All my schemes in one handy spot.
Last updated: May 2023.
🚀 Current projects
The Adventures of Blake: my current writing project
Unschool Adventures: my travel programs for teens and young adults
Mentoring: pro bono mentorship for young adult self-directed learners in 2023
🪄 Recent projects
Off-Trail Learning: my podcast about alternative education and self-directed learning, running since 2015 (on hiatus since Oct 2022)
GrownUnschoolers.com is a website sharing long-form profiles of—yup, you guessed it!—grown unschoolers, in their own words. I devised the idea; the site is now managed by Maya Landers.
Free Range Exchange: Facilitating international homestays and exchanges for home/un/alt-schoolers.
Self-Directed Learning 101: A 12-week online microschool that I ran with 25 teenagers in Fall 2020, transformed into an IRL workshop.
How to Stay Motivated as a Self-Directed Learner: a free audio workshop for teenagers and their parents.
Teenage Liberation Handbook: I served as editor for the third (and final) edition of Grace Llewellyn’s The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
Online teen meetups: In spring/summer 2020 (early pandemic) I hosted free meetups for self-directed teens from all over the world.
👴 Older but still kicking
Original videos: My friend Addison and I put together four original videos about self-directed learning in 2018. Fun + incredibly challenging work!
Worldschooler college portfolio: In 2018 I helped Kate Alonso, a worldschooler and former UA participant, to create a digital portfolio for submitting to colleges. She agreed to make the portfolio public. (Spoiler alert: she got into her top choice college!)
The Way of Adventure: In a 2016 I built a self-paced online course that explains my ideas about adventure. (I incentivized myself to complete this with a $500 Stickk commitment.)
Launchpad: a 3-week, email-based productivity course for self-directed learners ages 14-21. Created in 2017, it cost money for many years… now it’s 100% free!
How to Live Nowhere: A free, short, online book offering advice for 20- and 30-somethings with wanderlust. Written in 2016.
What to Do Instead of School is a free PDF with practical activity suggestions for self-directed teenagers. Created as a result of a daily blogging challenge that I gave myself.
The Unschool Adventures Guide to Travel Fundraising: a free PDF book for teenagers who want to raise money for international travel through crowdfunding. Written in 2012. (Funded by a $1,634 IndieGoGo campaign.)
Grown Unschooler Opportunity Network: a Facebook group sharing opportunities… for… grown unschoolers.
🎊 Gatherings I’ve organized
Montana SDE Founders Rodeo: a long weekend at a ranch in Montana for a small group of SDE program founders. Organized in 2022.
Young Professionals in Self-Directed Education: a 3-day gathering for people in their 20s and 30s who are trying to make a career out of self-directed education. Organized in 2019.
Superstitious Guacamole Placebo Program: a 4-day semi-secret gathering for grown unschoolers in 2017.
Trailblazer: a 5-day gathering in 2013 for college-aged self-directed learners, held in Asheville, North Carolina. Our proudest achievement: a flash mob.
☠️ Dead projects
Winter summer camp: Creating a summer camp in the southern hemisphere—morphed into the Patagonia Retreat.
Zero Tuition College: The companion website for my book Better Than College, Zero Tuition College served as a online hub for young adults who were self-directing their learning through the college years instead of attending a conventional institution. Due to the challenges of maintaining a social network website (which are many), I took the site down in 2017. (Funded by a $2,370 IndieGoGo campaign.)
OffTrailLearning.com: A resource website I published in 2016. I eventually took the site down because I wasn’t committed to updating it. (Creation incentivized with a $1000 Stickk goal.)
Hogwarts for Unschoolers: In 2013, a California unschooling family approached me with the idea of collaborating on the creation of a boarding school for unschoolers. I got very excited about this and put in some serious effort, but alas, the family got cold feet and the collaboration never materialized.
🌎 Unschool Adventures trips
Since 2008 I’ve designed and run one-of-a-kind international adventure trips and leadership programs, each a unique project in itself. Full details here.
- Patagonia Retreat 2023 (4 weeks)
- Humans of México 2022 (6 weeks)
- New Zealand 2019 (6 weeks)*
- Spain 2018 (6 weeks)
- Southeast Asia 2017 (7 weeks)
- Dance Recess 2017 (1 week)
- Argentina 2017 (12 weeks)
- Real World Retreat 2016 (4 weeks)*
- New Zealand 2016 (6 weeks)
- Adventure Semester 2015 (10 weeks)
- Nepal 2014 (6 weeks)
- Writing Retreat 2014 (4 weeks)*
- Buenos Aires Tango 2014 (4 weeks)
- Writing Retreat 2013 (4 weeks)*
- Trailblazer 2013 (5 days)
- New Zealand 2013 (6 weeks)
- Writing Retreat 2012 (4 weeks)
- Asheville Intensive 2012 (1 week)
- Argentina 2012 (4 weeks)
- Writing Retreat 2011 (4 weeks)
- Zero Tuition College Camp 2011 (1 week)
- South America 2011 (7 weeks)
- Fall Leadership Retreat 2010 (7 weeks)
- Spring Leadership Retreat 2010 (3 weeks)
- Australia 2010 (7 weeks)
- Writing Retreat 2009 (4 weeks)
- Argentina 2008 (6 weeks)
* = helped organize, but did not run myself
😁 Fun stuff
Stickers I created, for sale.
Settlers of Catan: Theory and Practice: a 5-day project I ran at Not Back to School Camp in 2012, in which Matt Sanderson and I taught campers how to become completely ruthless players of Catan
Unschool Adventures April Fool’s trips:
Go on, do it! — Challenge Me