Shawna Pitts on Freedom for Children at Sudbury School

Shawna Pitts is a staff member at Clearview Sudbury School in Austin, a model of self directed education that began with Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts in the 1960's. Shawna shares how her own success in traditional school contrasted with what she needed to learn in the real world, and how reading about unschooling and books like Free to Learn led her to enroll her sons at Clearview in 2016. We discuss how Sudbury offers freedom, space, and trust in the learning process and how staff support without grades, curricula, or top-down expectation. Shawna gives examples of her sons curiously pursuing coding, algebra, piano, and deep learning from YouTube, and we explore deschooling, parental fears about screens, and the value of parents healing from their own public school experience.

Clearview Sudbury: https://www.clearviewsudburyschool.org/
Free at Last by Daniel Greenburg: https://bookstore.sudburyvalley.org/product/free-last
The Many Benefits for Kids of Playing Video Games: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201201/the-many-benefits-kids-playing-video-games
Deschool Yourself Podcast Series: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deschool-yourself-with-zak-slayback-and-jeff-till/id1209651208

Learn more about Joel:
https://joelbein.com/
https://thehumanliberation.co/
https://thehumanliberation.co/guide