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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.
A school built around projects gives math its own class, and your neat theories get homework.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A reflective milestone episode on adventure, routine, and the restless logic behind unschooling.
Blake Bowles and Zen Zenith frame the episode as a milestone conversation, looking back on a show just past 100 episodes and on Zen's early role in helping it begin in 2015.
A hopeful look at rethinking middle school, sharpened by the compromises real schools cannot avoid.
Middle school comes through as more malleable than its reputation suggests, though the episode is clear that making it less dull still takes tradeoffs.
A candid, wandering conversation about late reading, social pressure, and an education built through curiosity.
Reading arrives as a question of timing, embarrassment, and what a life of learning can look like. Liam Nilsen recalls learning at nine, pushed in part by the social pressure of being around school friends, then reading intensely before teenage work changed the shape of his…
A reflective final-edition conversation on unschooling, revision, and convictions that have changed over time.
The final edition of The Teenage Liberation Handbook centers on a simple but useful question: what happens when a book about leaving school is revised by an author whose views have kept moving?
Archived dissent, kept in circulation.
Curiosity-led learning, relationship by relationship.
Family life without school, one theme at a time.
Off-Trail Learning turns Blake Bowles's 100-plus-episode milestone into a case for adventure as the organizing idea behind unschooling, self-directed education, and his own life choices.
Chris Baum, founding head of the Millennium School in San Francisco and author of Finding the Magic in Middle School, argues that middle school should be built around identity, belonging, and contribution.
Off-Trail Learning talks with Liam Nilsen about reading, unschooling, and how books shape self-directed education.
Grace Llewellyn says the third and final edition of The Teenage Liberation Handbook updates a book first published in 1991 and now marked as a 30th Anniversary Edition.
Off-Trail Learning interviews Takeru Nagayoshi, the 2020 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, about leaving teaching after seven years in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Blake Boles interviews Dev Carey about the High Desert Center Gap Year program, discussing its origins and evolution in providing meaningful experiences for young people.
Blake Boles announces a Kickstarter for his new book and interviews Matthew Joya from Hudson Valley Sudbury School about alternative education.
Blake Boles introduces a live recording of a discussion on the power and peril of self-education with Bill Deresiewicz, moderated by Dev Carey at Wayfinding Academy.
Blake Boles delivers a keynote address at the AERO Conference on alternative education, sharing a story about a self-directed learner overcoming adversity.
Blake Boles interviews Margie Sanderson about the intersection of children's rights and self-directed learning.
Blake Boles interviews Ted Dintersmith about his journey from venture capitalist to education reformer and the need for schools to foster creativity and independence.
Blake Boles gives a talk at a homeschooling conference about quitting traditional high school and the benefits of alternative education.
Blake Boles interviews Jerry Mintz about alternative education, self-directed learning, and the upcoming Arrow conference.