What is worldschooling, anyway?

Simply put, worldschooling is learning through direct interaction with the world. 

Learning about forced removals in Cape Town

Worldschooling is an educational approach shaped by the experience of learning in the world. Worldschooling is a form of education that combines travel and experiential learning. Rather than being confined to a traditional classroom setting, worldschooling families believe that real-world experiences, cultural immersion, and travel can provide rich educational opportunities. 

Worldschooling allows children to learn about different cultures, languages, history, science, geography, and social dynamics by experiencing them firsthand. It often involves families traveling to other countries or regions, exploring local attractions, engaging with local communities, and participating in activities and experiences that enhance their learning. Worldschooling can happen anywhere, any season, any time of day. It just requires a little curiosity and a lot of wonder. 

One of the limitations of classroom learning is that we tend to learn about others. With worldschooling, we begin to learn from others. It’s an exchange. Learners create their own opinions based on direct experiences rather than simply repeating what they hear from others or read in a textbook. You can’t fake a personal interaction. Your kids might reach the conclusion, for example, that countries maligned in the mainstream US media are full of good and kind people. Worldschooling is fact-finding; worldschooling is peacebuilding.

Worldschooling can be:

• learning to tap a rubber tree in Krabi, Thailand
• visiting WWII sites in Normandy, France to understand the legacies of those who battled
• sourcing ingredients and learning to cook kebabs with a hostel owner in Istanbul, Turkey
• taking the Junior Ranger pledge after completing educational activities at Dinosaur National Monument
• visiting the bridge on the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn to learn about navigation equipment
• collecting river water in your neighborhood and looking at it under a microscope at your kitchen table
• calculating currency conversion to buy Uyghur currants at the Xinjiang market
• visiting with a Ski Patrol team in Colorado to learn how dogs become avalanche rescuers
• talking with your elderly neighbor about what life was like when she was a kid
• listening to an audiobook about the ancient Mayans while exploring the temple regions of Guatemala
• learning how to say hello, goodbye, please and thank you in a local language new to you
• drawing a picture and naming the phase of the moon every night for a month from your campsites

The possibilities are endless.

Learning to weave from local experts in Laos

Worldschooling varies in its ties to formal educational structures. Worldschooling can be closely aligned with unschooling (see below), theme-driven, subject-driven, or opportunistic based on where a family is traveling and what the day presents. It can also include online learning while on the road, with students completing tasks independently or connected with remote classmates. 

Over the past couple of decades, the term worldschooling gained traction. Several traveling families who considered themselves worldschoolers brought awareness to the concept as they shared their experiences online and in popular media. You might also come across the term roadschooling. For clarity, here at Wonder Year we use the term worldschooling to mean it all. We want everyone to feel welcome whether you are traveling in the US or overseas, full-time or part-time, following a curriculum or going with the flow. This growing all-comers inclusivity around the term is also what we see reflected on the internet and social media.

Worldschooling is not something you sign up for. There’s no one to register with, no dogma or governing institution. There are many resources to help you design what worldschooling looks like for you and your family. We walk readers through many of them in our upcoming book, Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling.

What is Wonder Year?

A Wonder Year is a season of discovery. It is an experience of being in motion with your family and adopting a mindset of growth and curiosity. Not necessarily wedded to one year, the notion applies to any length of time–three weeks, three months or three years. For these reasons, it is also the name of our book.

Worldschooling is the educational foundation of a Wonder Year. Our belief is simply this—the world is a very good teacher, and the more interaction our children have with it through family travel, the more their hearts and intellect will open and grow. 

Wonder Year = long-term family travel + worldschooling

Finding favorite books at a market in Beijing

Can anyone do this?

You may not know this, but as a parent in the United States, you have the right to withdraw your child from traditional school and choose an alternative means to educate them. Some districts now have fully online options that you can do from anywhere. In most states, you will need to register your kids as homeschoolers. In some cases, you will need to record what you teach and how you teach it. But then you get to watch the magic unfold. What happens when your concept of education expands beyond the four walls of a classroom? What happens when you notice learning opportunities can be anywhere at any time? The world becomes your school. 

Changing his own flat on the Oregon coast

Won’t my kids fall behind if they don’t go to school?

By rolling into worldschooling, you are choosing to step forward and align yourself with the forefront of innovative educational models. Public and private schools are recognizing the value of travel as part of education. International Baccalaureate (IB) programs promote “intercultural understanding and respect…as an essential part of life in the 21st Century.” Leading universities encourage study abroad programs. Some people may say worldschooling lacks academic rigor, but the evidence will be clear when your kids return to traditional school from a Wonder Year with grit, confidence, and a global frame of reference.

What are some terms used in the worldschooling community?

• Homeschooling: learning at home rather than at a public or private institution    
• Worldschooling: learning through direct interaction with the world
• Roadschooling: a form of worldschooling that most often refers to domestic travel
• Nature schooling: using the natural world as the primary classroom; sometimes called forest schooling
• Gameschooling: a form of homeschooling that teaches concepts and skills through games like chess, cards, board games, and manipulative toys like Rubik’s Cubes  
• Unschooling: using students’ curiosities and interests instead of prescribed curricula to drive self-paced learning (more on this soon)
• Hybrid schooling: anything goes! a blend of any of the above

We hope these definitions and context help you enter the conversation and community. For a peek at what worldschooling can look like, check out our Fernweh Families posts in this blog. We hope they help inspire your own journey!

