This is an excerpt from the book Worldschoolers: Innovative Parents Turning Countries into Classrooms. (affiliate link.)
Cosimo and Emma were sitting next to each other at the kitchen table of our rental campervan; their school workbooks were wide open in front of them, taking over most of the table. I was perched over Emma, trying not to lose my balance from the motion of the camper and, at the same time, checking her exercise instructions. There was a loud background rattling sound coming from the campervan in motion. This was certainly not the quietest way to do their schoolwork!
Meanwhile, Cosimo on the side was complaining as usual loudly, “Mom, this is not how we did this at school!”
I rolled my eyes, looking out of the window, taking a deep breath, and admiring the beautiful Australian desert before responding to him.
Why couldn’t we simply be outside enjoying the environment?
“Cosimo, I am following the book instructions! Your teacher was making a whole three-hour lesson about it. I’m just trying to get through this topic quickly. The book isn’t wrong. It is just different from how your teacher would have presented it to you. Can you please just follow the instructions?!”
He snorted again and got back to it.
Emma, meanwhile, quietly had tears rolling down her beautiful pink cheeks. I wanted to cry too! Every now and then, Mass would check in from the driver’s seat to make sure that everyone was doing what they were supposed to do. Luca was peacefully napping. The car movement was a great way of putting him to sleep.
This was just one of the many “school” days during our travels in Australia as well as New Zealand.
Back in 2017, during a quick vacation in Thailand, our family of five decided to sell everything we owned to set out to explore the world for one year. Our travels started in June 2018 from Bali. We took this first month off from anything in order to enjoy the island and get rid of some of the stress of a whole year planning this trip. The plan was to start schooling again once we traveled to the next country: Australia.
Honestly, we thought we could easily just jump back into what they were doing in school, and it was all going to be fine and easy! The principal also gave us the workbooks for the year we were going to be gone. Mass and I thought we had it all planned out perfectly.
We were so wrong!
Let’s go back to that campervan drive, one of the many, where instead of enjoying the view passing by us as we drove all over the country, the kids and I were sitting in the back trying to get through a few pages of those workbooks which we all disliked deeply.
After big fights and being miserable throughout our time in Australia due to this “homework”, I had no plan of ruining all our time in New Zealand as well. I woke up in the middle of the night with this strong feeling that something had to change. I was done with this routine! If we wanted to enjoy and live in full this experience, we had to change the way we did it.
I got on my phone and started scrolling through the worldschoolers group on Facebook. During our months of planning, it had been so helpful when I was trying to decide on places to see and things to do. I finally made up my mind to ask a simple question: “How do you educate your kids while traveling?”
Everyone found their own way of teaching their kids, and it worked well for the whole family. Some followed a strict curriculum, some barely followed one, some unschooled completely,
In just a few minutes, I got over twenty very detailed responses. I read every single one, and as I went through them, I realized one common thread. Everyone found their own way of teaching their kids, and it worked well for the whole family. Some followed a strict curriculum, some barely followed one, some unschooled completely, and some worldschooled and homeschooled. They all had found their balance and were following that path. There was no right answer. There was just the right answer for you.
The next morning we donated the workbooks to a library in New Zealand. We sat down with our kids and asked them how they wanted to keep on learning.
It was time for us to implement a new plan!
First of all, I looked into one of the online programs that had been mentioned in the group: Time 4 Learning. What I loved immediately about this program was the fact that it covered all topics. From math to English, social studies, and science. I thought this would give our kids more consistency in their learning process but at the same time be more practical with our current lifestyle. The activities were engaging and entertaining, so it didn’t feel like they were simply doing schoolwork. Our change had been successful and everyone seemed pleased.
Project World School Family Summit
However I also thought it was time to meet some like-minded families sharing the same lifestyle, hopefully connecting with them would open us to new possibilities. Almost daily, I was seeing posts on Facebook about an upcoming event, the Project World School Family Summit. Incredibly I realized that we were going to be in Chiang Mai, Thailand on the same date. It was clearly a moment of synchronicity, so Mass and I decided that it was meant to be, and we booked to go!
For those who are wondering, the Project World School Family Summit is a conference-style gathering for worldschooling, homeschooling, and unschooling families and those who are just curious. Families from all over the world come together for five magical days with the main purpose of sharing experiences, tips, and tricks about worldschooling, creating a community, and learning from one another. It is a great support system united by the common experience of traveling and educating the kids.
This was clearly our tribe!
