Unschooling-friendly community

[Julie B]

My family is moving to an unschooling-friendly ecovillage sometime in 2009. My dream is scooping you all up from here and transplanting you to my neighborhood! If you've ever dreamed of living in community with unschoolers, you might want to check out our website: http://www.whitehawk.org

I should be clear that this is not an unschooling-only community. It's an ecovillage where a number of the families already involved are either unschoolers or interested in it. Of the six families with children, four are homeschooling families, and two of those are unschoolers. The other two households (with pre-school-age kids) are interested in unschooling. We will eventually have a total of thirty households.

We're just down the road (10 min.) from progressive Ithaca, NY, and we'll have our own bus stop so it will be easy to take advantage of all the great stuff going on there.

[Katherine]

We have a red-tailed hawk here who likes to perch on the electric lines and survey the fields... probably looking for mice and moles and such. There used to be one where I grew up too about 30 miles from here. They have a huge territory.

[Michele James-Parham]

There is a huge difference between intentional communities vs. co-housing/ecovillages (which are usually co-housing). Co-housing is more of an egalitarian well thought out neighborhood whereas an intentional community is usually (but not always) tied together by religious/philosophical ideologies.

On a side note...we've met some Zendik folks who were trying to 'recruit' down in New Orleans back in 2002. They were nice, but once we looked into their community and found out that you'd have to change your last name to Zendik...well, let's just say that it was too much for our hippie-asses!

[Meredith]

"intentional community is usually (but not always) tied together by religious/philosophical ideologies"

Philosophical ideologies can be pretty vague, though. In my area there are four Radical Faerie communities, which are organized around that ideology - but that's a pretty diverse and fluid philosophy any way you look at it!

George and I met at one of those coms and lived there for a few years. There were two other families with kids about the same age as Ray during that time. The biggest challenge was that each family had its own set of expectations as to where "family" ended and "community" began - expectations that none of us realized we had until we'd be in the middle of a conflict, all saying "well, its understood that...." duh, maybe not. We weren't unschooling at the time, but all of us homeschooled and even there we found we had really different expectations as to how much other community members would play a part in the "education" of the children and what that would look like. Good grief, I don't even want to think about the kind of draaaaaawnn out process that would have had to happen to unschool food or tv... yikes.

There are definitely things I miss about living communally, though. Mostly the sociability - I loved that I could go to the community kitchen any time and probably find someone to hang out with *and* I could go to my own house and ignore the world if I wanted.

The really great thing is, that community is right next door to me - we can go any time and Ray often walks over there to hang out. Its not his ideal, its very hippie-crunchy and he likes tv and white flour and all that horrible evil stuff ;) but he's part of a monthly drum circle and is meeting more friends through the community - and its a great place for him to meet travelling jugglers and fire-spinners and learn new tricks. So to some extent I have a tiny little eco-village of my own - me and my tenants and the Pumpkin Hollow Community. Fun.

[Oliveoyl]

Not only are you moving to an ecovillage with unschoolers living there, you are moving to a high number of unschoolers and homeschoolers in the county! There is an email list called FUNSchoolers which stands for Finger Lakes Unschooling Network - though I will warn you there are many people on the list who aren't true "unschoolers." There is another list that is for Tompkins County Unschoolers that is mostlyy unschoolers. I think both of those groups are Yahoo Groups.
Olive Oyl, Tompkins Co NY

[Julie B]

Thanks--great to see a local here! I'm on the RUNNY email list and get updates about the Tompkins County group. Hoping to attend a gathering soon...

[Julie B]

An update...

You can take a peek at our progress here. I just met a mom to a 2yo (and potential ecovillage resident) yesterday who was very excited to see the word unschooling in our bios. Looks like we're starting to build that tribe!

[Julie B]

Ask away! I think I need to add you as a friend, and then you can email me by going to the "My Page" link at the top. All you have to do is accept the friend request first.

[Heather Greek]

This might be interesting for you all, I was a sannyasin with the people of Bhagwan Shree Rajsneesh. We wore shades of orange and a mala around our necks,met up at ashrams to meditate and do workshops.I joined very young. My english teacher in high school was one and he gave me books from Bhagwan.

[Katherine]

LOL... whoa horsies! I didn't even change my last name when I got married.. so yeah... I mean NO. ;) I had no idea that was one of the deals there. When I looked into it I thought the people seemed real neat but the founder worship I just couldn't get into at all. Eek. There was a lot on their page about that.

[Kimberly Slage]

This is too cool.

[Robin CW]

For years, I was looking for an intentional community, welcoming to an unschooling single mom with lots of kids and pets, in California or Oregon. I've lost track of the directory websites that list many such communities. My 16yo daughter and I were watching the newsclip and just saying wistfully,"Awww, we wanna live someplace like that..."

[Julie B]

Maybe you're looking for www.cohousing.org?