our unschooling

Yesterday I think I felt what a true believer unschooler feels like.

We went to a musical event downtown. There was Aztec and Mexican music and dancing. As usual Z wanted to dance. At first she felt a little embarrassed to be the only one dancing but the music took her over and soon she really let go and was twirling and stepping and dancing with the rhythm.

All around people noticed and smiled at her.

Z has taken dance classes - when she was 3 1/2 - 4 1/2 she had a ballet class. She was very good and at the end of the year they promoted her and skipped her a "grade" so she could dance with older girls.

But Z didn't want to continue dancing. The school she went to spent months preparing for the big recital (it was a big and fancy recital) and Z had learned the dance very quickly and was bored and frustrated to have to practice the same thing over and over.

She told me that she liked to dance but she didn't want to have to practice the same things that she already knew for so long.

The next year we looked around for other schools and even tried one that was pretty good but I felt that it was too regimented for Z.

Z is a natural dancer. If she never took another dance lesson she could still dance very well. If she did take more lessons, the wrong lessons, I am afraid she might lose her inner drive and her confidence to dance the way her heart tells her to. Her dances are a wonderful expression of the music - she doesn't need someone to tell her how to dance.

But I think she would benefit from the opportunity to learn how to dance certain ways and certain styles.

I would love to find a dance hall that just played music where she could dance free form and also provided clinics on certain dances styles and moves that she could join if she chose to. And then later (she is only six) if she wanted to study dancing (like ballet or tap or jazz) more formally then she could make that decision. But I haven't found anything like that around here. It is all formal studying (mostly ballet for her age) or pee-wee type stuff that wouldn't interest her.

I feel very strongly about protecting her natural passion to dance. I think that if she took a dance class that she didn't choose herself and that wasn''t respectful of her passion, it could be damaging.

Isn't this what unschoolers are talking about? Do you have something you feel this way about for your child? Maybe art or a hobby?