Introduction to the Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE)
This a guest post by Bria Bloom, executive director of ASDE
Dear friends,
I know of nobody more qualified to teach us about Self-Directed Education than Bria Bloom. Bria grew up unschooled, in charge of her own education. She is now a mom of two unschooled kids, one a teenager and one a toddler. And, she is executive director of the nonprofit Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE).
I was one of the founders of ASDE and was president of the organization for several years. The smartest thing I did as president was propose to the organizing team that Bria be named executive director. ASDE has many resources for people who are already involved in Self-Directed Education, or thinking about becoming involved, or just curious. I invited Bria to contribute a guest post to this Substack about ASDE’s offerings and here it is. Pay particular attention to the invitation at the end.
To Normalize Self-Directed Education, We Need an Alliance.
By Bria Bloom on behalf of The Alliance for Self-Directed Education
When I was a young kid growing up without school in the ‘90s, I spent many mornings staring out my window at the schooled kids next door during their recess. “I want to play with them,” I would think. What I didn’t think about was that, a mere 20 minutes later, they were all back in their classrooms sitting down and doing work they were told to do. As a kid not limited to the confines of a desk, I, on the other hand, could never have imagined sitting down to read books or do activities that didn’t interest me.
In my early homeschooling years, my dad used to ask me to read a minimal amount of science and history (interesting books! Sometimes even comics!). I would try. I stared at the pages for the allotted time and then came out of my room, pretending I had read them. I wasn’t fooling anyone. Soon after, I gave the final push and basically unschooled my parents by showing them what interested me and kept my attention. Together, we learned how to live without school or assigned “schoolwork,” and I no longer had to pretend to read. I never would have been able to sit through hours of someone else’s agenda in order to get to 30 minutes of recess.
In the ‘90s and early 2000s, there were few unschooling advocates and very little information on the topic, and to say we had “less” access to the internet would be an understatement. My dad couldn’t hop on Facebook and find an unschooling community with ten different meetup options (of course, even now, that’s possible only in places with large unschooling communities, but we are getting there!). He couldn’t get on a Discord server and ask for support in finding community, friends and socialization for his highly extroverted young daughter.
We, like many other unschooling and even “relaxed homeschooling” families in that era, felt fairly alone. However, we made it work by finding community in places with shared interests (martial art dojos, patchwork classes, and, eventually, lucked out with a local homeschool resource center) — but that is a story for another time.
I often look back and reflect on unschooling as an experience that defined me and my life. So it’s no real surprise that I now work with an alliance that is dedicated to connecting families, young people, and communities of folks learning outside the conventional school norm — like me when I was a young unschooler — with resources, community, support, education, events, information, and networks.
ASDE
About ten years ago, several folks, including Peter Gray, sought to bridge the gap between what schools offer and what kids need by sharing support, resources, information, and knowledge about Self-Directed Education (SDE). The principles of SDE are rooted in what we know about how children learned and developed throughout most of human history, and in hunter-gather societies today. That group grew into what we now call The Alliance for Self-Directed Education (ASDE), a global organization and alliance of folks who are striving to make Self-Directed Education an accessible, normalized option for ALL families, regardless of their status, race, income, or other barriers in our society.
Many adults in today’s world believe in the importance of play but have a hard time knowing how to apply this idea to education and what that means for schools. SDE is one way to build the connection between play — and specifically, how Play Makes Us Human — and how authentic education requires schools to shift and change to support the natural instinct to play and to learn.
Our overarching principle is that all young people, led by their natural educative drives, are capable and have the right to direct their learning, as they naturally do starting from birth. It is up to community members, parents, adults, and elders in their lives to support them to do so, through supporting the conditions in which SDE can flourish.
ASDE is a lot of things to a lot of people. Most of all, it is a place of community and support no matter where you are in the journey or the world. ASDE is for everybody. Over the years, we have heard from thousands of folks who are making a path to live and learn without conventional schooling. Listening to the key needs and common questions that come up time and again, ASDE’s work has supported families as they make this major shift.
We do this through our many initiatives, community connections, events, and offerings, including:
ASDE’s Resources
Tipping Points Magazine is our online magazine designed to amplify and celebrate the voices of our movement. Here you will find articles, essays, and opinion pieces that cover a wide range of topics from the nitty gritty logistics of “how to homeschool” to the big picture of human learning and development. Tipping Points is full of relatable stories from other folks who have been through a similar shift. The stories that are published monthly (and the archives that date back nine years) will help you connect meaningfully with your kids, or the kids you are in relationship with as a mentor, facilitator, or other trusted adult. There are contributions that are serious, heavy think-pieces, and others that are playful, tongue-in-cheek entries serving as a reminder to make space for play and joy in everyday life.
Tipping Points Press is our book publishing company that amplifies and highlights the diverse voices of this movement. We have published both fiction and non-fiction books that can highlight SDE as a natural way for children to learn, rooted in research and centuries of deep wisdom about how humans (and young mammals generally) grow and develop.
