Worldschooling Education: Background Info to Support Your Launch
This blog offers a practical foundation for launching your worldschooling journey, including terminology, learning strategies, tools to support different types of learners, and thoughts on finding your groove.
In case you were wondering, yes, you absolutely can educate your kids on the road. This blog will provide you with guidelines and gridlines, ideas, and inspiration. And if you’re reading this from the road, we hope it reminds you just how much experiential learning is already happening effortlessly.
You have the right to educate your children outside of traditional schooling. In our book Wonder Year we share more about the process for pulling them out of school, and now we want to whet your appetite with all the ways that you can put them into the world.
We’ve spoken with many parents at all stages of worldschooling, and strong sentiments emerge. Before parents leave, they often feel pressure to have their whole worldschooling plan figured out. While on the road, they worry that they’re not teaching enough or that their kids haven’t mastered the academic milestones. Good news, though: you already have the three most important ingredients for educating your kids:
- you love and want the best for them;
- with every question you ask and excursion you take, you model curiosity; and
- having chosen to travel as a family, you recognize that the world is a very good teacher.
Even more good news: most parents return home proud of all the growth they see in their children.
There are as many paths to worldschool as there are paths in the world. Some parents want more structure, academic focus, and alignment with traditional school standards, whereas others prefer spontaneity and freedom. Our suggestions are guideposts for you to create your own approach, knowing that the alchemy comes from diving in and interacting with each other, with learning, and with the world. Be prepared to pivot as you, your children, and your map will likely evolve.
Some Important Terms
Here are some common terms you will encounter in Wonder Year and in online conversations about educating outside of traditional schools. Because this is an evolving space and the definitions are not written in stone, note that these terms are sometimes used interchangeably and are not mutually exclusive. It’s important to note that this is a dynamic—fluid, even—landscape that continues to evolve.
* 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 below)
* Hybrid schooling: Anything goes! You can blend any of the above.
Unschooling: Don’t Let the Name Fool You
Unschooling is an increasingly popular form of education, and we want to delve a little deeper into it because many worldschoolers find themselves leaning heavily into it. The word may sound extreme, but it does not necessarily mean no schooling. It’s called unschooling because, as a form of learning, it does not try to mimic traditional classrooms with schedules and standards-based learning but instead lets kids follow their interests with great fluidity.
Popularized by American educator John Holt in the 1970s, the premise of unschooling is that we learn better when we aren’t forced to do so. Unschoolers believe that learning is not the same as schooling. Proponents believe that the unschooling parent’s job is to maximize their child’s experiences in the world and to find the learning that is already happening, hear the questions of their blossoming youngster, and nurture that inquisitiveness. The parent becomes the collaborator, the guide, the witness, and the recorder.
Families carve out time and space, and they expand the surface area between them and the world by exposing their kids to all kinds of people, places, and experiences. That way, the world becomes more readily accessible, and adventures become teachable moments.
Unschooling can be entirely open, or it can take on some structure. An unschooled Wonder Year might include monthly or weekly learning contracts (agreements between parent and student about program of study, dates, and assignments), interest projects, writing portfolios, fieldwork, direct instruction if desired, and other ideas.
Unschooling starts with the premise that we are all lifelong learners, and schooling is just one resource that aids education.
Learning Modalities
Worldschooling offers an opportunity to get to know your kids through a different lens and to learn how they learn. No matter the approaches you choose, chances are you will get a closer look at their strengths and challenges.
You’ll be there to help break down projects into small chunks. You can teach them about setting schedules, reaching goals, and prioritizing. These are the soft skills of executive functioning; and kids will thrive from the step-by-step, individualized instruction. Throughout the year, you can pull back or help them make their own system.
Direct, hands-on experiences result in long-lasting knowledge. Think about that time in middle school when you presented a science project to your classmates. Maybe you asked them to taste chocolate, lemons, salt, and arugula to learn about sweet, sour, salty, and bitter taste buds. Chances are you remember way more from that exercise than from a lecture you passively listened to on the same topic.
What does this mean for worldschooling? It means that your children are likely to learn and remember more from their multisensory travel experiences.
Each child learns in a variety of ways, and your teaching toolbox may be bigger than you think. On the road you can employ a full range of learning approaches such as the following:
* Visual and spatial learning happens by seeing the information and thinking in pictures. Kids can explore map reading and photography.
* Verbal or auditory learning works by hearing information and thinking about the meaning of words and sounds. Worldschoolers can interview interesting people they meet or listen to ocean waves, birdcalls, and audiobooks.
* Reading and writing skills are developed through interacting with some form of text. In this mode, we journal, write blogs, or read menus or books.
* Logical or mathematical learning happens through calculating numbers, identifying patterns, and thinking conceptually. Your kids might play logic games like Sudoku or collect coins and calculate and compare their value.
* Hands-on or kinesthetic learning occurs through physical activity, like learning a new dance or the times tables while practicing headers with a soccer ball on a rainy day inside a twenty-four-foot RV . . . for example!
We are not one fixed learning type but rather a constantly changing mixture. Play around with different approaches, and discover together what works for your family.
Most importantly, coach your children so they become lifelong, meta learners—those who are aware of their own learning. It all brings you closer; it all brings wonder.
If you have a neurodiverse child, your worldschooling might have more considerations. One mom we know attended an Orton-Gillingham (a type of multisensory teaching approach) training program for dyslexia so that she could more confidently help her two sons in their daily schoolwork. She also decided to shorten their journey to six months, to lessen her sons’ time away from the seasoned support of their learning center.
