Presenters
Sandra Dodd
For twenty years now, Sandra Dodd has been involved in learning more about the potential of unschooling to improve lives. With two books, weekly chats, a daily-inspiration blog and a blog, the ideas are shared in all directions. Sandra is a former English teacher whose other jobs have all involved words, ideas and learning, and whose avocation is helping other parents find ways to live more richly and peacefully with their children. Sandra maintains an online collection of writings, notes, examples, and great quotes collected from over 15 years of online discussions.
Sandra Dodd has lived in Albuquerque with Keith Dodd since the late 1970′s, and they’ve been married for most of those years. There are offspring, who grew up unschooled. Kirby is 25 and has lived in Austin since he was 21. Marty (22) and Holly (19) still live at home.
Daily happy thoughts are here: Just Add Light and Stir
The Big Museum of Unschooling Stuff starts here: Sandra Dodd.com
Sandra will be presenting the talks Connections, Balance, and Food at an Unschooling Table as well as the funshop Vocal Music of Eight Centuries.
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Erika Davis-Pitre
Erika Davis-Pitre and her husband Michael have 4 children – one daughter (33) and three sons (29, 27 & 19). They also have a son-in-law and an almost 5 year old grandson. They live in Central Connecticut with their 19yr old (when did that happen!) son. They have been unschooling for many years and love it, so Erika is always looking for opportunities to share their unschooling joy with others.
Erika has spoken at many un/homeschooling conferences, led quite a few funshops/workshops and has hosted and participated in many round table discussions about unschooling all over the US and Canada. She especially enjoys talking about unschooling teens, sharing the joy of unschooling and celebrating diversity through unschooling. And she is an Artist Trading Card (ATC) fanatic-if you don’t know about ATCs please ask!
Erika and her family are all so looking forward to this conference! They are hoping to see many old friends and to make many new friends too!
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Carolyn Groves Winkler
Carolyn Groves Winkler has worn many hats in her life: camp counselor, teacher of English as a foreign language, ski bum, high school speech and debate coach, executive assistant, DJ, school library media specialist, pizza delivery gal, librarian, musician and lifeguard among them. She is a third generation bookworm – her mom introduced her to the works of John Holt, John Taylor Gatto and other education pioneers.
While living in Jackson, WY the Winklers found out about and (thankfully!) attended first LIFE is Good conference, the spring before their oldest child would have started kindergarten. Seeing families who hadn’t stopped attachment parenting their kids once they left toddlerhood, watching how always unschooled tweens and teens interacted with the younger children and adults at the conference, and feeling the support of the families at the conference affirmed that unschooling was the right choice for their family.
Carolyn and Bret now live in Portland, OR with their always unschooled daughters Sabine (4/2002) and Vivian (10/2005). They recently convinced Carolyn’s parents to move to Portland as well.
Carolyn will be presenting the talk Lessons Learned …, the Meet and Greet for Newbies Circle Chat, and the Find a Family Match-Up funshop.
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Lyla Wolfenstein
Lyla lives in Portland with her husband and 2 kids, ages 16 and 13. She came late to unschooling, despite being best friends with a lifelong unschooler since her oldest was 2 years old. She’s a slow learner :)
Although Lyla’s family has experienced almost every type of school that exists (with the exception of a neighborhood public school), and she wishes she’d come around to unschooling much earlier, the experiences with school have been formative to her understanding of, and commitment to unschooling. Over the course of her children’s school experiences, Lyla’s family has faced many significant challenges, and she is convinced that they’ve come out the other side in much better shape than if her children had remained in school. Lyla is passionate about advocating for the parent-child relationship being the absolute top priority for families in any circumstance.
Lyla’s kids came home after 7th and part way through 4th grade, and the transformation within each of them, as well as the tremendous improvement in all the family relationships, is nothing short of astounding. She believes that subtle changes in parenting can have extraordinary results, and cares tremendously about the lives of children, wishing to help other parents find peace and connection in their families – hopefully much sooner and more easily than she did!
Lyla’s blog about parenting and unschooling is here: The adventure continues
Lyla will be presenting the talk The Only Parenting Mistake Anyone Ever Makes and the All Things Pokemon funshop.
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Ginger Sabo
If there was one word to describe Ginger’s life, it would be ‘change’. She’s learned not only how to survive it, but to go with the the ebb and flow of it. She has moved at least 17 times across the US and gone from tree hugger to Army recruit to Mama, and back again. The Sabos started their unschooling journey 7 years ago and haven’t looked back since. Currently she lives with her family in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, and shares her daily life with five great individuals and two really cool cats. Those she has the pleasure to call her kids are Ella (and beau, Adam), 22; Kai, 13; and Kade, 10. She’s sharing this incredible journey with her partner in crime, Jeff. In her spare time she’s a crazy crafter, mainly with fiber and wire. Mostly, though, her days are filled with fun times with her kids.
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Ronnie Maier
Ronnie Maier and her family have been unschooling for 9 years. She enjoys sharing the joys of radical unschooling with anybody she can get to listen, and she strongly encourages people (even unsuspecting strangers) to honor their children’s perspective, choices, and freedom. In her other life, she is a Program Manager in the software industry, and in her real life she likes nothing better than spending time with her daughters Chloe (18) and MJ (19), son-out-law Sean (19), and partner in crime Frank (many). She enjoys writing, traveling, making music, reading, and borrowing babies at unschooling conferences (she always gives them back).
Ronnie will be presenting the talk Leveling Up: Advancing your unschooling (and having fun doing it).
