You might have heard of worldschooling before, but are wondering, what the heck is it? Why are people worldschooling? And most importantly, who is doing it? Worldschooling is the latest type of alternative education. Though it is not super common overall, there are quite a lot of families who have chosen worldschooling as a new type of schooling for their children.
When you hear the name what do you think of? World-schooling, so it must be schooling with the world, and that is right. In a short explanation worldschooling is being educated from the real world and in most cases worldschooling involves travel. Worldschool families travel around the world as they are learning and being educated from the world.
Worldschooling is one of the most epic ways to be educated. Imagine learning new things every day in a different location, and the world is your classroom. Keep reading as I debunk all the questions about this new type of education going by the name of worldschooling.
What is Worldschooling?
As I said before, worldschooling is a modern educational movement that has slowly grown over the past decade. Now there are thousands of families worldschooling across the globe. Worldschooling is when families travel, adventuring and exploring as their children’s education.
Worldschooling combines education and travel to create the best source of learning there is. To worldschoolers, the world is their classroom! Worldschool families often sell all their belongings before beginning their travel adventure, but there are many different approaches of it.
Most worldschool parents are not against conventional schooling, but they think worldschooling will bring more value to their children’s lives. They find the amount of learning through travelling the world is a much better education. From being worldschooled you don’t have the worry about doing well on a test, and there is no peer pressure or competition. It is a travel based education where kids can expand their knowledge, and curiosity. They can learn through interest based projects and activities while they travel.
Worldschooling can range from traveling and simply letting the world teach everything, to going to schools across the world as families travel. According to Ashley Dymock De Tello, there are 4 different approaches of worldschooling.
The Settled Globe Trotter
A common misconception with worldschooling is that worldschoolers need to be travelling full time. Well that is not true. The settled globe trotters are the families who have a home base and live in their home, but travel occasionally. They do not need to follow any sort of type of schooling while worldschooling, and it doesn’t matter whether the kids go to public school, private school, or are homeschooled or unschooled.
This type of worldschool works well for families who can’t work abroad or have a location independent job, or if they have certain obligations keeping them at home most of the year. So if you take your kids out of school to go on family trips once in a while, you would be considered a settled globe trotter.
Unconventional Traditionalists
The Unconventional Traditionalists are families who use traditional schools as their children’s education source. So they combine travel and local schools around the world. In other words, families will often enrol their children in public schools as they are traveling. So the children will continue going to school but they get to do school abroad. This is also a great way for kids to learn new languages as they travel.
On month their kids might be learning at a public school in china, and the next month they might be at a school in France. This way students will be immersed in all the different aspects of the new culture, and it gives them the ability to meet people and make friends. Unconventional Traditionalists often stay in one area for a while or travel quite slowly.
The Structured Adventurer
This is the most common type of worldschooling, and the one that I first found out about. The Structured Adventurer is the way to go if you are interested in homeschooling. Families homeschool as they travel and the kids get to learn based on the locations they’re going. The worldschool parents can make lesson plans and “classes” based on the locations they’re in. These types of worldschoolers often don’t stay in one location for a long time.
For example, if the family is in Cairns, Australia, they can learn about the Great Barrier Reef, and maybe do a few projects about it. It is common for structured adventurers to learn math and science, or subjects that they don’t learn as much of just from travel, to do a few online classes. Structured adventurers tend to use a more methodical approach to education.
World Un-Schoolers
World Un-schooling is when families don’t have any sort of structure to their children’s learning approach. Unschooling is a form of homeschooling, but families live as if school doesn’t exist. Normally they don’t follow any sort of curriculum, but it really depends on the parents. Children can pursue subjects that interest them, and learn based on curiosity.
World Unschoolers don’t plan out their children’s education. They simply travel as normal and their kids learn as they go. Some way world unschoolers learn are through currency exchange, and time change. They might learn from going to museums, outing or just by exploring the area that they are in. Being in a whole new part of the world has so many learning aspects including being immersed in new culture, learning about geography and learning new languages.
Why are Families Worldschooling?
Most families find that worldschooling brings more value into their life than when they were living in one spot. Normally the familly with begin worldschooling after they’ve had a taste of travel with their kids. After going on a family vacation and realizing how much more value it brings to your life, that can begin the want to worldschool. Another thing is that when you travel you really learn a lot. At least I do. Travelling opens your mind to so many things, and possibilities. Here are 9 worldschooling benefits.
Worldschooling truly has so many benefits to it. Travel and education fit together like peas in a pod. Think about it, when you travel you are in a completely new place. Things are different, maybe a different language is spoken, maybe the trees are different, the atmosphere can be completely changed. But from travel you realize that even though it is different, people are still the same everywhere. I think that the people you get to meet when you travel is one of the most important aspects to worldschooling.
Another reason families are worldschooling is because they want to get out of their comfort zone. A lot of families spend their whole lives living “normally” where kids go to school, parents go to work, they eat dinner, kids do homework and it repeats. So life does not have too much variety weekdays. Sometimes families can get sick of doing the same thing over and over again, driving them to want to have a more exciting life.
