Wendy Priesnitz writer, editor, changemaker

Writing About Education

• When We Make Children Struggle
   
• Because It Was the Right Thing to Do
   
• It's Hard to Lose Learning
   
• Living and Learning at the Edges
   
• Education Inspired by Nature
   
• Ready for a Changing World
   
• The Words We Use: Living As If School Doesn’t Exist
   
• Learning in the Real World
   
• Learning is Not Something That’s Done to You
   
• The Benefits of Boredom
   
• Learning from John Holt
   
• How Unschoolers Learn: The Principle of Productive Failure
   
• Taking Risks and Breaking Rules
   
• Power to Control
   
• Protecting the Spark of Curiosity
   
• What Education Means
   
• No Such Thing As Unschooling Failure
   
• The Whole World is a Learning Community
   
• Unschooling Lets Kids Control Their Own Minds and Environment
   
• Curiosity: Honoring, Encouraging, and Satisfying It
   
• The Principle of Productive Failure
   
• Motivation for Learning – and What Science Says
   
• Knowledge & the Cult of Experts
   
• Freedom or Control: Who Decides?
   
• Rules in a Life Learning Family
   
• Learning From a Mentor
   
• Make It & Mend It: Real Life Learning Opportunities
   
• A Life of Learning: Empowering and Trusting Children
   
• Understanding Life Learning / Unschooling
   
• Life Learning is About Process Over Content
   
• Taking Possession of Our Lives and Learning
   
• Willing to Try: Living Without Fear or Shame
   
• Parenting Digital Natives
   
• Don’t Let Your Children Learn!
   
• Guidance, Not Control
   
• It’s Not Important What School Reformers Think About Homeschooling
   
• Nurturing Creativity
   
• Life Learning Science
   
• Place-Based Education
   
• The Art of Inspiration: The Role Parents Play in Life Learning
   
• Risking to Learn
   
• What Fear Does
   
• How Do They Know That? (and why do they need to know?)
   
• Not Just for Children: Reframing Unschooling to Include Adults
   
• Defeating Adultism
   
• After the Pause - The Effects of Coercion
   
• Challenging Assumptions in Education (book excerpt)
   
• Slow Learning
   
• Instinct to Learn
   
• The Dark Side of Competition
   
• Doing Our Best (When We Want To)
   
• Lazy Learning
   
• What is Socialization and What Kind Do We Want Our Life Learning Kids to Have?
   
• Finding Success – Life Learning Children Can Define it on Their Own
   
• Life Learning Changes Our View of Success
   
• Challenging Assumptions: Learning is Not Something That’s Done to You
   
• Exploring the Assumptions About Kids and Electronic Media
   
• A Sense of Wonder
   
• A Life Worth Living and a Job Worth Doing: Pat Farenga on John Holt
   
• The Life Learning Journey: Grown-Up Unschoolers
   
• Mindful Learning and Parenting
   
• Anarchy in Education? Life Learners Creating Change
   
• Scaling Up Life Learning
   
• A Space for Learning?
   
• Experiential Learning is Children's Work
   
• The Benefits of Self-Directed Time
   
• Coercion, Compulsory Attendance, and Adultism
   
• Compulsory Self-Directed Learning?
   
• Pushing Back Against What They Don't Understand
   
• Learning and the Power of Storytelling
   
• The Power of Authority
   
• Journaling: Writing to Learn and Learning to Write
   
• A Short History of the Home Education Movement in Canada
   

Writing about Green, Healthy Living

• Biomimicry: Inspiration From Nature to Solve the Problems People Have Created
   
• Counting Our Food Miles
   
• Learning Difficulties, Health, and the Environment
   
• The Real Dirt on Sewage Sludge
   
• Better Safe Than Sorry: The Precautionary Principle
   
• Seeking Nature-Inspired Solutions to Climate Change
   
• Air Fresheners or Air Pollutants?
   
• What’s Wrong With Peat Moss?
   
• Should We Eliminate Plastic?
   
