As alternative educational settings we often hear from parents of children struggling with the mainstream approach to learning. Children who need to move more than the school day allows for, find it hard to focus on work they aren’t interested in or simply learn in different ways than their peers. It’s not surprising that parents look elsewhere for something that suits their child. But yet we can’t help but think that something must be deeply wrong for so many children to find it so hard to thrive in our school system. And that’s the topic of our podcast this week as we talk to clinical psychologist and mum of two, Dr. Naomi Fisher, about her experiences of children with special educational needs and the implications their behaviour has for our schools.
Guest: Dr. Naomi Fisher, a clinical psychologist and mother of two children who have always been self-directed. Naomi writes about child development, psychology and self-directed education. Look out for Naomi’s forthcoming book Changing Our Minds.
Find out more: Some resources to help you delve deeper into this topic:
- Recommended in the podcast Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom by Young Children at School by Carla Shalaby.
- You might also like these other articles by Naomi:
- Schools Out, published on The Psychologist
- Canaries and What about Autism from our own blog
If you’ve struggled with learning at home in lockdown our Podcast is here to help, our episodes to date cover topics from looking after your mental health and wellbeing to the options available post lockdown if you don’t want to go back to school as normal. Listen to all our episodes here.
In our final episode next week, what are our hopes and dreams for education post lockdown? Can this be the turning point?