About Me…
Jenni Mahnaz
Over the course of 20 years, I have worked with children in a wide array of learning environments and I am now a passionate advocate of self-directed education (SDE). In addition to personally facilitating the unschooling journey of several young people across NY, I have worked closely with Manhattan Free School (now ALC NYC), Brooklyn Apple Academy, ALC Mosaic in Charlotte, NC, and Omnis Education. My writings on education can periodically be found in Tipping Points, the online publication for The Alliance For Self-Directed Education. I now homeschool three young children in Upstate NY.
After a lifetime of conventional schooling and a brief stint as a special education teacher in the NYC public school system, I finally discovered the freedom of homeschooling and self-directed education. Years of frustration over pointless power struggles, meaningless assignments, odd philosophies, and unreasonable demands within the conventional system finally ended when I realized I had been operating for years within a system that wasn’t in line with my core beliefs about learning, children, and basic human existence. I now find joy in helping other families homeschool confidently.
While self-directed education is where my passion lies, I also regularly work with families taking a more traditional homeschool route and I love the experience of exchanging ideas and talking through long-held assumptions to co-create a unique learning plan for each family.
Beyond my advocacy for self-directed education, I am also a pro at NY state homeschool paperwork, translating the way kids actually learn into language the DOE understands, supporting the "deschooling" process for new self-directed families, and helping families explore and challenge long held assumptions about what education "should" look like.
In addition to working with families to find their educational footing, I am also a photographer who captures the freedom of SDE & childhood through my camera lens- all of the photos on this site are my own.
Contact »
(917) 912-3031