The post What is Worldschooling? appeared first on Wonder Year Travel.

Fernweh is a German word coming from fern (“far”) and weh (“pain”) – literally, “far pain,” most often translated to English as “a desire to travel,” or, more simply, “wanderlust.”

Our third traveling family is the Diop Family: mom Helga (44), a political scientist from Iceland working in development cooperation; dad Yaya (45), an ex private bodyguard from Senegal; and their children Klara (27), Mariama (22), Daniel (20), Ingibjorg (16), Idrissa (15), Joseph (13), Cheikh (12), Alexander (9), Richlove (7), and Hekla (5). They also have two grandchildren Jökull (22 months) and Salka (20 months).

Please tell us about your family.

Homeschooling in Dakar, Senegal

We are a large family, with nine of us living at home at the moment. I have an incurable travel bug and  cannot stay put in one place for a long time. I’m either traveling with my family; traveling for work, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa; or dreaming of traveling to far away places with daddy and the kids in tow.

Please tell us a bit about your journey.

Our travel style varies. We mostly slow travel, staying for extended periods of time in other countries–most often Africa. At the moment, however, we just finished a two-month trip in Europe to Poland, Italy, and France. 

I work remotely, which allows us to travel when we want and homeschool our children when on the move. Until now, we have taken flights and rented accommodation, but we are preparing a van to bring abroad soon. We believe the van will be a better fit for our large family and be more budget-friendly. 

What was one of the most important ingredients in getting your family on the road – what did you do that worked out well?

The most important part for us was to be able to sustain ourselves financially while on the road, and have a base to return to when we wanted. We tried the “sell all and travel the world“ thing, but that did not work for our family. It is stressful to have children and not have somewhere to call home when you feel like returning to your home country. It also proved stressful not to have a stable income and be able to plan our future financially. Hence, we took a break for some years to build our little base in the countryside of Iceland and secure our income remotely. We are happy and proud to have managed to work it out, and we are excited for our future slow travels.

Buying souvenirs in Senegal

What’s outside your window right now? What fascinates you about where you are?

Last week it was downtown Nice, France. We decided to visit there for three weeks so I could take courses in professional French and all enjoy a sunny European city. It’s amazing to step outside your apartment and walk only 200 meters to a beautiful beach. Today it is the Icelandic countryside, beautiful Icelandic horses and a glacier. Iceland is the most amazing country in the world during the summer. We don’t want to be anywhere else during that time. 

Can you describe a time when learning for your kids or family happened organically and profoundly…when you learned outside the “plan” you started with?

Recently we have been strictly following their curriculum from home and it has worked out fine, but I love when we let the kids choose. Once while in Africa they wanted to make a bow and arrow, so we went to the market, bought everything they needed, and then built it ourselves. Another time our son wanted to learn computer programming, so we signed him up for courses on Khan Academy. I have multiple examples like this when the kids decide what they want to focus on and we follow. When we do that, they are more interested and seem to learn more than when the ideas come from us and are imposed on them.

What have you discovered about your family by being on the road together?

How much I enjoy being with my family without outside distractions, but at the same time how important alone time is. I wouldn’t change being able to show my children the world this way, but I´m happy to mix it up with normal routines back home in Iceland in-between. I’ve also discovered that travel does not solve problems, it magnifies them.

What does community mean to you, and how have you found it during your travels?

Visiting their grandmother’s sister in Senegal

We don’t seek community while traveling. On the contrary, we enjoy not being part of a community and being only us. We like not having to answer to anyone or think about anyone other than just us in our small bubble.

Are there other traveling families you are particularly inspired by? Why are they inspiring?

Yes, I love following:

@nestaautourdumonde we met them during their travels here in Iceland, and we love their view on life and their travel style. They slow travel with their three kids and are expecting the fourth one on the road.

@worldschoolfamily is a large family like ours that homeschools and travels. They just finished a three-month Europe trip and are now creating a base in Portugal. 

@malimish live in their Sprinter van with their three kids and cats. They share their everyday life and show us what life on the road looks like.

@worldtowning have tried it all, starting by living in a town in France, living in an RV driving around Europe, and now living aboard a sailboat. They share vlogs about their daily life. 

@macs_explore for their exceptional photo and video capture skills and their adventures with their two teenage boys. We met during their travels in Iceland and had inspiring talks about travel and life.

What do you wish a fellow worldschooling family had told you before you left home?

It will not be like you expect it to be, everything will go wrong and the kids will get homesick. But that’s ok–it’s all part of the adventure and this journey you are on together. 

Grabbing WiFi where she can, Helga works remotely in Dakar.

What’s your favorite story to share about this experience? 

When I was stuck at the border of Western Sahara and Mauritania at 3 o’clock in the morning, with one suitcase and two kids in tow, trying to hitchhike my way to Senegal. I decided to take public transport from Spain to Senegal because my car broke down in Spain, and I had to be in Senegal in a couple of days for work. I knew everything always works out in Africa, so I decided to just go. And of course it worked out, and we reached Senegal after four days and four nights on the road.

What are you excited about seeing/doing/learning next?

Bringing my van outside of Iceland and experimenting living in it with my family. We are converting it into a camper and hope to be able to give it a try soon.

Many thanks to Helga and her family for spending time with us to share their experiences. You can follow along and learn more about their journey at:

• Facebook: MommyNeedstoTravel
• Instagram: @mommyneedstotravel

Or on their website, www.mommyneedstotravel.com

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