"Follow it, do it, dream about it, and it will hit you: learning was there all the time, happening by itself."

- Grace Llewellyn

Barb Lundgren is the founder and producer of the Rethinking Education international conference. Barb is an unschooling parent of three children, now 25, 23 and 19. She is passionate about freedom, respect and unconditional support for all, especially children and teens. She is known for saying "my children taught me and I tried to be a good student" in response to all who have asked her if she taught her children at home. Well-educated in traditional school/college, she knew nothing until her kids were born... at home.... followed by immediate, premature early retirement from her employer, Washington University in St. Louis, then the family bed, child-led nursing and weaning (she breast-fed 3 kids over (brace yourself) 11 years!) and of course, no school. Her joyous mothering career awakened her totally and completely to life's big questions.

Prior to creating the Rethinking Education Conference, she conducted day-long unschool workshops for parents; inspiring and helping them work through the legal, logistical, and practical issues in getting started. She is also the owner of Imagine Advertising Group, which manages the national advertising for two widely read leaders in homeschool publications: Home Education Magazine and Family Times.

Her children are:

Son Quinn, 25: a thinker, meditator, intensely focused, challenged to take one day at a time. Recent forays into pottery, hand-constructed shoe design, quilting, and artisan bread making. Committed to living simply, he has everything he wants and needs at all times, loving the freedom of creating each day anew.

Daughter Brenna, 23: questions and dissects everything, in search of the magic bullet that will allow all of the big questions to fall into place. Brenna is radiant, independent, committed to her ideals, adventurous and determined. She lives in a cool, funky apartment in Salida, CO with her (unschooled) boyfriend and 3 beloved dogs. Her monthly expenses are so low that she has plenty of time to snowboard often, hike with her dogs daily and play with some of her favorite people in the world - children. She loves her no-stress job at a local family-owned cafe, where she eats for free and everything is homemade.

Baby Ike, 18: a gem of a human, he is gentle, funny, compassionate, honest and completely unafraid. He loves making money and spending time with his (unschooled) girlfriend, playing and competing at disc golf and making plans for the future.... which will remain private for now.

Her children are incredibly intelligent, capable, confident, unique and very cool... as all children should be.

Her husband Steve graduated from his "top 8" MBA advertising career of 20 years a few years back and became a massage therapist. He is now so happy and fulfilled he can't imagine ever going back to the corporate life. In fact, he has so successfully unschooled himself that he regrets ever going to college in the first place.... now that he has come to know and value the taste of freedom, self-education, work worth doing, and entrepreneuring.