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Christine Yablonski
Christine Yablonski has been interested in child and adolescent education and development since she herself was a teen. She received her BA from Clark University after majoring in Psychology, with minors in Education and Philosophy; then earned her MA in Counseling Psychology, with a focus on children and adolescents, from Boston College. After becoming a stay-at-home mom she focused her energies in numerous volunteer activities that involved families and children, including being a regular volunteer in the public schools. Her observations of what was happening in the classrooms and her two children’s direct experiences in school led her to explore alternatives to public school education. Her discovery of unschooling changed her family profoundly.
In 2010 Christine’s family was profiled on Good Morning, America, which created a huge online response and led to an additional interview on GMA as well as interviews on The Joy Behar Show, Boston Channel 5 WCVB, and numerous local and syndicated radio programs. Since then Christine created the website Living the Unschooling Life, as well as a Facebook page of the same name. Through these online media she writes and shares information about unschooling, both as an educational alternative to public schools and as a parenting philosophy.
Christine also has been featured as a speaker at numerous unschooling conferences and gatherings. Her latest project is as a contributing writer for the e-zine Education Revolution, published by AERO – Alternative Education Resource Organization.
Christine will be presenting the talk Love Lessons Learned: Unschooling my Marriage as well as the talk Gilmore Girls in Real Life: the Mother-Daughter Relationship as Unschoolers with her daughter, Kimi Biegler.
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Kimi Biegler
Kimi Biegler has been an unschooler since leaving school in 2004. She spent part of that first year out of school preparing to be a People to People Young Ambassador, traveling to France and England for two weeks at the age of 10. Since then she’s traveled all over the country, including a two-month RV tour of the US in 2006. Thanks to all of the unschooling conferences, camps and gatherings she has attended through the years (and Facebook!) Kimi has friends from all over the country.
When Kimi’s family joined a homeschooling co-op in 2004, Kimi and another mom co-founded The Coop Cafe, an organic, vegetarian cafe offering freshly prepared lunch food for sale to the families at the co-op. This involved monitoring inventory, menu planning, staff assignments, gathering pre-orders, food prep & hygiene, serving and clean up.
For the past two years, Kimi worked as a camper representative at numerous camp fairs on behalf of Guard Up’s Wizards & Warriors Camp. Kimi also worked as a representative at a kiosk advertising Guard Up’s Zombie Adventures, as well as being a zombie during these adventures, where she learned to apply special effect makeup, acting, and group safety. After years of attending Not Back to School Camp (NBTSC), East Tennessee Unschool Summer Camp (ETUSC) and Wizards & Warriors Camp, Kimi was accepted into the Wizard & Warriors Counselor-in-Training Program, where she continued her training in theatrical makeup, costuming, acting, improv and group safety.
Kimi and her family recently moved from Massachusetts to Asheville, NC, which has brought new and exciting opportunities. Some of Kimi’s hobbies are swing and blues dancing, vegetarian/vegan food, baking, reading, and traveling.
Kimi will be presenting the talk Gilmore Girls in Real Life: the Mother-Daughter Relationship as Unschoolers with her mom, Christine Yablonski.
Circle Chat and Funshop Presenters
Frank Maier
What can I say about me that hasn’t already been said in FBI files, various district attorneys’ charging documents, or court records? I’m the happiest husband in the world, being married to my sweet Ronnie. I’m the happiest dad in the world to 19yo MJ, 19yo son-out-law Sean, and 18yo Chloe, not to mention a few “loaner” sons and daughters from among our unschooling community. In June 2011 I participated with Jon Gold and Ben Lovejoy in the first-ever SSUDs sailing and SCUBA adventure to the Virgin Islands — VirginSSUDs2011, a SSUDs which may never be equalled. Then again, 2012, and the whole of the twenty-first century, is still young, even though I’m not.
I blog at http://pvmaro.blogspot.com which is mostly my stream-of-consciousness psychiatrist. I do occasionally have something to say about unschooling and if you search for that term at my blog you’ll find a few posts. Most of our unschooling family life is documented at Ronnie’s blog http://zombieprincess.blogspot.com. For anyone who might be interested but especially for you SSUDsers, I blogged about the VirginSSUDs2011 trip in a series of 13 lucky posts starting with this one: http://pvmaro.blogspot.com/2011/06/virginssuds2011-trip-report-day-0_30.html
Frank will be moderating the Dads’ Panel.
Bret Winkler
Bret Winkler is the dad of two always unschooled daughters (10 & 6.5) and husband of 14.5 years to Carolyn. He is currently a Civil Engineer with the city of Portland, OR, but has worked as a science teacher (7th, 8th, & high school), ski instructor, Wendy’s drive-thru guy, pizza deliverer and springboard diving coach.His first “aha” moment about how humans learn came after high school while training to be a lifeguard. Although 99% of the class was about lifeguarding, lifeguards were also expected to teach swim lessons. The 1% of instructional training came from a gruff old dude who simply said, “During swim lessons, don’t try to trick those kids into doing more than they’re comfortable with, and don’t lie to them…because they’ll remember.” Surprisingly effective, that advice has served him well in the classroom, as a coach, and as a parent.
Bret will be hosting the Outside Activities and Your Unschooling Life Circle Chat .
Shannon Loucks
Shannon is an unschooling momma of two boys with a pure passion for stories of all sorts. Shannon currently lives in sunny California, but she is a pure bred Canadian through and through. 
Shannon will be hosting the Playing With Stories funshop.
