Explaining Self-Directed Education to Strangers: It’s Gonna Get Weird
Goodies from the event! A notebook, Laila Ali's book, and more!
This past week, I had the opportunity to explain self-directed education to several strangers. How do you think it went?
I attended this great event. The event was for business owners receiving coaching from Chase’s Coaching for Impact program. Though I am not in this program, I knew someone—the mom of a former learner—and that’s how I squeezed in. Man was I thankful for the invite.
It was held at a great venue, the one and only, THE Brooklyn Museum. Laila Ali, a world champion and the daughter of Muhammad Ali, spoke for 45 minutes and dropped multiple truth bombs and gems. She said don’t be bitter, just get better.
At the Brooklyn Museum!
The event was held in that big room on the 3rd floor where all the coolest events are held. Incredibly high ceilings, cool lightning, archways, and a kind of big courtyard in the center of this enormous open space.
The mom, her friend, and I were having a wonderful conversation after Laila Ali left the stage. I told mom my experience working with her teenager, and it was wonderful to bond over it, discuss how we ended up meeting and working together, and sharing in all her son’s journey and progress. At one point, I was sharing about when her son and I spoke after a year post-mentorship. I told her son that I’m not a teacher, and he immediately replied: You’re a liar. You are a teacher. The mom, her friend, and I all had a good laugh about that.
She already knows what I do, for the most part anyway. She gets it. But most don’t.
What I really want to say to people when they ask what I do is I want to tell them times are getting weirder and you’re either with it or you’re not.
An old friend from Goddard College and I talked last night, and she told me the future. She said it’s going to get weird. More natural was what she meant, closer to the laws of nature than to the laws of humans. Nature is funky. Though we are nature ourselves, we pretend to not be. We are Great apes, one of five species of Great apes on this planet, but I think many of us don’t know that.
We use deodorant and iron our clothes. Couldn’t possibly be an ape! (Wrong. Still apes.)
She didn’t mean it in a bad way. For me, I’m very into it. I’m already weird. People tell me this. Sometimes, it’s a compliment, and other times, it is not. Even if they didn’t say anything, I would still know. Words are only a small percent of communication, and the message is clear: I was not born normal. So, for me, when my friend said it was going to get weird, that was sweet rap music to my ears.
My response was emotional. Her telling me the future, as she sees it, validated my own weirdness, and even this business, Off Da Beaten Path Learning.
Before I return to the story about trying to describe self-directed education to strangers, let’s casually define weird and normal.
Enormous caveat: Both of these words are subjective, cultural across time and space, and overall amorphous. So good luck, me, in defining them. But I will try. Let’s start with the status quo, which is *currently* normalcy.
Both, I believe, are defined in the response of others. So…
To be normal is to get by, likely understood and respected. It is the experience of existing without an abundance of daily confused looks and reactions. To be normal is to move within the confines of the narrow path laid out in this modern world, and to be relatively into it. The 9 to 5 job. The brand names.
The word confused is key. Some normal people receive an abundance of gaze, but it may be due to their influence, popularity, beauty, whatever. The “good” things. Whatever that means. To be considered normal is certainly a type of privilege, at least in our current ecosystem. Normal people get away with things that weird people do not.
Some synonyms that come to mind are: Mainstream, Neurotypical, Cis, white, and hetero, Able-bodied, Regular. The American Dream.
To be weird is to garner confusion from the masses. Let’s be clear: there is nothing inherently wrong with weirdness. This is also not anything wrong with the masses of people on this planet. Not at all. Simply, we have all internalized the norms, the air, the culture and pressures around us. So that’s usually what we’re putting back out.
Change happens when things get weird. Innovation happens. Progress. Evolution. But diversity is scary because it’s unfamiliar and human beings, maybe all living beings, we tend to like what we know. Conversely, and for evolutionary reasons, we don’t tend to like whatever is unfamiliar.
To be weird often comes with identifying as a minority. The more intersectional your identities, the more likely you are to feel a bit (or a **** ton) out of place.
Sup weirdos
My theory is that the people who need self-directed education and who most enjoy the freedom that comes with it, are those who either feel or identify with weirdness. They may experience a world wherein they feel alienated and/or restrained in their creativity and imagination.
Anyway, back to the story from the Chase event. I’m meeting all these people, and we’re there all handing out our business cards and QR codes. People asked if I was a teacher. I’m not. People asked if I offer tutoring. Not really, not unless the learner chooses it. People got confused, which happens a lot.
What is fascinating but also completely not surprising at all is how this is such a common problem for alternative educators, especially the entrepreneurial ones.
Here is a fictional exchange to describe what often happens, an amalgam based on dozens of interactions.
Mom: “I still don’t know what you do.”
Me: “1-on-1 self-directed education!”
Mom: “Ok, but what is that?”
Me: “Empowerment through choice!”
Mom: “Again, I’m confused.”
Me: “We meet weekly to guide learners through their chosen path and to their definition of success.”
Mom: *getting frustrated and losing interest*
Mom: *gives understanding another shot, because this is for her kid*
“Soo… What does that mean? What does a meeting look like?”
Me: “Well, it’s different for everyone!”
Mom: *throws in the towel* girl I gotta go
I am not using this post to attempt and define self-directed education. For that, I will tap in ASDE, the Alliance for Self-Directed Education. Go to their website, read through their explanatory articles. They have a plethora of resources for you. This post is more so to describe the experience of trying to explain it. Secondarily, this post is also meant to demonstrate how weird people think SDE is.
Well, to that, I say—
It’s going to get weirder.
Are you with it? Or nah?
If you want to discuss 1-on-1 self-directed education, reach out to me. I am an alternative educator and the founder of Off Da Beaten Path Learning LLC.
Stay weird, good people.
