About

Helping You Develop Your FHREE & SDE Facilitation

FHREE stands for Full Human-Rights-Experience Education and it is education that supports young people in  living the full range of their human rights rather than just learning about rights in an academic way. You can find out more about FHREE here.

Democratic Self-Directed Education is one expression of FHREE, and it is booming, and we need more facilitators and facilities, fast. More education spaces are exploring and converting and more families are moving to SDE / Natural Learning/Unschooling too.  SDE is an excellent choice for most young people, and may be the only viable option for some  families such as those dealing with autistism with a PDA profile.  So how do we develop best-practice rapidly? You can find out more on Patreon Here

Je’anna Clements (BA Psych.Hons) is a mother, writer, determined defender of young people’s rights, SDE Facilitator and Facilitator trainer, facilitator and co-founder of Riverstone Village SDE learning community in South Africa. Riverstone Village is a Self-Directed Education community for ages 4 and up where everyone is equal, conflict is resolved through communication and collaboration, and everyone governs the space and learns together in a nature-rich environment.

Je’anna is also an active member of several My Life My Education campaigns such as the Clarify Compulsory Education and Democratise Education campaigns, a mentor for Children’s Rights champion Fardeen Blaq’s Y Not Campaign, an Oversight Committee member at EUDEC, and the author of What if School Creates DYSlexia?, Help, My Kid Hates School!, as well as the Helping the Butterfly Hatch series of books for SDE facilitators.

With over 18 years of experience in the field of Self-Directed Education she offers online international courses and support groups to aid Self-Directed Education facilitators and unschooling parents in finding their confidence and best practice, to support founders groups in getting onto the same page in terms of vision and understanding how SDE actually works, and to support people new or transitioning to SDE in getting oriented. She also specialises in SDE for PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). For a longer Bio, please scroll down

It took Je’anna over a decade of intensive Self-Directed study and practice to develop the skills and insights needed to co-found an SDE facility and offer effective support for young people (including young PDAers) to self-educate. You can do the same… but what if you don’t have a decade to spare?
Realising that there was a need that must be met, Je’anna continuously creates the Helping The Butterfly Hatch books, materials and courses to support beginners in getting started, and experienced SDE facilitators in reaching their next level of optimal.
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or contact Je’anna on OurShyftCommunity@gmail.com  to get the support you need – whether it’s a full course, mini-course, staff group workshop, support group, or one-on-one consultation.

You can also book Je’anna to speak at your event.

Je’anna Clements (BA Psychology Hons) is the author of What if School Creates DYSlexia?, Help, My Kid Hates School!, as well as the Helping the Butterfly Hatch series of books for SDE facilitators.

She was also recently elected as a member of the EUDEC Oversight Committee as well as to the core team for the co-creation of Training materials for EUDEC.

Following her degree in Philosophy, Political Science and post grad degree in Psychology, Je’anna worked in the music industry before entering the field of child-participation and environmental rights. During this time she became aware that many of the young people she worked with, hated school. After becoming a mother she trained as an Aware Parenting Instructor, counselor and educational play facilitator before deciding to study further in the field of alternative education. She quickly discovered that what she needed to learn was not ‘taught’ at university. Leaving behind her Masters in Philosophy of Education she instead embarked on a long and winding self-directed learning journey. When she first came across Self-Directed Education she knew she had found what she was looking for. However, although there was plenty of written material available, she did not live somewhere that she could intern and receive training. She set out to create her own training program for herself and other staff. Since 2006 she has been involved in a number of alternative education startups leading to her co-founding Riverstone Village, a Democratic, Self-Directed Education community in South Africa, in 2017.

She currently offers international support to adults learning to facilitate young people in Self-Directed Education (SDE), specialising in SDE for PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance). In addition to her books, her articles have been published by Save The Children (Sweden), the Children, Youth and Environments journal (Univ. Colorado, USA), and Tipping Points magazine (by the Alliance for Self-Directed Education) as well as a variety of online and print media.

Je’anna is an all-pronouns neurodivergent parent in an all-neurodivergent family who isn’t currently loud about any of that. If the details of this feel important for you to know, please do feel free to ask on theshiftwillcome@gmail.com