A most important half hour

On Saturday of the event, I'm going to stop talking at 11:30 so people can get things out of their rooms by noon, those who are leaving Saturday afternoon, and so we can say goodbye to them. Some people will need rides to the airport about that time and so people from my family might be off driving.

We will need to vacate the big room and the room where the younger kids' toys are so it can be re-set for someone else's New Year's Eve party. We're keeping the south room, where the games and older kids' things will be, for our Saturday night room, so anything that's ours can be moved to that room, to be dealt with in the afternoon.

I'm deputizing everyone to help that happen smoothly. Don't let me speak past 11:30, no matter how much I might hint or beg.

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Gratuitous image: Marty, tumbleweed, mountain; in the parking lot of Central New Mexico Community College, when his jeep wouldn't start and I rescued him with jumper cables. Tadaaa!

Nice note from Pam

In an exchange on Facebook:

Pam Sorooshian 10:19pm Nov 11
I'm SUPER excited about ALL - the gathering in Albuquerque. I think it is going to be deeply thoughtful and sweetly fun and probably will challenge our thinking, too....I know enough of the people coming to have a sense of what to expect!

Ten dads, so far

I'm not talking biology; some might be step dads or even less formal significant-others, I didn't ask, but there seem to be ten adult males scheduled at the moment to be here in December. So just in case someone's been worried about that aspect, of the 54 people that I have on my list (a few more have muttered about coming but haven't confirmed), ten seem to be men of the dad-age. :-)

In case anyone would like to pass on some writing by and for dads, I have a collection: SandraDodd.com/dads

And so that each post will have a photo, here's picture of James Daniel, who will be here, his wife Julie, and their son Adam, our 9:00 Saturday morning speaker:

Twenty to thirty families, so far

I think we will have one to three adults from twenty to thirty families, about a dozen little kids and a dozen or more teens. That's a rough guess. Some people asked. :-)

Because there was no tiered registration-cost schedule, some people have made hotel reservations and gotten airline tickets and still not yet registered for the conference. I don't mind, but it means I don't have a count. We have enough to pay for speakers' travel, and not quite enough rooms rented yet to get the conference rooms comped, but they'll be discounted.

Gratuitous photo of Holly and some mannequins at Sears:

Deb Lewis has a plan

Deb will speak on how be develop the courage and confidence it takes to unschool.

Here was her initial description, and I loved the enthusiastic flow of her writing here:

I want to talk about how unschooling parents probably can’t expect the understanding and support of extended family and friends but how being honest can give them courage and credibility.
And I intend to make these points:
That being honest doesn’t mean being unkind.
Honesty has far reaching benefits.
That our culture has certain (wrong) ideas about children that make unschooling seem crazy to the mainstream population.
And that emerging science about babies and children seems to suggest radical unschoolers are right. (There’s some research by Alison Gopnik and some from MIT I’ll use as supporting evidence for this claim.)

I know it doesn’t sound like it all connects but it really does.

I think it will be a good segue to the grown unschoolers.

It's been added to the schedule.

If anyone reading here isn't yet familiar with Deb's style and ideas, please read here: SandraDodd.com/deblewis.

Holly and Luke, not so recently

This is what two of the unschoolers who will be there looked like one night at Jill's house in 2010. It's Luke Davidson and Holly Dodd, hanging out with computers and a time-lapse camera designed to help people watch plants grow.

New presentation for the program

Because the Daniel family is coming from London, I'm adding a talk at 9:00 Saturday morning.

How I learn, by Adam Daniel (with some help from his mum)

By Saturday morning you will have met Adam (and Julie and James), and I'm sure you'll be willing to get up a bit early that day to hear Adam and Julie.

I'll add this to the schedule, and create a bio page for Adam, who is six, loves Star Wars, and skis well. In July, the Daniels hosted a wonderful one-day conference in London, and Adam helped with the site procurement, organization and announcements.

I lifted these recent photos from facebook: