What Do Teaching, Learning, and the Death Penalty Have in Common?

The answer is: Susannah Sheffer.

Susannah is my friend and colleague who edited Growing Without Schooling magazine for 16 years and she has a new website that brings her beautiful and diverse writing together in one place.

Of particular note to homeschoolers is this page, where Susannah’s work with GWS, adolescent girls, North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, and her insightful writing about teaching and learning is gathered:

http://www.susannahsheffer.com/teaching--learning.html

Susannah is also involved with death penalty and prison issues, and her new book, Fighting for Their Lives: Inside the Experience of Capital Defense Attorneys, is coming in March 2013. Here is how it is described:

Intimate conversations with the dedicated lawyers who try, but too often fail, to prevent executions.

How do those who represent clients facing the death penalty cope with the stress and trauma of their work?  Through conversations with twenty of the most experienced and dedicated post-conviction capital defenders in the United States, Fighting for Their Lives explores this emotional territory for the first time.

I know Susannah has been working on this book for a few years and I can’t wait to read it and tell you more about it. I hope you’ll buy it and read it too.

The Benefits of Homeschooling Teenagers

Ken Danford, one of the founders of North Star: Self-Directed Learning for Teens, has written an excellent essay for Huffington Post about taking teens off the college production line and focusing on their passions and interests as a way to nurture self-awareness, expertise, and confidence. He ends his essay with this observation:

When teens experience schooling as more stressful than helpful, we can do better than simply telling them, "Make the best of it until you graduate." We can offer information and support for a different way to grow up. Instead of forcing teens to remain in the "race" to win college admissions, scholarships, and a place for oneself in the world, we might provide teens with a coherent perspective that encourages them to set their own pace toward these same goals. Many families are already doing so. What we need now is a social commitment to make this option widely available.