If We Collaborate Could We Light a Gentle Unschooling Fire?

I’m looking for collaborators. People to work with. Other bloggers and podcasters and vloggers and authors who are passionate about spreading the unschooling message. In a gentle way.

Helen Keller said:

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.

And Louisa May Alcott said:

It takes two flints to make a fire.

I only have to look at my family to see how much can be achieved when a few people pool their talents and work together.

When we’re filming a music video, Imogen is our ‘star’, the reason for the video, but each of us has her own essential role to play. We share our talents and ideas as we braid hair, put together appropriate clothes, apply make-up, operate the video cameras, take photos, chat for the behind-the-scenes clips, hand out coffee, play the audio track at the right time, encourage, laugh and have fun. Later, we edit the video, publish it, promote it, and write blog posts before we go back to the beginning and record a new song and film a new video.

But we don’t just work together on music videos. We pool our talents for other projects too.

I’d never have published my children’s novels without my daughters’ help. Imogen formatted my manuscript. Charlotte drew the illustrations to go with my words. All the girls read my stories and gave me constructive feedback and lots of encouragement.

Then there’s photography. Sophie is always helping me with the editing of my photos.

And what about my unschooling book, the one I’ve been writing for years? If it ever gets finished, it will be thanks to Gemma-Rose who is insisting I work on it during Camp NaNoWriMo next month. She is going to keep me accountable.

I love working as a team with my daughters, sharing ideas, mulling them over, extending them and then putting them into action. I know if we worked alone, we wouldn’t achieve nearly as much. Or have as much fun.

I also know that two unschooling parents working together to encourage and support and provide information will achieve more than one. However, even though I know this, I’m still a bit reluctant to write this post.

I say to myself, “Sue, no one will want to work with you. Remember how few people took you up on your guest post idea. You’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Just continue doing your own thing.”

But I’m not going to listen to myself. I’m going to take a risk. Sometimes stepping outside our comfort zones is scary. However, I’ll never know what will happen if I don’t try, will I? And really, the worst that can happen is silence. No feedback at all. I can live with that. I’ll just keep on doing my own thing.

So what do you think? Together we could promote unschooling in a gentle unconditional-loving-kind-of-way. How would we do that? I’m sure if we pooled our ideas, mulled them over, and then worked on them, we could come up with something amazing. We could light an unschooling fire. A gentle one.

If you haven’t got a blog or Youtube channel or podcast, we might still be able to work together. Perhaps you could write a guest post for this blog. Even though I didn’t get much response to my last appeal, I was grateful for Lucinda’s, Hamilton’s and Miles’ posts. They were all enjoyed by my readers, I’m sure.

If you’re interested, you could leave a comment. I’d love some feedback – not silence – to my idea!

Images: I took these photos at our last music video shoot. The completed video will be published tomorrow on Imogen’s Youtube channel. Please watch out for it. And if you’d like to be part of Team Elvis, please subscribe to Imogen’s channel. We’d love to have you on board!

Update:

If you’d like to watch Imogen’s latest music video, here it is!