Redwood Bay is a Self-Directed Education (SDE) Community for kids between the ages of 6-12 located on unceded Ohlone land, now commonly known as Castro Valley, CA. We strive to be a safe and inclusive space that center’s the voices and experiences of Black, Indigenous, other People of Color. As we grow, we want to create a space based on the needs of the community while fostering a sense of belonging for marginalized and vulnerable community members.
“We can’t keep using tools of oppression and expect to raise free people”
Winter is coming and we are ready for another community for camp!
At home we have a small but plentiful outdoor space complete with a trampoline, basketball hoops, chickens, a garden and a craft room that has all the things! In the summer heat, we love to get out to water parks and splash pads, or explore the local nature scene and facilities like libraries, creeks, Lake Chabot or Redwoods in the greater bay area.
Our family has been unschooling for about 5 years. We have two sons and a daughter ages 10, 8 and 3! Our camp is an extension of our lived experience with natural learning through play, adventure, exploration and discovery. We will add additional daily offerings to enrich the experience for our camp kiddos. While this is our first annual camp, we have hosted homeschooling kiddos, neighbors and friends here for over 7 years via homeschooling cooperatives, baby/kid sitting and playdates.
We offer a the same space and grace that we give to our own kids, like one we want for all kids to have, where kids are celebrated for their uniqueness, where they feel free and safe to be their full wonderful selves, where adults acquire cooperation through collaboration and trust and not by exacting control, where adults treat children with respect in an circumstance and do not react with ego but with compassion.
We are looking forward to playing with your family this season.
With love,
Lori Fernando and the Fernando family and team
Weekly Structure
Our summer program offering will be hosted three days a week for five hours a day. Extended hours available by request depending on capacity.
Tuesdays we are at home base. There will be at least one active offering facilitated by an adult along with several available at-choice activities going on throughout the day.
Wednesdays we will take a field trip to a predetermined location. It’s important that kiddos consent to the field trip before enrollment for this particular day.
Thursdays will be emergent and determined as a community. This day might be a flow day where kiddos are actively deciding how to spend their time at home base or collectively on another field trip.
Daily Structure
Our days will have a structure that will support the community in building our culture of compassion and caring for each other, the space, mother earth and all living creatures. It will serve as a space where kiddos can feel seen and heard by all. Between the times listed below offerings or free play will be happening. That will vary each day.
10:30am Group check-in - How are you feeling today? What would you like to get into?
12:00pm - Reminder to eat, check-in with their body- What does your body need? (Eat, hydrate, snack, rest, move?)
2pm Clean up, required activity for all community members. Kiddos must consent as a part of enrollment.
2:30 End of day check-in reflection. Rose-bud-thorn. If you could redo any part of the day what would you do?
What kids and parents will need to bring / provide
A packed lunch with water
A change of clothes for planned wet days etc…
Additional fees depending on the outings such as the Oakland zoo.
Canceled Camp/days
We will have to cancel camp whenever any of my children are sick with fever or other contagious illness. Likewise, please do not send any child to camp who may also have a contagious illness or is feeling physically unwell.
Masks are a valued tool in our space and as we will have at least one immunocompromised community member we ask that they be worn whenever necessary.
“If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued, or was actually stigmatized.”
Redwood Bay Pillars
Self-Directed Education
“Education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the learner” -Alliance for Self-Directed Education, What is Self-Directed Education. We invite you to learn more about SDE, The Optimizing Conditions, Educative Drives, and how various families practice it. Alliance for Self-Directed Education website or to our local East Bay Self-Directed Education community of practice facebook group resources to start with.
Child Autonomy
We trust kids! Kids are respected and supported in how they choose to spend their time pursuing their interests and living their life (even if it doesn’t look like learning is happening or appears to be unproductive). They have the power to make decisions about how to live their lives and, for example, about the community, budget, activities, what offerings take place and how to keep ourselves and each other safe. Anything that kids are learning, exploring or discovering is interest based and intuition led and allows kids to trust themselves by following their instincts without interruptions by adults.
Community
Kids learn the most from the culture. We use tools to create intentional culture around respecting and caring for one another, the spaces we occupy and mother nature and all living beings. It also allows for self-awareness and growth to happen through community check in and reflections about how we are responsible for ourselves and our community. Most of these tools are taken from the Agile Learning Centers (ALC) organization.
Deschooling
Deschooling is an ongoing practice of the children and parents in our community. Deschooling is the process of actively removing school ways of being and thinking and instead, begin to center ourselves in our own lives, support our children to center themselves in their own lives and create a new way of being and thinking fully aligned to our own core values, ancestral wisdom and intuition.