Session 1 - 10:40 am - 1:05 pm

10:40 am - 11:00 am

Workspace Education Students - More details soon.

11:05 am - 11:25 am

Working Together to Spread the Vision

with ~ Ken Danford

The AERO movement includes many different models sharing a common vision. We are all good at understanding and defining our differences, as those are the things that make each of us unique. For the long-term growth of AERO and for the sake of offering more young people the opportunity to utilize self-directed learning, we might benefit from defining our commonalties. What do we share, and how can we leverage our various assets and locations to reach a goal of knowing that all children have some option to traditional schooling? Most communities have at most one program or school that offers self-directed learning, so if we all are able to refer people to each other instead of staying in our lanes, we can immediately and exponentially expand our impact. Imagine a world where Agile Learning Centers promote unschooling and Liberated Learners who in turn respectfully direct people to democratic free schools. We can create this circle. The sooner the better.

Presenter Bio ~ Kenneth Danford is the Co-Founder and Executive of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens. His new book Learning is Natural, School is Optional: The North Star approach to offering teens a head start on life shares his journey from being a public school loyalist and reformer to building a program that supports young people to opt out of school to pursue self-directed learning. Since 1996, Kenneth has coached more than 800 teens and their families to explore living and learning without school. Kenneth’s vision and commitment include welcoming all interested teens to North Star, making the approach accessible for every family in his community. He has been attending and presenting at AERO conferences since 2007.

11:30 am - 11:50 am

Africans Born in the Americas: Healing, Ancestors, & African Spirituality

with ~ Dr. Consuela Ward

This presentation reaches back to African cosmologies, traces them in church & other Black experiences, and offers participants a road map to investigate their truest selves & alignment of their destiny. The focus will be on how this all related to youth and education.

11:55 am - 12:15 pm

Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?

with ~ Blake Boles

In the future, if your kid clearly isn't fitting into the conventional school system, will other parents consider you unreasonable for considering alternatives? Or will they ask, with a hint of incredulity, "But why are you still sending your kids to school?"

In the future I believe that unconventional schools and self-directed approaches like unschooling will no longer need to justify their existence, because they will clearly offer an equal (or superior) path to financial security. As a society, we're not there yet. But for an ever-growing number of people, this reality already exists—and the trends are only going in the right direction.

Join Blake for a preview of his next book, Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?, which aims to nudge skeptical parents into seriously considering self-directed alternatives, today, for their kids who don't mesh with conventional school.

Presenter Bio ~ Blake Boles is the founder and director of Unschool Adventures and the author of The Art of Self-Directed Learning, Better Than College, and College Without High School. He hosts the Off-Trail Learning podcast, speaks for alternative schools, writes for The Alliance for Self-Directed Education, and has keynoted multiple homeschooling conferences.

Blake lives without a permanent home base. He enjoys working from coffee shops in foreign lands, following summers in the southern hemisphere, and going on long adventures in the mountains.

He and his work have appeared on The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, BBC Travel, Psychology Today, Fox Business, TEDx, The Huffington Post, USA Today, NPR affiliate radio, and the blogs of Wired and The Wall Street Journal.

In 2003 Blake was studying astrophysics at UC Berkeley when he stumbled upon the works of John Taylor Gatto, Grace Llewellyn, and other alternative education pioneers. Deeply inspired by the philosophy of unschooling, Blake custom-designed his final two years of college to study education full-time. After graduating he joined the Not Back to School Camp community and began writing and speaking widely on the subject of self-directed learning.

In his previous lives, Blake worked as a high-volume cook, delivery truck driver, summer camp director, Aurora Borealis research assistant, math tutor, outdoor science teacher, camp medic, ski resort market researcher, web designer, and windsurfing and tree climbing instructor. His biggest passion is sharing his enthusiasm and experience with young adults who are blazing their own trails through life. He was born in 1982.

You can read more about him here .

12:20 pm - 12:40 pm

Mine Conkbayir - More details coming soon.

12:45 pm - 1:05 pm

An Unschooling Journey

with - Molly

Molly shares her unschooling experience and the realities of education without schooling.

