia’s decision to spend her 10th grade year doing a hodgepodge of activities she called “self-design school”—including biology classes at a local university, online math, Spanish tutoring, and lots of swimming—what she’s doing now (despite the pan...
Rivers and bike trips and workshops, oh my! A quick update from my somewhat-successful-sabbatical. Also: new podcast episodes coming soon!
Off-Trail Learning is on hiatus! In this brief personal update, I discuss my decision to go on sabbatical in 2021. Learn more at (newly redesigned) blakeboles.com.
Kevin Currie-Knight (kevinck.net) is a philosopher, historian of education, and Teaching Associate Professor at East Carolina University’s College of Education. Following a stint as a high school special educator, Kevin began training future public school teachers at the college level and experimented with giving them high levels of autonomy. We discuss the results of Kevin’s experiments, his unique definition of “self-directed learning,” the benefits of letting students choose their own grades,...
Martina Geromin is the CEO and Co-Founder of School Beyond Limitations (school-beyond-limitations.com). Originally from Italy, Martina has lived and worked in Austria, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. We discuss the state of self-directed education in Europe (including homeschooling and alternative schools), cultural differences and institutional differences between the U.S. and Europe, and what differentiates progressive and holistic education from self-directed education.
Dr. Naomi Fisher is a clinical psychologist, mother of two self-directed learners, and the author of the forthcoming book, "Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning." In this deep-dive interview, Naomi and I dissect the modern culture of “intensive parenting” and the research behind Judith Rich Harris’ controversial book, "The Nurture Assumption." We address some thorny topics including: How much do genes, peers, and parents respectively matter for a child’s long-t...
Dev Carey is the founder and co-director of the High Desert Center in Paonia, Colorado (highdesertcenter.org), where he’s been offering an adventurous, affordable, and highly alternative gap year program for more than six years. We discuss his approach to working with 16- to 23-year-olds, the most common issues they face, and the lessons they learn through his 9-month program that combines communal living with high adventure. We conclude with the question of what parents can do to offer young ad...
Prisma (joinprisma.com) is a brand-new company that’s attempting to combine the best parts of homeschooling with the best parts of online education. In this episode I speak with Victoria Ransom, who co-founded Prisma alongside her husband Alain Chuard, about the Prisma model, who it’s for, how self-directed it is, why they don’t do grades or transcripts, and their vision for expanding Prisma into a global “co-learning network.”
What does it mean to educate in freedom? What are the different flavors of “freedom” that appear in the self-directed education world? In this live interview (recorded in January 2020) I speak with Alexander Khost, Editor-in-Chief of Tipping Points, the online magazine of The Alliance for Self-Directed Education, and a facilitator at Brooklyn Apple Academy. We discuss a controversial pair of articles he published in late 2019, addressing the topics of fear- versus trust-based education, the mess...