You could also plan your trip in a way that allows you to return home periodically so that you can tap in and out easily with specially trained teachers. Another mom found that working one-on-one with her daughter, who had ADHD, helped her understand and strategize solutions that carried them both way past their worldschooling trip. Sometimes removing the literal and metaphorical noise is advantageous for diverse learners.
Finding Your Rhythm
With worldschooling, you choose the time in which to learn and the space you want to do it in; this flexibility can be one of your most powerful educational tools.
You could, for instance, have “school” each morning for one hour. You could have one day on and one day off, or you could have pockets of concentration. You will inevitably adjust these dials to suit your needs and preferences throughout your Wonder Year.
The point is to find a cadence that works for your family.
Angela used their RV home base for traditional homeschooling of some subjects. Her family alternated three months of international traveling with three months of domestic road tripping, multiple times over. This gave them a base for desks, storage space for materials, and the time of slow travel to work through their lessons.
Annika had “buckle down” time in New Zealand so that she could get through 75 percent of their goals and objectives and then relax into the magical moments of travel, fitting in the remaining goals as opportunities naturally arose.
Be flexible and take advantage of the natural downtimes in travel, such as a long train ride in China, a rainy day in the Everglades, or waiting for food in Greece. Keep flash cards in your purse or backpack. A pair of dice is also good for math exercises: divide, multiply, add, and subtract.
Annika kept one big Ziploc with 5″ x 7″ journals, colored pencils, scissors, and a glue stick for impromptu sketching, scavenger hunts, or journaling. Julie, Charlie, and Johnny always had their “10 essentials” bags handy with things like headlamps, pocketknives, compasses, star charts, and paracords. You never know when there’s a knot to be tied, a limerick to be written, a stick to be whittled, or a constellation to be identified.
Worldschooling rhythms can be highly efficient. While classroom teachers fill their seven- or eight-hour day with teaching, classroom management, and breaks in between, most worldschooling families find they can cover material in much shorter times than they ever imagined.
We have found that one or two hours per day of focused learning is profoundly effective.
When Everything Isn’t Awesome
When you are the parent and the teacher, what happens when your kid doesn’t like your supercool lesson idea? They look at you and say no. When you’re on the road, your kids will be distracted, tired, and sometimes, it may seem, just plain over you. The emotional proximity might make this normal child behavior feel like a personal attack. It’s not.
Coping strategies for off days:
* Limit the direct instruction to no more than an hour, maybe even fifteen minutes on a bad day or if you have younger kids. Create some space. Keep stepping back until the dynamic lets you step forward again somehow.
* Find ways for kids to do independent work, maybe an art project or online lesson.
* Remind them that they are not spending all day in a classroom, and that, in your most gentle parenting way, their end of the bargain is to do this schoolwork.
* Kids need you to be their safe space. If long division is causing a divide between you and your child, stop.
* If there are more and more of these off days, find ways to shake it up. Hire an online or local tutor, look for an online class, reach out to loved ones back home for ideas, or offer your kids self-paced books or science kits.
Here are some tips for working with differing levels of learners at the same time, especially when the kids outnumber the parents:
* Set one child up to do independent work while you coach the other one.
* Ask one child to help or present information to another child; ask siblings to quiz each other.
* Remind kids to do what they can independently for, say, fifteen minutes, and then go check on them. It’s hard to move forward with one child when you are interrupted repeatedly by the other.
* Of course, if it’s an option, two parents can coach.
Packable School Supplies
Here are some things that are easy to pack and bring along almost anywhere:
* Journals
* A durable carrier for colored pencils, a glue stick, and TSA-approved scissors
* Hard-shell accordion file folder for drawings, school assignments, or keepsakes that you don’t want to get tattered
* Index cards for flash cards, quick diagrams, and other ideas
* Dice for math games
* Binoculars and magnifying glass
* Mini portable photo printer
* Kindles or other e-readers
* Deck of cards and travel board games
* Camera
* Compass
* Laptop/tablet
* USB thumb drive to deliver files to a print shop
Culmination Projects
When you have finished your worldschooling journey, how do you make sense of it with your children? How do you document and memorialize what your family has done and learned? How do you present it to your school upon reentry?
There are many ways to capture your children’s educational adventure. Take some time to digest, integrate, and share your experiences.
* Create a writing portfolio as a culminating project. Make a cover, create a table of contents, and add some artwork.
* Apply to attend a conference or festival, and once accepted, prepare a presentation or poster for display as an exhibit.
* Keep a running document about some of your kids’ favorite unschooling learning moments. Include photos. This is easier to do as you go, rather than cramming it all at the end.
* Create a timeline of your trip, and have your kids list their greatest hits from each place, month, or activity.
* Final exams. Not what you’re thinking. If your children are nervous about having a whole year out, create a “Celebration of Learning” that circles back to those goals, standards, and objectives you articulated at the beginning of the year. This kind of final is a fun way to show your kids just how much they learned. You might ask questions like:
* What is the strangest food you ate?
* What is the capital of Maine?
* What is the major religion in India?
* Which countries colonized Vietnam?
* What are the trees in these photos?
* Would you recommend a Wonder Year to your friends? Why or why not?
With the tools and ideas shared here, we hope you feel well on your way to crafting an education approach that follows your children’s curiosity and is meaningful for your family!