Presenter Bio ~ Molly Roughan is a 13-year-old unschooler from Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has many interests but her top passions include baking, crafting, acting, reading fantasy books, writing fan fiction, and doing math. She is also more than halfway on her path to a first-degree black belt in martial arts, in which she takes classes three times a week. Molly’s interest in martial arts led to a curiosity about Korean language and culture, and she learns with a native Korean language tutor several times a week. She also attends a self-directed learning center for unschoolers twice a week where she does computer programming, drawing, theatre, and hangs out with friends. Follow her on Instagram @mollys_makery.

Session 2 - 2:50 pm - 4:25 pm

2:50 - 3:10 pm

Libraries as Centers for Self-Directed Education

with ~ Peter Gray

Public libraries are gradually becoming much more than places to borrow books. Many libraries now have maker spaces, a few are providing free play opportunities for kids, and some have made special accommodations to meet the varying needs of homeschoolers. The Alliance for Self-Directed Education is currently conducting a study, supported by the Woodshouse Foundation, of the feasibility of public libraries becoming kid-friendly general centers for Self-Directed Education. We are envisioning a world in which a full set of resources supporting Self-Directed Education are available to everyone, free, through the system of public libraries.

Presenter Bio ~ Peter Gray is a Research Professor of Psychology at Boston College. He has conducted and published research in neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, anthropology, and education. He is author of an internationally acclaimed introductory psychology textbook (now in its 8^th edition), which views all of psychology from an evolutionary perspective. His current research focuses on the role of play in human evolution and how children educate themselves, through play and exploration, when they are free to do so. He has expanded on these ideas in his book, Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life as well as in academic articles. He also authors a regular blog called Freedom to Learn, for Psychology Today magazine.

3:15 - 3:35 pm

Racial and Social Justice in the Classroom and Beyond

with ~ Erika Strauss Chavarria

This session will focus on racial and social justice advocacy work both in the classroom, within the union, and beyond. The session will highlight how I teach from a racial and social justice lens, as well as the racial justice work being done on the local, state, and national level in regard to issues such as the school to prison pipeline, immigrant rights, culturally responsive education, Black Lives Matter at School, and more.

Presenter Bio ~ Erika Strauss Chavarria teaches high school Spanish in Howard County, Maryland. An advocate for racial and social justice, she became a practitioner and trainer of Restorative Justice in an effort to end the School- to-Prison Pipeline. She is currently keeps a restorative classroom. Additionally, she served on the NEA Task Force on the School-to-Prison Pipeline and School Discipline and is now a National Education Association Director representing Maryland, a Director for the Maryland State Education Association, and a Board Member of the organization Racial Justice NOW!.

3:40 - 4:00 pm

Teacher Liberation: How do we (Self-Directed Education leaders) make this shift more possible?

with ~ Cassidy Younghans

We are building a movement, and there is power in numbers. Some educators, like many of us, are dissatisfied with the current education system and yearning to learn about alternatives. What support can we provide to make the shift from public school to Self-Directed Education possible? What pathways are available? How can SDE leaders support more educators in making this shift?

Presenter Bio ~ Cassidy Younghans taught 7th grade English in a public school for 5 years before shifting her path towards Self-Directed Education. She spent the 2018-2019 year interning at multiple alternative educational spaces, including North Star (with 23 years of history) and Houston Sudbury School, as well as visiting many others. She also spent 3 months working at Makarios Community School and Inspired Learning Academy. This September, along with 3 partners, Cassidy is opening EPIC Life Learning Community in the Dallas area. EPIC will be incorporating aspects of many strong Self-Directed Education models, including use of Agile Tools and Liberated Learners practices.

Find more about EPIC at epiclifelearningcommunity.com

Read articles by Cassidy at cassidyyounghans.com

4:05 - 4:25 pm

Life and Learning at Princeton Learning Cooperative

with ~ Gabbie & Delilah

We are looking to share with you our journey with self directed learning. In this presentation we will talk about PLC, what the program is like, the community, and the stigma we have experienced around self directed learning.

Presenter Bio ~ Delilah is a 15 year old who has been unschooling since she was in kindergarten. Her interests lie in math, psychology, art and music. She is a current student at PLC and is hoping to get a degree in engineering from a four year college.

Presenter Bio ~ Gabbie is a 15 year old who has many interests, including art, music, history, psychology. She is interested in veterinary medicine as a future career path. She is a current student at Princeton Learning Cooperative and has been unschooling since she was little.