The ASDE Facilitator’s Community Discord is a place for all SDE Facilitators to come together and share resources, ideas, questions, and ways of collaborating. This is meant to be a resource and a refuge where those who are working with young people can share their common experiences and also hear from early adopters who have been in this work for many years. The work of a facilitator can seem strange, unknown, or daunting. By joining those entrenched in this work, you will find ease and camaraderie.
The ASDE Research Network is an online research discussion group open to people actively engaged in research aimed at understanding how Self-Directed Education works and its effects. Its purpose is to share research ideas and findings and help promote more understanding of SDE in the academic world.
The Resource Directory is a catalog where you can find a wide variety of SDE-related resources all in one place. It is regularly updated and lovingly crowdsourced, with a dedicated curator making sure the resources are SDE-aligned. The directory will connect you with support and community and includes programs, articles, podcasts, coaches, workshops, and much more. When you’re doing something outside of the common paradigm, having friends who believe in your decisions can be key.
Listings in the Directory are for families, facilitators, and educators who are ready to be supported in the deschooling shift that’s needed as we seek to leave school systems and move into play-based, autonomy-centered ways of being and learning with our kids. Connecting you with like-minded folks in your area or online to help you build your own network is an integral part of the work of being an alliance. We bring together practitioners from many different philosophies and styles of practice, including free schools, Agile Learning Centers, Sudbury schools, unschooling, independent co-ops, and more. Finding centers, co-ops, schools, or meetup groups that are SDE-aligned is critical to many families’ ability to engage with education in this way.
The ASDE Substack is where we share written articles, audio, announcements, and our podcast, “Saving the Seeds of SDE.” Here we will also post historical pieces from the Tipping Points archives that feel as relevant today as when they were originally published. We also re-share relevant content from other creators who overlap with our values and work. We love that we can feel our community’s response and receive feedback instantly on this platform.
The ASDE Compendium is our latest project, developed from almost a decade of relationships and community building with diverse folks in SDE. This is a rich collection of knowledge, wisdom, and lived experiences from over 60 practitioners of SDE around the world. We know that many people see that their kids are exhausted/frustrated/having such a hard time in school, but don’t know how to go about doing it another way. The Compendium is meant to answer the “how” of divesting from conventional schools while giving you a peek into the various ways this can look. Because it is such a wisdom-dense tool, we also offer a Guided Cohort model so that you can reflect, challenge, and grow alongside others who are unschooling or curious about starting.
Please explore and join any of the initiatives shared above, nearly all are free and can be found via our website. Reach out if you have any questions at all. We are always happy to connect and help. We know an important part of the transition to SDE is tuning out the noise in order to tune into your own relationships with your kids. We recognize the importance of seeing the spark in your kids again — the joy, the love, the play, the desire to learn and test and be curious.
A Timely Invitation
Right now, we invite you especially to join our Introduction to Self-Directed Education Cohort, starting later this month as part of our ASDE Compendium Cohorts. The ASDE Compendium Guided Cohort model offers a collaborative group experience of diving deeper into SDE philosophy and practices through discussions, reflections, and deschooling considerations. Members of the ASDE organizing team will be stewarding these cohorts so participants will be supported in large and small group conversations as well as with ongoing email support and a library of podcast interviews with the ASDE Compendium contributors.
This cohort begins January 18, 2026. It is the first of four consecutive cohorts we are offering. Our Intro to Self-Directed Education Cohort starts January 18, followed by Liberatory Practices for Parents, Caregivers, and Facilitators in March 2026; Building Resilient SDE Community in April 2026; and finally Neurodivergence and Disability in SDE in May 2026.
It is a great opportunity to delve into the world of SDE, meet other like-minded folks, and explore diverse perspectives on the most common topics in SDE with the support of experienced guides.
We hope to see you in our communities soon.
Further Thoughts
Thank you,Bria!
And now, just a reminder that the first cohort begins just 3 days from the posting of this letter. I hope you will look into it.
The Alliance has had many major impacts on educational thinking throughout the world. Even the term—Self-Directed Education—capitalized as a sort of brand of education, came out of discussions within ASDE and then consistent use of that term. I began to realize how it was catching on when, several years ago, I was invited to write a chapter on Self-Directed Education for the Oxford Encyclopedia of Educational Research (here).
And now, please share your questions and comments below. Bria has kindly volunteered to respond to questions addressed to her.
For paid subscribers and those who become paid subscribers, we will have an online meeting discussing the future of education, including the role of SDE in that future, on January 28. For more information and to register, see here.
With respect and best wishes,
Peter
I am really interested in starting my own forest school. Recently Ive moved away from terms like unschooling and even self directed ed, as it carries more questions and stigma than I care to address each and every time. Now we are focusing on natural education or even free education as a way to express these ideas in a more accessible language. Im so happy to see these resources you’ve provided and I really hope I can attend.
Thank you for your work.
Would you say it is possible to integrate self-directed learning principles even for children who attend mainstream schools? I have an almost four year old who attends a montessori nursery, but is due to start school later this year. There is only enough flexibility in our careers to ensure that she does not attend after school clubs every day of the week, and we cannot realistically change that.