Resource Author
Yusef Seward
Unschooler
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I’ve been unschooled pretty much all of my life, and I’m 15 years old. My mom started out homeschooling me as a toddler, and then we switched to unschooling when I was in first grade. Unschooling is freedom. Freedom to follow whatever your passions are, at your pace, and the way that you want. Different people learn things in different ways and at different speeds, and when you’re unschooled, you can do just that.

A high school girl—Meghan—brushes her horse outside of a barn.
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Unschooling, however, isn’t always completely fantastic. Certain challenges are there vs traditional schooling, but there are also a lot of upsides. The advice I’ll give in this article should help you quite a bit on your unschooling journey, and it’s based on my own personal experience.

  1. 1

    Don’t Be Afraid To Do What You Want

    Like I said before, unschooling is freedom. If your passion is something like underwater basket weaving, you can do it when you’re unschooled. That’s the beauty of this learning path. For learning, set goals for yourself or give yourself personal projects. If you enjoy video editing, try editing one video every few days or once a week. If you enjoy coding, look up projects for your programming language and do them for fun until you can code proficiently. After you’ve mastered the basics, move on to more advanced things.

  2. 2

    Learn The Fundamentals (to the extent they’re helpful to you)!

    If you need to learn basic math, reading comprehension, science, and so on to pursue your interests, workbooks can be really helpful. Spectrum Workbooks are my favorite, and they come in almost all subjects. Knowing the basics gives you a basis for the rest of your life that’s important to have. Working these into a curriculum for yourself is ideal, and remember to follow whatever it is you want to do in addition to doing these.

  3. 3

    Have Fun!

    Having fun is one of the most important parts of unschooling. Being excited to learn and experience new things is a very valuable quality most people don’t have due to the nature of traditional schooling.

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Enjoy whatever it is you’re doing, and never stop wanting to learn more, even past adulthood. Unschooling builds the foundation for you to have that quality for the rest of your life.”

Yusuf, 15-year-old unschooler

Thank you for reading! I wish you the best on your unschooling journey.

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Meghan tending to her horse
About the author

Yusef Seward

Yusuf Seward is a 15-year-old unschooled drone pilot living in Chicago, Illinois. He spent the majority of his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia, where he became proficient in code language and joined the Discbots FIRST robotics team as their lead programmer. With FIRST robotics he also traveled to Ghana for the Pan-African Robotics Competition in 2019. Yusuf discovered FPV drone flying back in 2018 after watching a viral video of someone flying an FPV drone above a train. Afterwards, he built his first drone and began practicing from sun up to sun down and he took off from there. Yusuf started a YouTube channel where he creates and uploads various FPV videos weekly, and a blog QuadandPilot.com where he shares everything about drone flying. Yusuf has already been booked for professional drone cinematography and he plans to fly FPV as his career with an aim to start a production company that specializes in FPV and aerial video. In his spare time, he also races drones online and in-person around the Midwest.