Our common goals were more important: the well-being of our kids, sharing the world with them, and a different approach to their education.
During those five days, we didn’t feel like we were listening to someone telling us what to do and how to do it, but rather a community united in trying to walk through this path together, sustaining each other. Some shared personal skills and others’ personal experiences on topics related to this lifestyle, all to help each other grow. Honestly, we had never felt so close to perfect strangers as we did in those five days. Never have we trusted 150 people we just met, sharing with them our fears, issues, doubts, successes, and joys. For the first time, we felt free to be around people we didn’t know because race, religion, and political views were not blocking us from connecting. Our common goals were more important: the well-being of our kids, sharing the world with them, and a different approach to their education.
While the parents were focusing on all these important topics, all the kids that had never met each other before played like they had been friends for ages! They lived every day to the fullest.
One session in particular moved us deeply.
A few mothers talked about their different ways of teaching their kids while traveling.
It started with a very organized mom that had an actual detailed curriculum and a whole plan for each week. Mass and I were immediately overwhelmed by all the information and started questioning ourselves on everything we were doing and feeling extremely guilty. However as the other moms came up to speak our mood shifted as all the stories were so different. They all had different ways and styles, some felt closer to what we had chosen and some less. Our confidence was coming back until a mother came up and spoke of how she was completely unschooling her children, they were free to learn what they wanted and at their own pace. This felt so extreme and difficult to grasp for us. How could they learn if we (or someone else) was not directing them in some way?
Once the session came to an end I found a new confirmation to what had been worrying me for months, every family had a different approach and we could feel free to find what worked best for our family.
We finally realized that all five of us needed to “unschool” ourselves from what we had learned in the past, if we wanted to take on a new way of learning.
What was one of the biggest lessons from this summit? We finally realized that all five of us needed to “unschool” ourselves from what we had learned in the past, if we wanted to take on a new way of learning. After all, as worldschoolers, we acknowledge that we are learning constantly from the world! It was time to give ourselves a few months off from traditional learning and start focusing on truly observing the world around us and recognizing how it was teaching us every day.
Learning all the time
After Chiang Mai, I feel our worldschooling experience truly started. One of our biggest realizations was that our attitude toward our kids’ learning process was completely based on fear. The fear that had been transmitted to us from everyone who couldn’t understand our choice to travel and take them out of school.
Inevitably in our first months on the road, we had all those little voices inside us saying that “The kids were going to be left behind,” “They would not be accepted in school once we got back,” or worst of all, “They would not learn anything!”.
We weren’t just reading about the Great Pyramid of Giza. We were actually running around it, climbing on it, and celebrating Luca’s third birthday in front of it!
At times, those little voices inside us were so powerful that blinded us from seeing the reality of things. WE WERE LEARNING ALL THE TIME! We were constantly putting ourselves outside of our comfort zone and taking in what the world had to offer. Our family was exploring places that you usually read about in books. We were walking the grounds, touching it, and connecting closely to the history behind it.
We weren’t just reading about the Great Pyramid of Giza. We were actually running around it, climbing on it, and celebrating Luca’s third birthday in front of it!
What a magical way it was to celebrate his birthday for the first time during our travels! We told him that we were going to ride camels to go to the pyramid, but he insisted on riding a horse, hence we booked three horses and two camels. Once we arrived in the perfect spot where the pyramids were the perfect background, we took lots of pictures, and finally got out a cupcake I had taken from our hotel breakfast, put a candle on it and let him blow it. I will never forget that moment, he was so happy, so excited and jumping all over the place. Shortly after we made our way closer to the pyramids, and there the climbing started. For our kids that was simply another amazing playground….with a lot of history!
The kids weren’t simply seeing photos of elephants in books or in documentaries; we drove close to them! Actually at times maybe a bit too close! In fact, we were doing a self-driving safari in the Kruger in South Africa, when we found ourselves stuck between a group of elephants that was crossing the road, two giant ones were blocking us on both sides, while the rest passed safely. Not our safest moment, but for sure it was unique!
We weren’t just reading about volcanoes erupting. We were actually sitting on the beach on Gili Meno enjoying dinner and making new friends when Mount Agung in Bali started erupting right in front of our eyes. We were learning about the difference between a volcanic crater and volcanic caldera by direct experience, hiking up 3 craters in Iceland and doing a safari inside a Caldera in Ngorongoro National Park in Africa
My list could go on and on. The point is that we were out in the world and our learning environment had just become so much wider!