Keith and Sandra Dodd, Albuquerque

Keith was born in 1956 and grew up in Alamogordo (south central New Mexico). I was born in 1953, lived in Texas for a while (where all my grandparents were from and 7/8 of great grandparents), and grew up (from the age of 6) in Española, in north central New Mexico.

Keith and I met in the middle, and stayed in Albuquerque. I used to be a lot older than he was. Now I'm not.

Keith and I will be at the symposium with Marty perhaps briefly attending, but I'll tell you about our children anyway.

We have three children who won't be at this symposium. Kirby (28) is in Texas, needs to work through the holidays (at Blizzard Entertainment, customer service, in-game (he supervises gamemasters, and has worked there for eight years). He's coming to Albuquerque in January, though, to look for an apartment or house, to move here with his girlfriend of a year and a half, and her daughter who's five, in March or April. Kirby has promised to speak in 2016 if there's a symposium. (That's a hotel question, not yet answered.)

Marty (25) got married November 20, in Las Vegas, just because his girlfriend of six years (now wife) loves Las Vegas. Marty and Ashlee might come to the hotel to play board games at least one night, I hope.
http://sandradodd.blogspot.com/2014/11/marty-is-married.html

Holly (23) is in India, staying with unschoolers, taking an art class, hanging out with people who are involved in alternative education, shopping, exploring, playing My Little Pony with the daughter of her host family, and having an exciting adventure. She left two days after Marty's wedding, and will return January 24. (Not current, but still Holly: SandraDodd.com/holly

I don't have a page on my husband, Keith, but I thought some people might like to see him aging, in medieval costumes, as Gunwaldt. :-) He's grey now, but still has a beard and he still plays recorder. SandraDodd.com/duckford/gunwaldt

There are two photos of baby Holly there, and a link to more of Holly. She doesn't do much medieval dressing-up anymore, and neither do I, nor Kirby the oldest, but Marty, my middle child is currently the baron of the local group, and so extremely active for the time he's the representative of the Albuquerque SCA group to other groups.

SandraDodd.com/marty

There is this, about Keith, and knotwork, which he will be demonstrating.
SandraDodd.com/knotwork

Here are some recent photos, but they can't be any larger unless I want to give the hotel wedding department Big Bucks. I might, later.

Dressed up, Keith and me:



Holly, on the left:


Ashlee's dad, the hand-off:


Me, Keith, Ashlee Dodd, Marty, Destiny (Kirby's girlfriend), Kirby and Holly:



Here's some more about me, if you want. I haven't kept it up for the past few years; I will probably fill it in at some point. SandraDodd.com/bio

Bios and intros are great!

Someone who attended in the past wrote

I loved "meeting" everyone from my own couch at home and was so much more comfortable going into the conference, having a good idea of how many kids there were and if they had similar interests to my kids, making introducing them easier.  AND making it easier for ,e to get to know others--small talk is painful, ha, so having more information about the families ahead of time makes it easier to dive right in to interesting conversations.

So though intros aren't required, please consider sharing at least a photo of your family in advance. :-)  Thanks!

If you have a blog you would like to share, or maybe facebook page, I'd be glad to put that link out, too!  Send it to me by e-mail, please!

Marina, Steve and Roman, from Germany

We are Marina, Steve and Roman (5).

We leave in Parsberg, Bavaria, Germany.

I'm a Bulgarian stay-at-home mom to our dear son Roman who was born in Germany :). Steve is American, currently working for the US Department of Defense.

We like to travel, eat, cook, read and explore. We like LEGO and video games (Many Thanks to you, Sandra!)

As I was searching the internet to find somebody to learn something from about child rearing and learning that would make sense to me and my husband, I found radical unschooling (the grammar check give me as option to replace the "wrong" spelling with "schooling"-eek...) and fortunately the name Sandra Dodd :).

We are looking forward to deepening our understanding of radical unschooling and meeting you in person.


Note from Sandra, for those who like to learn names in advance:

Marina Popova
Steven Kuhaida
Roman Kuhaida (5)

The Pierce Family from Boulder

We are the Pierce family from Boulder, Colorado - Eric, Shelley, Junior (Eric), William, and Ruth. We have been unschooling from the start. Our boys Junior and William love Legos, Minecraft, and Parkour. Our girl Ruth loves all things Frozen and My Little Pony. Living in Boulder gives us access to a good sized unschooling community with lots of activities and park days. We also love to travel and this will be our third unschooling conference, we are trying them all on for size.

---

Note from Sandra:
The ages of these Lego, Minecraft, parkour, Frozen and My Little Pony fans:
Junior / Eric Pierce Jr (9)
William Pierce (7)
Ruth Pierce (5)

...and they might have a grandmother along, too, we might get to meet.

Checklist reminder

Check back to see if things are added.

Quiet toys

Warm clothes (for going to the Crest of the Sandia Mountains)

http://albuquerqueallive.blogspot.com/p/checklist.html
(It's a tab at the top of the blog.)

Nicole, Michael, Molly and Frank Rod

I'm Nicole Rod. My husband Michael and I have two awesome kids, Molly, 6, and Frank, 4 next month. We live in the SW Denver suburbs.

Obviously, our kids are still young. We are still figuring this whole homeschooling thing out, and I can definitely see that we are leaning in an unschooling direction. Molly went to public preschool and started full time public kindergarten in the fall of 2013. We made it halfway through the year, and made the decision to pull her out of school after one week back from Winter break. It's astonishing how your world changes when you go from questioning nothing to questioning EVERYTHING! Everything that we had accepted as just how it is and what you do, all of a sudden seemed completely ridiculous. What do you mean, my 5 year old has 20 minutes to eat lunch and 55 minutes a day to play? And next year, she will only have 40 minutes of recess? Why does my full time kindergartner have HOMEWORK!? What in the world happened to graham crackers, apple juice, and naptime?

And so, I dove into the rabbit hole. I pulled my husband in with me. We deschooled. We signed up for activities. We started trying to do "school at home." We were miserable. I remember telling her, "we can't just play and have fun all the time!" Then one day, I was setting up a new printer, and the kids were playing with the box. All of a sudden, it occurred to me that what they were gaining, playing with that box, was so much more valuable than anything we could get out of any curriculum or instruction.

So we read. And we're still reading. We're still figuring all this out. We're still a little afraid of the big scary Unschooling. But not as afraid as we are of big scary public school. What we know for sure is that the less we force, the happier we are.

  

 

"The Care and Feeding of Miracles"

James, Julie and Adam Daniel live in Ashford, in Surrey, west of London. Julie has organized three conferences at which I spoke. My daughter Holly stayed with their family for six weeks one winter and had an English Christmas with them. They have been to another Always Learning Live symposium, where Adam spoke (with Julie's assistance).

Their talk for this year will be about principles and processes. Julie wrote:

[We will] talk a bit about how people gravitate towards defining processes. They do it particularly when an outcome matters to them. But the outcomes that matter most to unschooling are ones that can't be defined by a process. Like you can't write a process for falling in love or making friends.

Without a defined process we believe you need three things.

1) A clear but general outcome
2) Very clear guiding principles as to conduct and behaviour
3) Trust

We think that living in this way produces amazing outcomes. It seems as though miracles happen! But actually the miracles are just the everyday results of careful, mindful choices made in the context of these three things.