LearningHappens has been, in one form or another, an email address of mine since 1990. Learning Happens is something I’ve known in the core of my being all my life. In the sixth grade at Giffin Elementary School thanks to David Bilbrey who was an awesome learning f̶a̶c̶i̶l̶i̶t̶a̶t̶o̶r̶  partner (disguised as a 6th grade teacher) I began to consciously embrace and internalized the concept that learning ought  to be self-directed, passion driven & shared amongst your community (be that community a classroom, neighborhood, county or world).  Moving on to South High School there were other learning f̶a̶c̶i̶l̶i̶t̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶  partners who further instilled the concept of passion-driven learning — chief among them Charles Baum & The Game. I attended college on my own terms seeking out learning outside of a scripted major. I learned during our family’s homeschooling journey to reconsider the concept of even considering leading a horse to water.
I gratefully acknowledge how absolutely blessed I have been as founder of HUUH+, EHSMT and the homeschool program for The Farm School to be one who scatters & tends to acorns in the forest garden of life-long learning and am so grateful and thankful to all the wonderful learning f̶a̶c̶i̶l̶i̶t̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s̶ partners I’ve encountered from my birth to today.

Ancora Imparo
(Still I learn)

More than you ever wanted to know about me:
She Her Hers Herself

Born on the Summer Solstice 1956 in Knoxville, named after my father Jack  (who was more or less named after his mother Lillian but her nickname was Jack), I have two older brothers (6 & 7 yrs older than me) that are Irish twins, one born on summer solstice , the other on the winter solstice. There seems to be a pattern here.  I was raised by liberal, folkie parents. Picked up and hugged by JFK as a child, have Rose Kennedy’s lipstick bolted on a napkin from a tea my mother hosted for her. Raised up at the altars of FDR and JFK.

615 has been my area code my entire life. I have lived in 5 zip codes over 65 yrs.

Started breaking up with Christianity on May 28, 1970
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/local/tennessee/2018/02/21/protests-and-progress-nixon-visit-put-knoxville-national-stage/358244002/
(https://www.knoxnews.com/…/protests-and…/358244002/) I am now a lapsed Unitarian Universalist.

Moved to Nashville from Knoxville in 1981, did a stint as corporate regional and marketing director for Mid & West TN with Kinko’s Copies. Burned out in 1988.

At this writing on 02/02/21 I am 45 days away from 45 years of weddedness – mostly bliss. Forty-one days away from the 37th anniversary of the birthing of my contribution to the gene pool.

Until 10 years ago I lived in a bubble of whiteness (SoKno then Donelson), moving to Antioch in 2010 opened my eyes to just how racist I really am. How utterly ingrained systemic racism is in every breath. Even before my first gasp of air, systemic racism was there.

I also labor against the patriarchy, genderism, ageism, ableism, classism & theocracy (to name a few).

I knit a little, am a Fountain pen & ink nerd, learning to make things on Cricut Joy and Maker, have lots of fabric – but do not sew. Collect spices. HATE to drive.

Hopepunk

I re-charge by gathering with and sharing meals with kith and kin. So 2020 ….

I am also an advocate of Life-Learning – home & community-based learning.

My (woefully neglected) website: https://learning-happens.org/welcome/

Our family life-learning journey:  In the mid 70’s I was in college – UT-K -College of Business majoring in accounting, and the universe saw fit to cross my path with David Olive. He and few others lured me from a fate of bean-counting & number crunching to the big wide wonderful world of #TheHumanities (aka Liberal Arts).

He also introduced me to the works of John Holt (if you are reading this you OUGHT to have read at least one book by Holt) and Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society) and some others.

After I obtained a divorce from my one-year starter marriage, David & I cohabited for a while and then decide to marry — our vows were inspired from the UU Wedding Handbook and entitled The Anarchist and The Feminist and included the concept of homeschooling (unschooling). That was 1976. David would want me to add here that he is no longer an anarchist having grown older, wiser, and more compassionate (less certain of the reasonability of others).

Fast-forward from 1976 (years of infertility /loss as well as years of being corporate) to 1984 – expanded our family from 2 to 3 and then FF to 1990

We finally begin our “official” homeschool journey. Filed intent to homeschool form for our six-year-old child. While we were and still are at heart life-learning advocates we ordered 1st grade Calvert Academy curriculum and supplies. And promptly began culling subjects beginning with Calvert script (handwriting) and Language Arts —within weeks we were only using the supplied paper, ruler, and pencils (we still have the ruler and a couple of the pencils). And learned to trust ourselves as able to learn outside the box.

Turned in attendance calendar to LEA, annotated as UNDER PROTEST, we used our own calendar because at that point the state form did not include weekends. Filed second and FINAL intent to homeschool, again clearly annotated UNDER PROTEST.

We homeschooled openly for the next 10 years, not registered with either a church school umbrella or filing an intent to homeschool. We did associate with Clonlara School https://clonlara.org/ for a few years.

In 1990 I contacted The Farm School asking them to shelter homeschoolers that needed a nonreligious / less religious shelter than was available at that time. Finally, in 2008 they decided to offer shelter to homeschoolers. I developed and ran the homeschool program for many years and retired on Jan 31, 2021.  at the end of the 20/21 school year.

In the early 1990s, we were active in the National Homeschool Association. Also, we were involved in the earliest forms of online networking of homeschoolers. Also, a friend & I co-founded the national organization — HUUH+ (Homeschooling Unitarian Universalists, Humanists, and those on other roads less travelled) and I was editor of our newsletter Learning Happens!

HUUH+ mission statement: for sharing and developing resources that celebrate lifelong learning in the interdependent web of life; supporting each other and, most importantly, our children in the development of personal theologies, helping each other deal with the censure and reprisals we sometimes experience from others in the homeschool community (and society at large) when we express our beliefs; challenging the assumption of many that homeschooling is identifiable with a particular educational, political or religious agenda; coping with the “school-structured” styles we find in most of our religious communities and in society; and challenges faced by marginalized members of society who choose homeschooling — bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, people of color, people with disabilities, single parents, etc.

Locally I founded Eclectic Homeschoolers of Middle Tennessee and a group that met weekly (at least) for more than 25 yrs. Our mission statement: support and encouragement for home-educating families who openly embrace diversity (racial, ethnic, spiritual, political, culinary, environmental, philosophical, pedagogical, epistemological, gender identification, sexual orientation, and lifestyle & family composition). On Jan 30, 2021 I decided to archive the Facebook group that EHSMT had hosted on FB for at least a decade.

I no longer believe all parents should homeschool, I will not assist white nationalists, white supremacists,  homophobes, people with agendas that espouse theocratism, anti-science, and /or anti-democracy agendas to homeschool.