Amanda Dixon teaches second grade at King’s Center Charter School in Buffalo, New York, and her husband, Solomon, 38, conducts writing workshops at middle schools across New York state.
As the couple worked long hours to support their three young children, then ages 4, 2, and 1, Amanda, 43, thought: She has both her own children and other people’s children. ”
But she didn’t know how to make a change. She still loved teaching and she wanted to work. They decided to become “world schoolers” who travel with their families for short periods of time, while others open schools and educate their children by traveling for months or years at a time. There is.
The couple did not consider themselves homeschooling because “we wanted our children to be around other children.” Solomon, a poet and spoken word artist who grew up riding his bike to and from nursing homes, was also a risk-taker, and suggested opening a school in another country.
But Amanda couldn’t find a way to move abroad, open a school, and travel with her children. “It seemed impossible,” she says. She was the exact opposite of her upbringing: “She goes to college, gets a good job, gets a pension, and stays there.”
The couple began researching and learned on social media that many other disaffected families had immigrated from the US, UK, and Canada to start their own educational adventures. The couple thought, “People are doing this. How can we do what they’re doing in our own way?”
What is school education around the world and what is it not?
There is a growing travel community that educates children on the road, loosely known as “world schoolers,” and its followers can be defined in many ways. The number of family members on the trip is not entirely known, but one of the major Facebook groups devoted to the act has more than 62,000 members.
But the main themes are a desire for traveler community, a similar approach to education and lifestyle, and a desire for a sense of living in a place rather than just traveling. Students around the world are using a combination of online education, real estate, stock trading, and other remote work to fund their travels. Many other countries tend to have much lower costs of living and healthcare.
Global pandemic is helping accelerate interest in homeschooling among U.S. families, numbers show 30% increase 2019 to 2022 — But even as the world slowly returns to in-person learning, interest hasn’t waned. The number of homeschooled students has doubled since 2019, according to a research report, and the number has remained stable as parents “increasingly express interest in non-traditional learning options for their children.” It is said that there is. analysis From the Libertarian Reason Foundation.
Family travel provides a variety of educational opportunities for children. Many families in the United States and United Kingdom enroll their children in state homeschool programs. And how they educate their children is up to their families. Some students choose to mix domestic and international studies in one year. Some people cling to the idea of traveling indefinitely and not attending school. Some enroll their children in formal online programs while traveling.
Tera Horton, a Los Angeles-based family therapist, traveled for about a year with her husband and three children, then ages 14, 9, and 6. She placed her children in a home because she knew her family would return to Los Angeles after her trip. – Schooling Charter School, and during the trip, the children all participated in an online schooling program called “.time and learning. ”
Horton said the children studied at their own pace while the family traveled. It’s been two years since they returned home and back to school. Horton said her children were “a little behind” at first, but they quickly caught up, she said. She often talks about the time her family spent on the road, which she said was one of the best “life experiences” they had ever had.
How do World School students travel around the world with their families?
Over the past three years, about a dozen collectives known as “World Schooling Hubs” have sprung up around the world. Some programs are loosely run by parents. Others are more ad hoc, forming on the fly when enough people gather in a location or region. The cost to join a more informal “hub” can range from $250 to $900 per month, not including living expenses and airfare. In Egypt, students around the world can rent a three-bedroom house with a pool for $600 to $700 a month, and spend just under $10 a day on food. More formal hubs can cost several thousand dollars, but they tend to include all associated costs.
We have hubs in Egypt, Spain, Thailand, Morocco, French Polynesia, Peru, Colombia, and Portugal. Bulgaria. These hubs most often run short-term sessions of four to six weeks in which families participate together. Children typically have several hours of educational activities scheduled in her day, allowing parents the time they need to work remotely. In the afternoons and evenings, the hub runs activities for the whole family, and on weekends it hosts planned excursions. Some hubs also host adults-only events, and many strive to form a sense of community among attendees.
These programs are enriching educational experiences that typically last one to three months, allowing many families to travel to the country on a tourist visa. Each country has its own visa rules and regulations, but some countries, such as the Dominican Republic and Egypt, have overstay fees that travelers can pay upon departure. In other countries, travelers can extend their stay by registering upon arrival.
What can children and families gain by going abroad?
Louise Marie Morris started One Family Luxor World School Learning Habu moved to Egypt from Portugal in 2021 with her two young children. Morris was working at the BBC in London, but after she had her second child, she felt she wanted something different in their lives.
Upon arriving in Egypt, Morris sensed an opportunity. She wanted her visiting family to explore local temples and tombs, including the Tomb of King Tutankhamun, and play soccer with local children.
Morris set up a hub in the garden of a local hotel with 10 participating families. “We had no idea what we were doing.” Now, Morris has built classrooms and garden facilities, and her base attracts about 25 families per six-week session, caring for their children. They and their parents build an Egyptian oven on an old farm, visit the Valley of the Kings, and take a river cruise. Nile. The family stays for a while, joining a local sports club or renting a house from a local family, so they get a feel for the rhythm of Egyptian life.
“We have people from different socio-economic backgrounds coming in and out, and everyone is being thrown into this new environment,” Morris said. It’s not easy, as many families coming from the West end up experiencing a true culture shock. But these interactions, she says, “create some of the most precious moments.”
The company launched to provide a structured version of schooling around the world. In August 2020, Sam Keller moved with his wife and two children to Moorea, French Polynesia, for a year. Keller said living on the island has had a positive impact on her children and family, allowing them to spend more quality time together. “It was very deep for us,” Keller said.
Shortly after, Keller “Working across borders” A California-based travel company that offers month-long educational experiences for families. The program also operates in Moorea, Colombia and Peru.
Jamie Neirans, 46, of Honeoi Falls, New York, traveled to Peru with his company over the summer, taking his 12-year-old son Jace with him. Because she wanted her son to experience her life abroad and she wanted to experience it together. When Neylan was young, she lived in Mexico for six months, which “changed her life.”
As a single mother, she wanted her son to have a similar experience and understand what is important in life, but for her, it’s not just a big, beautiful house or an expensive car. do not have. She said she wanted her son to learn that he didn’t need all of this, that he could be happy with the people he was with and who he was.
Since Neelands owns her own business and does independent medical billing, she spent months saving up money to go on the adventure. Naylands says her month-long shared experience in Peru has strengthened their bond.
On the last night of the month in Peru, Neirans said she cried as she watched a ceremony to thank the visiting students at a local school. She thought this experience of hers taught her son that she had “a different way of looking at life and the way things are.”
What will school education around the world look like?
In September 2020, the Dixon family moved to the Dominican Republic to start their own school. ”Forever Wild Children’s Garden“The couple used their savings to open a food truck to support themselves while the school grew. Three years later, with another child, the couple decided to close their Dominican store. 12 of us are preparing to embark on a mobile school.” The family will travel and learn together to six different locations in four countries, including Kuala Lumpur, Chiang Mai and Bali.
Months of interviews led to the final addition to the Dixon family and their four children. They stay at each location for a month for structured programming, followed by specialized camps.
Families can travel on their own for two weeks before moving on. The family plans to travel for 10 months before settling in a new location, where they plan to open another base for three years. They plan to live like this “for as long as possible.”
“Twenty-two years ago, when I was in college, there was no such thing as a world school,” Amanda says. “I thought I was going to be in the same place forever.” It’s impossible to know what will happen in the next 20 years, she said.
What’s important, the couple said, is the ability to pivot to what happens next. Solomon said the only tool they can bring to the table is “our spirit and our desire to educate children and our unique way of doing it.”