Leif Schmit

Hi there! I'm Leif (ze/they), a 26yo, white, Genderqueer, Grown Unschooler, Theatre Professional, and Self-directed Education facilitator. I've been coming to LIG since I was 10, starting out spending the whole weekend in the game room and ending up hosting various funshops and the talent show as a young adult. If I've learned anything from my time in theatre, it's that collaboration, artistic expression, and play are central to the learning process. After teaching theatre and summer arts camps for 7 years I started working at The Village Free School, where for the last 4 years I've been able to apply and deepen my understandings and question my assumptions around learning, unlearning, education, making change, and being in right relationship that my unschooling experience offered me.

Throughout the various hobbies & professions I've been privileged enough to fail my way to familiarity with - blues dancing, board member-ing, theatre teaching, musical acting, dishwashing, music producing, language learning, mushroom foraging, game designing, tabletop roleplaying, animal husbandry-ing, software designing, zine-making, "un"school administration-ing, to mutual aiding - I love finding the ways that different areas of knowledge and experience can weave into and enhance our understanding of each other in surprising ways. I care deeply about making sure all young people have the spaces and resources to cultivate their curiosity and agency so we can all get free together from the oppressive systems of supremacy that we are pressured to accept and perpetuate.

My heartfelt gratitude to my beloveds, mentors, students, family, community, ancestors, the land, and queer, BIPOC, indigenous, immigrant, poor, and disabled revolutionaries past and present for all the gifts they have - and continue to - offer the world while facing discrimination, marginalization, and oppression in all their insidious forms. You are needed, and your needs are seeds.