Victoria Lenormand | From Detective To Unschooling Advocate

Ex-detective turned homeschooler Victoria Lenormand traces a clear line between two systems she lived inside: policing and schooling. She describes leaving a police service as it shifted toward force, metrics, and control, and later recognizing the same dynamics in her son’s early education through grading, labeling, and constant assessment following an autism diagnosis.

In this conversation, Victoria explains how those systems undermined confidence rather than supporting learning, and how her family responded by moving into home education. She shares practical examples of replacing compliance with agency, learning through lived experience rather than abstraction, and building community through shared interests instead of age-based classrooms.

The episode shows what changes when education is organized around curiosity, deep focus, and real relationships, and how families can identify when a system no longer serves a child—and what it takes to step outside it without losing structure, learning, or community.

🗓️ Recorded December 8, 2025. 📍 Tarragona, Spain

🔗  Relevant links

https://geminidirections.co.uk/
  / victoria-lenormand-2129227b  
  / geminidirections.co.uk  
  / geminidirections  
https://amzn.eu/d/dZz1BqH

📖 Episode Chapters

0:00 Meet Victoria: Detective Turned Homeschooler
1:16 Early Schooling And Questioning Grades
4:55 From Service To Force: Policing Shifts
8:55 Outcome Versus Process In Learning
15:45 A Four-Month Crash Course In Math
20:50 Diagnoses, Misfit, And Withdrawing From School
25:55 Discovering Home Education From Scratch
31:16 Motorhome Life And Interest-Led Learning
35:51 Community Beyond Age Groups
42:00 Measuring What Matters And Play
46:50 Parents’ Growth, Boundaries, And Work
51:45 Alternatives Rising And Paths Forward

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