(Last updated: September 2024)
🚀 Current projects
Dirtbag Rich: a book, a podcast, a TikTok… all of the above! (details TBA)
The Adventures of Blake: stories from my life on the road
Unschool Adventures: travel & leadership programs for teens & young adults
Dance Connection: a workshop series for partner dancers
🌈 Recent projects
Do What You Love & Die Trying: a memoir-ifesto for young adults of all ages, now free to download
Off-Trail Learning: my alternative education podcast (2015-2022)
Free Range Exchange: international homestays and exchanges for home/un/alt-schoolers.
Self-Directed Learning 101: A 12-week online microschool I ran in Fall 2020, becoming an IRL workshop
How to Stay Motivated as a Self-Directed Learner: a free audio workshop for teenagers and their parents.
Teenage Liberation Handbook: editing the third (and final) edition of Grace Llewellyn’s The Teenage Liberation Handbook.
Online teen meetups: In the early pandemic, I hosted free meetups for self-directed teens all over the world
👴 Older projects
Grown Unschoolers: a website sharing long-form profiles of grown unschoolers.
Original videos: In 2018 my friend Addison and I put together four original videos about self-directed learning
Worldschooler college portfolio: In 2018 I helped worldschooler Kate Alonso create a digital portfolio for college applications, which she agreed to let me post publicly. (Spoiler alert: she got into her top choice college!)
Launchpad: a 3-week, email-based productivity course for self-directed learners ages 14-21.
The Way of Adventure: In a 2016 I built a self-paced online course that explains my beliefs about adventure.
How to Live Nowhere: A free, short guidebook for 20- and 30-somethings with wanderlust.
What to Do Instead of School: a free PDF with practical activity suggestions for self-directed teenagers.
The Unschool Adventures Guide to Travel Fundraising: a free PDF for teenagers who want to raise money for international travel through crowdfunding. Written in 2012, but still helpful.
Grown Unschooler Opportunity Network: a Facebook group sharing opportunities… for… grown unschoolers.
🎊 Gatherings I’ve organized
Montana SDE Founders Rodeo (2022): a long weekend at a ranch in Montana for SDE program founders.
Young Professionals in Self-Directed Education (2019): a 3-day gathering for 20-/30-somethings trying to make a career out of self-directed education.
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. Don’t miss the flash mob.
☠️ Dead projects
Unschool Adventures Club: an online community for self-directed teens who want to take interesting risks, together.
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, ZTC served as a hub for young people self-directing through the college years instead of attending college. Due to the challenges of maintaining a social network website (spammers, security, updates), I took the site down in 2017.
OffTrailLearning.com: A resource website published in 2016. I eventually took the site down because I wasn’t committed to updating it, and then someone else bought the domain and uploaded the exact same content that previously existed there.
Hogwarts for Unschoolers: In 2013, a California unschooling family approached me with the idea of collaborating on creating 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
Each of my teen programs is a unique project in itself. Here’s where we’ve gone.
- Berlin 2023 (4 weeks)
- 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 DIY Immersion Strike Force 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)
* = organized but did not personally serve as trip leader
😁 Silly stuff
Stickers I created
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, challenge me!