Unschooled Abby’s First School? Princeton.

. . . and beyond “schooliness” - notes of an uncensored teacher

Unschooled Abby’s First School? Princeton.

Never heard of the “unschooling” movement? Here’s a very interesting case study, from an article originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times. Full article here.

You Have to Trust that the Child will Learn
by Rosalind Rossi, Education Reporter

Eighteen-year-old Abby Stewart got word this month that she won early admission to elite Princeton University, even though she has never set foot in a high school classroom. She also wrapped up a huge challenge - dancing the Snow Queen role in “The Nutcracker Suite” at the Athenaeum Theatre - largely because she has never set foot in a high school classroom.
Five years ago, frustrated with the pace and depth of a Chicago Public School gifted program, Abby withdrew from eighth grade and entered uncharted territory - a branch of home schooling often called “unschooling.” Under this ultimate form of “child-directed” learning, Abby used no set curriculum. She called her own hours, worked at her own pace and, most important, followed her own interests -without taking tests or receiving grades. Some days, she’d wake up, grab a bowl of cereal and go back to bed with a book.

Since then, she has amassed a six-page reading list ranging from Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species to Holt, Rinehart and Winston’s Calculus to 16 Shakespearean plays. “I do exactly what feels right to me,” says Abby. “If I want to just read literature for three weeks or three months, that’s perfectly fine with my family.”

The flexibility of unschooling made it easier for Abby to take ballet classes six days a week, resulting in the shopping bag full of Pointe shoes in the corner of her Hyde Park bedroom and her recent role in Ballet Chicago’s Studio Company production of “The Nutcracker Suite.”

Abby also volunteers three days a week at the Field Museum, where she reduces animal carcasses to bones. Her first day at work, she was given a pair of gloves and a scalpel and directed to the remains of a Siberian tiger.

“Compared to a kid in high school with worms and frogs, it’s pretty heady stuff,” said her dad, Dana Stewart, a sleep researcher at the University of Chicago Hospitals. . . .