• Are Wind Turbines Dangerous?
   
• What’s Wrong With Fabric Softener?
   
• Skin Deep: Are Cosmetics Safe?
   
• How Dangerous is Antibacterial Soap?
   
• How Green is My Diet?
   
• How Healthy and Safe are Soy Foods?
   
• Is Fluoride in Our Water Bad for Our Health?
   
• What’s the Dirt on Household Cleaners?
   
• What is Nanotechnology and Should We Be Concerned About it?
   
• Do Cellphones and Other Electronic Gadgets Affect Our Health?
   
• Can We Save Money by Going Solar?
   
• Shedding Light on Lightbulbs
   
• Soapnuts – An Inexpensive and Eco-Friendly Laundry Alternative
   
• Rewilding Ourselves and the Planet
   
• The Wonderful World of Trees and Treehugging
   
• Downsizing Your Home, Decluttering Your Life
   
• Taming the Power of Possessions
   
• Save Energy and Money While Living Sustainably and Healthily
   
• The Cooking Pot Dilemma
   
• Cooking with Deep Greens – Kale and Swiss Chard
   
• Seven Ways to Green Up Your Grocery Shopping
   
• Back to Basics Food Storage
   
• How to Reduce Kitchen Waste
   
• Living Without Single-Use Plastic
   
• Bicycle Culture: A New Cycling Revolution Takes Hold
   
• A Composting Primer
   
• Laugh and Be Well With Laughter Yoga
   
• Toxic Art & Art Making
   
• Candles: A Burning Indoor Air Quality Issue
   
• Stop That Noise! A Guide to Noise Pollution
   
• Eat Well & Protect Your Eyes
   
• Health in Your Eye - Understanding Iridology
   
• Spraying Yourself With Toxic Chemicals is Not Sexy
   
• Are You Dying to Lose Weight?
   
• It's Never Too Late to Be Fit
   
• Try a Raw Foods Diet
   
• Why We Should Soak Nuts, Grains, and Seeds
   
• The Seeds of Health
   
• Natural Dental Care
   
• What is Dental Floss Made Of?
   
• Avoiding Flu? Boost Your Immune System by Taking Good Care of Yourself
   
• Five Nasty Things They’re Doing to Our Food and Five Things We Can Do About It
   
• Sensitive to Sulfites
   
• Pollen Allergies: Are Unisex Trees Making Us Sick?
   
• What’s the Problem With GMOs?
   
• Earth Day: Ten Ways to Celebrate With Your Family
   
• Celebrate the Winter Solstice
   
• Five Ways to Simplify the Christmas Holidays
   
• Nature Offers Relief for Holiday Stress
   
• Making Your Life Simpler: Ten Tips for Making and Keeping Minimalist Resolutions
   
• Have a Green, Socially Responsible Valentine's Day
   
• How to Create Edible Landscaping for your Home
   
• A Straw-Clay House That’s Inspired by Nature
   
• Learning Straw-Clay Building
   
• A Sense of Place: Sustainability is More Than Solar Panels
   
• Zero Energy Homes
   
• Tiny Urban House Gets Net-Zero Reno
   
• Do You Know Where Your Wood Pallett Has Been?
   
