Deciding to Worldschool – Author Stories
Here we share why we each chose to worldschool, opening up about the experiences and personal motivations that led us on this journey.
Annika
My love of the road trip probably began the summer I turned ten, when our family drove from our home in the San Francisco Bay Area to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in our VW van—with just three cassette tapes. I sat in front with a stack of AAA maps, which I read with the intensity of a novel, looking out into the high desert of Nevada with awe, imagining the lives of the ranchers on the adjacent frontage roads, kicking up dust swirls. The high desert offered perspective. My mom had passed away less than two years earlier, and we were left a family of three, reeling and reacting from events outside our control. Travel became healing.
Two years later, my father taught a two-week course at the Polytechnic University of Milan in Italy. My sister and I stayed with the family of a faculty member in the suburbs while he worked. We watched kids our age playing soccer on ancient cobblestone roads, ate strawberry risotto, and saw a whole new way of life.
That Italian summer, my father came to life again and we officially found our footing. We traveled around Italy, Greece, and Switzerland for four weeks after he finished teaching. My frugal father, enamored with a bullet train, told the cashier, “Hang the cost… I want to ride that train!” Words that were unimaginable weeks before. Those joyful adventures through new places with my dad and sister shaped the form of my life—it was my first Wonder Year.
Will and I had planned and saved for our own Wonder Year for ten years before we left. But as the time for our journey approached, I realized it was coming at the perfect time. Parenting, stressful jobs, and busy lives had been pushing us off our center for years, and knowing that the time was set for “The Big Trip” was the sweet reward waiting on the horizon.
Julie
When I was thirteen, my father married my stepmother, Joan—aka Noanie—and they took the new stepfamily on an extended road trip through the American West. We rented an RV in Denver and trucked our way through mountains and mesas, salt flats, and national parks.
We camped under the stars, made chili in our outdoor kitchen, took a raft trip on the Snake River, and ground corn in Puebloan fashion at Mesa Verde, crisscrossing our way through the expansive West. I was a curious teen from Cincinnati, Ohio, coming of age in tube socks and pigtails.
Twenty-seven years later, my son, John David, was born—named for his beloved grandfathers and bound to generations through memories and love. Soon after his birth, my father and stepmom passed away—Dad from cancer and Noanie from a broken heart. Life is short. You never know. “Get out there now” is the reason I always wanted to travel.
We have dear friends, John and Eydie, who several years ago traveled around the world with their twelve-year-old son, Brook. They started on bikes in Ghana, trekked in Nepal, studied Spanish in Mexico, and found themselves in the Peruvian Andes.
At the time, our Johnny boy was in elementary school, manufacturing letters and numbers in what seemed to me to be a two-dimensional curriculum. I was increasingly frustrated by this and was actually looking at options for changing schools. When John, Eydie, and Brook came to visit upon their return, they shared stories of educational adventures. It struck me and opened my eyes to possibility. We played pin-the-flag-on-the-country and marveled at their stories. We were amazed at Brook’s cultural literacy, global awareness, conscientiousness, and grounded sense of preteen self.
We figured if they could do it, so could we. John, Eydie, and Brook got the gears spinning and helped us commit to our trip. It all made sense, felt natural, and we are forever grateful.
Angela
“Breaker breaker 1-9, what’s your handle?” Mine was Blue Eyes, given to me by my Grandpa Ed. While I rode shotgun in his RV, he’d let me talk to semitruck drivers on the CB radio, and we’d count punch buggies. These are the first trips I remember—tagging along on fishing excursions to lakes in Indiana and Kentucky, where he’d bait my hook and spit tobacco on the minnow to attract bigger fish. I loved how cozy and contained the RV was, especially where I slept, in the narrow bunk above the cockpit.
I’ve always loved to travel. I’m lucky my house was a happy place to grow up, but if I scan over the course of my life, almost all my favorite memories were made away from home. The unknown has always held sway.
My husband and I took many trips together in our early years as a couple, and in hindsight, I realize we made our most important life decisions on the road. Camping in Montana, we decided to marry. Sheltering from a Wisconsin blizzard, we decided to move west. Watching children play at the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, we decided to try for our first child. Then life piled up. So did responsibilities. A decade after moving to the Bay Area, we found ourselves with two sons, two very busy jobs, and a house we were working to fill. We were doing what was expected of us, but it no longer felt like us. The idea for a Wonder Year was born from a desire to find those things again—simplicity, time together, and adventure. We also hoped our kids would gain perspective and experience life outside their bubble. Soon we realized: there was no way we could not go.
Four months later—and forty years after my first overnight in an RV—I found myself in one again, this time calling it home.