Being immersed in new culture is an amazing thing for kids to experience. Not very many kids truly get to experience that, so worldschoolers are lucky to have the opportunity. The learning opportunities are endless for worldschoolers. They could learn from hiking to base camp at Mount Everest, or they could learn martial arts in China. Families can turn any experience into education, because the things you do in real life really are the best ways to learn. Plus, worldschooling gives a lot of opportunity for family bonding.
The learning worldschoolers get is incredible. They get to do experimental learning and hands on learning. Not just like homeschoolers or even conventional schoolers, making crafts and doing projects, worldschoolers get to full on experience things that their peers would be learning from a textbook. They can learn thing based on their interests.
How to Afford Worldschooling
It can be kind of surprising thinking you could travel around the world for a year or longer. How can families afford to do that? People are used to spending lots of money just for a week vacation to Hawaii for expample. They stay in fancy 5 star hotels right on the beach and take a bunch of tours. Worldschoolers can’t do that at all. It is really expensive and if you’re traveling full time most families need to travel on a budget.
The thing is you’re not going to be taking the price you spend for a one week trip and multiplying it by 52 to see how much you would be spending in a year of worldschooling. Worldschool families need to change the typical style of travel and turn it into budget travel.
The Dennings, a worldschool family of 9 (7 kids and 2 parents), lived off $5000 a month for all of them! That is a crazy budget for 9 people but they wanted to keep going, and the experience of traveling full time for 10 years must have been totally worth it! Worldschool families get used to budget travel.
So in the beginning, before they start their worldschool adventure, families usually sell their house, or any properties they owned. They also sell most of their things because they will most likely not be able to carry around everything with them. They might get a little bit of money from selling their things, and that can go towards their travels.
It is common for parents to continue work as they travel. If not it can be hard to continue being able to afford worldschooling. Normally they can get jobs online, because there are so many online job opportunities. You can even get paid to write on some websites, so if you have writing experience that is one of the best and easiest jobs to do from anywhere around the world.
Who is Worldschooling?
Ok, now you know what worldschooling is and how people afford it, but who is actually doing it and how can I find them? Well, there are thousands of worldschoolers around the world. You can find them on Facebook groups, blogs, websites, interviews, podcasts and any type of social media. I have written 2 posts about worldschooling families, one is worldschool families that started the worldschooling movement, and the other is amazing worldschool families you must follow. On both of these links you’ll find families who have, or are worldschooling.
If you are interested in meeting any worldschool families you can check out a few worldschool Facebook groups and see where people are. There are worldschooling trips to that some families organize. Normally these trips are for just worldschoolers. There are some pretty amazing adventures that worldschooling families have put together like horse trekking in Mongolia, exploring egypt, and hiking Mount Kilimanjaro. There are even trips for just worldschool teens who want to meet other worldschoolers around their age.
If you are thinking about worldschooling but you’re not sure, why not go to Family Adventure Summit. Family Adventure Summit is an in-person gathering for worldschooling families to meet up and for families who are interested in worldschooling, or just families who enjoy travel. It is a 4 night event where you can watch inspiring presentations about travel, talk and get to know worldschool parents, while your kids are off with their groups. There is a teen group and a kids group, where they do fun team building activities, while getting to make new friends.
There are plenty of blogs where you can follow families’ worldschooling journeys. Most worldschoolers make blogs and websites so that their family and friends can follow and see what they are up to during their travels.
Can Anyone do it?
A lot of people assume you need to be rich and have an online job to worldschool, but this is not the case. The simple answer to this question is yes anyone can do it. Worldschool budgets range a lot depending on where the family is traveling and how they are traveling. Keep in mind that when you worldschool you are not staying in 5 star resorts on the beach and relaxing the whole time. Most worldschool families are on a small budget so that they can afford to keep going.
It is very common for worldschoolers to house sit, or pet sit while they are traveling, because they can get free accommodation just for looking after a pet or plant. (Read my post about why worldschoolers should do house sits and swaps.) But in some locations accommodation is super cheap and can be under $200 a month for a 2 bedroom apartment. Accommodation tends to be cheaper in Southeast Asia, Northern Africa and South America.
If you are willing to make all the sacrifices to have an amazing adventure of a lifetime, then yes, you can do it! You need to have the right mindset to worldschool…if you think you can do it then you can!
Before they begin their journey, most worldschool families sell their homes, and most of belonging and things. Obviously you won’t want to be lugging around a large amount of your things. You can also store certain belongings that you don’t want to get rid of at family or friends’s houses. Normally by selling most of their things, it gives worldschoolers a little bit of starting money to begin traveling.
Parents can often get jobs in other countries. But they can also get location independent jobs on the internet. There are so many options for online jobs nowadays. It is common for families to start a blog about their adventures, and sometimes they can make money off from affiliate links, but that will take some time. Blog posts take up to 6 months to get indexed in google, and normally you need a lot of content to start making money, but it is not impossible.
Some common location independent jobs are; web designer, programming, freelancer, entrepreneur, accountant and marketing manager. These aren’t the only jobs that you can have and still be location independent. With our technology, a lot of jobs you wouldn’t think could be location independent actually can. You’d be surprised with all of the options there are.