• Interview with a Community Activist, Cob Builder, and Unschooling Mom
   
• Interview: Sustainable Country Living in an Earthship
   
• Interview: Living and Working Off-Grid
   
• Interview: A Woman Straw Bale Construction Pioneer
   
• Small Houses are Good for the Planet
   
• Tiny Houses, Tiny Neighborhoods
   
• Beyond the VW Van: the New Nomadics
   
• Yurts: Housing in the Round
   
• An Affordable, Sustainable House
   
• A Cold Climate Net-Zero Condo Duplex
   
• Wild Sage Cohousing Sets a Sustainability Standard
   
• Communal Food: The Community Kitchen Movement
   
• Cleaning Up a Moldy Home
   
• Breathing Lessons: How to Make Your Home a Clean-Air Haven
   
• Radon in Your Home
   
• Eight Ways to Create a Greener, Healthier Home
   
• Organic Pest Control for Your House and Garden
   
• Feng Shui Your Way to a Simpler Home
   
• Ten Steps to a Serene Bedroom
   
• Microfibers: How Your Clothes Could be Polluting the Oceans
   
• Organic Fibers: Dress Yourself and Your Home in Style with a Conscience
   
• Questioning Carbon Currency
   
• Companion Planting: Working Together in the Garden
   
• Creating a Wildflower Garden
   
• The Buzz About Backyard Bees
   
• Keep Your Pet Healthy the Natural Way
   
• The Problems With Leaf Blowers
   
• What's Wrong With Natural Living?
   
• Excerpt from Natural Life Magazine's Green and Healthy Homes
   
• Have a Sustainable, Healthy Summer
   
• Planning Your Green Vacation
   
• The Staycation: A Stress-Free, Green Family Vacation at Home
   
• Doing Good While Traveling? The Pros and Cons of Voluntourism
   
• The Power of Fun
   
• Dirty Cruises: Cleaning Up a Polluting Industry
   
• Respectful Whale Watching
   
• Catching a Green Wave: Geening Human-Powered Action Sports
   
• Letting It All Hang Out: Clotheslines Save Energy
   
• Natural Burials: The Ultimate in Recycling
   
• Parenting Our Parents: Finding Progressive End-of-Life Solutions
   
• Your Garden: The Planning Before the Planting
   
• Small is Beautiful...and Local, Sustainable, and Planet-Saving
   
• The Times They Are A-Changin'
   
• We All Have Green Work To Do
   
• The Glow is Coming Off Glitter
   
• The Toxic Consequences of Fireworks
   
• What Goes Up Must Come Down: The Problem With Balloons
   
• Stop Stacking Stones
   

Writing About Media and Media Literacy

• Corporate Spin is Harming Us
   
• Spin: How We Are Influenced
   
• Media Madness
   
• Follow the Money
   
• Greenwashing: When the green is just veneer
   
• Helping Kids Manage Their Media
   
• Exploring the Assumptions About Kids and Electronic Media
   
• Protecting our Kids from Commercialism
   

Writing About Play

• Playing in the Real World
   
• Do you Know What Your Child is Playing on?
   
• Playing Together: Cooperation, not Competition
   
• Where Does Spontaneity Go?
   
• Baby Couch Potatoes
   
• Skipping Rope – A Revived Street Game for all Ages
   
• The Value of Spontaneous Play
   

Writing about Conscious Parenting

• Keeping Ultrasound in its Place
   
• Eight Reasons Not to Swaddle Your Infant
   
• Baby-Led Weaning
   
• Good Nights: Bedtime Doesn’t Have to be Stressful
   
• Natural Play: Ditching Fancy Toys for Sticks and Mud
   
• Your [Dangerously] Wired Child
   
• When Clean Isn’t Always So Clean: The Case Against Antibacterial Soap
   
• Please Leave Your Shoes by the Door
   
• Baby Steps to a Green, Healthy Home
   
• Greening the Ghosts and the Ghoulies at Halloween
   
• Greening the Easter Bunny
   
• How to Have a Merry, Non-Commercial Christmas
   
• The Damage Spanking Does
   
• Learning to Trust and Love
   
• Traumatized Children, Traumatized World
   
• Kids in Community
   

Writing about Social Change

• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Rocks the Boat
   
• Be Like a Butterfly
   
• On Pandemics as Portals to a New Way of Living
   
• It's Not About Growth: Alternative Economic Indicators
   
• Shop Small
   
• Embracing Slow
   
• Knitting for a Change
   
• Fair Trade is Shopping With a Conscience
   
• Buycotts and Boycotts - Can Ethical Consumerism Change Society?
   
• The Problem With Cheap Fashion
   
• A Fruitful Harvest - The Public Food Movement
   
• Cohousing – Creating a Sustainable Housing Solution
   
• Cohousing Comes to Canada
   
• Connections are the Solutions to Life and Learning
   
• A Time of Opportunity or One of Crisis?
   
