Presenters
James H. Coburn IV’s Biography: My wife of 11 years is Robyn, and Jayn is my wonderful always-unschooled kid (almost 9 at conference time). I work as a motion picture Production Sound Mixer and play with amateur radios, scanners and short wave; my ham call sign is W6JHC. I am a computer and gadget geek, X-box gamer, and War driver. I love to play games on the DS and PSP. I dig digital photography and am a confirmed LED flashlight freak. As one of the first Geocachers in the world, I placed the first cache in California and still moderate the first Geocaching e-group in the world. This will be my sixth Live and Learn Conference.
Cameron Lovejoy is 20 this year and still lives at home with his amazing parents and incredible younger brother, but he plans to be moving out on his own next summer. He appreciates many things: the Earth, friends, animals, live music, veggie burritos, strangers, books, hugs, learning, his imagination, and his partner of five years, Carly Ridgeway. Cameron has been an autodidact for 8 years now, since he left private school after 6th grade when school started getting in the way of his passions. Now learning has happily consumed his life. His current passions are cooking, wilderness leadership and survival, entrepreneurship, writing, travel and art. He doesn't eat meat, and beans give him gas.
Ronnie Maier is mom to two teenagers, MJ and Chloe, and wife to her partner in crime, Frank. She overcame her Traditional Parenting Syndrome and has been unschooling with her family for more than five years. They have regular travel adventures together, including a misguided attempt to cruise their sailboat through hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. A lifelong resident of Washington State, Ronnie runs a social group for teen unschoolers, regularly hosts unschoolers and their families in her home, and is thrilled to be part of the growing unschooling community in the West. In her spare time, she is a technical writer in the software industry and actually gets a thrill out of writing Help topics. You can find Ronnie online as "dragonfly" or "hmsdragonfly," and on her blog at www.zombieprincess.blogspot.com
Brenna McBroom is 18 and an unschooler from Jacksonville, Florida. She first attended the Live and Learn Unschooling conference in Colombia, South Carolina in 2003. The case of strep throat she contracted there
(and the accompanying vacation from her home school co-op) was the catalyst that liberated her from school once and for all. (Super Cool Mom Gail played a pretty integral role too.) Lately, Brenna has been
experimenting with unschooling while in college. Her most recent success was convincing the dean of her local community college to let her take a British Literature class with her favorite professor even though she (gasp!) didn’t have the prerequisites. She enjoys singing, baking pies, and planning big projects. She’s very flattered that she was asked to speak this year, and she’s also very excited about receiving the coveted speaker bag.
Scott Noelle has marched to his own drummer since he was old enough to march! But he didn't realize he was an unschooler until he had kids and read John Holt's, How Children Fail. In 1997, Scott worked with Jean Liedloff to create an online support organization for readers of her classic book, The Continuum Concept, which Holt considered one of the most important books ever written. Formerly a professional singer and voice coach, now Scott works as a parenting coach, offering support (by telephone) for the unique challenges of continuum/attachment parenting, unschooling, and more. He also writes and publishes The Daily Groove, designed to help parents internalize the new paradigm of creative partnership with children. Scott is married to Beth Noelle, and they have two lovely girls who will be age 11 and 7 at the time of the conference. They live in Port Townsend, WA. www.EnjoyParenting.com
Anne Ohman and her family found their way to unschooling because of her radical idea to respect, listen to and learn from her children (the fact that her first born child would allow nothing less may have had something to do with it, too!). Ever since Jake (her oldest child, now 17 1/2) showed her the path to a rich, full life via unschooling, Anne has been thinking about it, learning from it, writing about it, talking about it, and joyfully living it with her family. She and her sweet honey (husband, Dave) and her always unschooled teenage boys (Jake and Sam) joyfully live, learn and grow together on top of their rural mountain in New York State. Anne's inspiration can be found at her *Shine with Unschooling* community (a Yahoo list). She is also currently working on checking off an item on her *Vision Board* by writing her first book.
Funshop and Round Table Talk Presenters
Kathryn Baptista is a long, long time unschooling parent, writer, and unschooling conference coordinator, recently the Northeast Unschooling Conference. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts with her patient and goofy wife Beth, rock star/College student/ grown unschooler Julian, and a couple of mushy cats.
Amy Bowers and her Barber kids live in Florida where they have adventures and rabble rouse daily. They like art, music, insects, food, things that move and things that explode!
Jayn and Robyn Coburn love crafting of all kinds. We are veterans of Live and Learn. Past funshops include Barbie skirts, fairy flower crowns, and cloth doll decorating. When not at conferences we live in Los Angeles with James Coburn and do something crafty every day.
Beth Fuller lives in New Mexico with her favorite people; her husband Kevin, their daughter Emma and her mother Nina. She and her family try to approach life with creativity and goofiness. She is always on the lookout for new ways to think about and interact with the world. Beth does not aspire to be the busiest, wealthiest, prettiest or most successful; she simply wants to relish the delight of being alive and being with her loved ones. She pursues happiness and has stopped expecting it to knock on her door uninvited. Now she spends time opening those doors and inviting it in. She can sometimes be found moderating the Peaceful Partnerships yahoo group, playing Guitar Hero or on her blog, http://web.mac.com/elizabethfuller/iWeb
Jennifer Johnson shares her NJ home with her husband of 9 years, Chris, and their two kids Charlotte, 2 and Jackson, 4. She is working on a book about RU for the rest of the world called Up The Down Staircase. Her belief is that unschooling involves finding poetry in everyday life and that if more people practiced unschooling, there would be poetry on every billboard on every highway in the land. Jennifer and her husband are thankful to be a part of this inspirational gathering of people.
Ginger Sabo is the peaceful Mama to Kai and Kade and a soul-mate to Jeff. I seem to be on a slower path to discovering all there is to discover and explore in the world…taking time to truly enjoy our children and our surroundings. You can usually find me watching our kids, knitting, reading or joining in a great game or two.
Hi, I'm Barbara Splett an unschooling mom of two wonderful boys Reed (11)and Blair (10). We have been unschooling from the beginning and love what it has brought to our family. We live in Northern Illinois and enjoy many interests including art, music, hiking and camping.