• Grassroots Change - From the Ground Up
   
• Change Begins With the Children
   
• Instead of Efficiency
   
• The Clichés Might Have it Right
   
• Words Have Power
   
• Being Part of the Solution
   
• The Big Picture Looks Good
   
• Enough, Already
   
• OK Boomer
   
• Interview with Rolf Priesnitz, Publisher of Life Media
   

Writing about Business and Work

• Work: How We are Redefining it (and everything else in life)
   
• Start a Business and Change the World
   
• Mastering Home Office Spillover
   
• Unjobbing: A New Paradigm of Work and Life
   
• The Benefits of Coworking Spaces
   
• How to Handle Work-at-Home Isolation
   
• Starting a New Business During Hard Times
   

Personal and Memoir Writing

• A Potholder Hug
   
• Learning From the Robins
   
• Remembering the Ancestors
   
• More Than the Absence of School
   
• Providing Support While Letting Growth Happen
   
• Challenging Assumptions in Education and Pandemics
   
• A Life of Learning: Empowering and Entrusting Children
   
• Talking About Life Learning: An Interview
   
• Remembering What's Important
   
• When Activist Icons Undermine Their Causes
   
• Microchimerism
   
• Companionship: Thriving Plants and Thriving People
   
• Acceptance speech for leadership of Green Party of Canada
   
• Resignation letter from leadership of Green Party of Canada
   

Poetry

• Selected poems
   

Quotes

• Selected quotes from books and articles
   

Books

For a limited time, free PDF downloads of these books are available at this link.

• Beyond School: Living As If School Doesn’t Exist
• Natural Life Magazine’s Green & Healthy Homes
• Life Learning: Lessons From The Educational Frontier
• Challenging Assumptions in Education: From Institutionalized Education to a Learning Society

These books are now out of print:

• It Hasn't Shut Me Up - a memoir (2013)
• Bringing it Home: A Home Business Start-Up Guide for You and Your Family (1996)
• School Free: The Homeschooling Handbook (1987)
• Summer Love, Winter Fires (1976);
• North York – Realizing the Dream (1988);
• Markham: A Contemporary Portrait (1990);
• The Natural Life Cookbook (1992, with Heidi Priesnitz);
• A Kid’s Guide to Starting a Business at Home (1994);
• The House Where I Grew Up (1999)

These are some of the books I’ve contributed to:

• Recommendations for Action on Pollution and Education in Toronto for the Board of Education for the City of Toronto, with Bruce Small (1985);
• Metropolitan Toronto: Working Toward the Future, with R. White (1990);
• The Homeschooling Book of Answers, with Linda Dobson (1998);
• “Nurturing Self-directed Learning” in The Unofficial Guide to Unschooling, by Kathy Ishizuka (2000);
• “Education Can Lead the Way to a Sustainable Society” in Creating Learning Communities – Models, Resources, and New Ways of Thinking About Teaching and Learning, with Ron Miller (2000);
• “New Study Links Monsanto’s Roundup to Cancer” in Strategic Management, by Hanson et al. (2004);
• A Parent’s Guide to Home Schooling, with Tamra B. Orr (2002);
• “A Life of Learning: Empowering, Respecting, Trusting, Unschooling Children” in Turning Points: 27 Visionaries in Education Tell Their Own Stories, with Jerry Mintz & Carlo Ricci (2009);
• “There is Art in That Trash” in Global Viewpoints: Garbage and Recycling (2010);
• “Rooftop Power” in Leap Advanced, with Julia Williams (2013);
• The Legacy of John Holt, with Patrick Farenga (2013);
• A Path of their Own: Helping Children to Educate Themselves by Lael Whitehead (2014);
• Natural Born Learners: Unschooling and Autonomy in Education, with Beatrice Ekwa Ekoko (2014)

copyright © Wendy Priesnitz