Worldschooling - What is it? Why? Sounds cool...

World schooling / worldschooling sounds like such a cool thing to do. All the digital nomads are talking about it. And with ease (seemingly) doing it. They are jet setting around the world, living the dream with their little tribes of boho kids behind them. Sounds appealing right? The only problem is, we're not digital nomads and we don't know how they're doing it. What we do know is that we want to try it. There's been a pull in our souls for many years to do this. We just didn't even know it was 'a thing'.

toys sad to see their kids leave for school. Bertie & Lilly head back into mainstream school after lockdown

What is world schooling?

World schooling kind of happens naturally as a parent anyway. We’re constantly educating, teaching, and talking over scenarios and topics of virtually everything our kids see. Day in day out. So much we get sore throats some days. This gets less so when you’re in the throws of the day to day routine, but you’ll notice their interest peaks when you’re out and about, walking, on a day out, going on holiday. It gets next level when travelling the world for longer periods of time. Kids are continuous information sponges. We dip in and out of world schooling for much of the year. But the kids still attend a mainstream English schools. And we are bound by what they get taught and when we can take them on holidays etc. So the real definition of world schooling would be like home schooling (no actual school) but you travel the world. The world is your home.

And this isn't the same as home schooling at home during lock down, which was hell on Earth. Disengaged kids, bored out of their minds, seeing the same 4 walls day in day out. Going in the garden to look at berries on tree's or the garden birds for the millionth time. No it's quite different. It's an engaging series of learning through travel, projects we set up for them to learn from. Cultures, history, ecological viewpoints, nature, environmental perspectives, wildlife, anatomy and conservation. Astrology, looking at the Universe, Learning to surf, learning to dive and doing it everyday. Learning the language of the place we're in. Meeting people of different cultures. Of course we'll be doing a little maths, number work and English. Reading all the time anyway. But this is learning through freedom. What flows on that days is the topic we'll be learning about.

We as a family are at a serious juncture in our lives. We’ve always felt that we don’t really fit in – in our lives in the UK. As kids and now adults myself and Si have very different views than most people around us. We have always felt different and like we stand out like sore thumbs. And also we are not living a fulfilled life. Our souls are not happy. And we are starting to see this in our kids and the things they like doing and are good at. And it’s made us question whether the life we have is the life for us.

We are a creative family. Myself & Si have had our own business for 15 years. This requires creativity. We have marketed our business in unconventional & creative ways. I have made things from nothing, with my hands and sold them for income all of my life. I’ve never had a ‘proper’ job. But I’ve worked my arse off trying to make a life for us. The roof over our heads has come from our creativity. I love being outdoors, I love the ocean. I have a pull to be near it. And yet I'm not living my dream.

And Si is a DJ, he plays for money and that is our life. Many life events have taken him away from this passion, where more money can be made, for example, we’ve always gone with that. And so yet again he finds himself not living his dream.

We are artistic, and apply that flair in almost everything we do. We came together and had 2 creative kids. Si also has a son from a previous relationship who is a 'creative’ and is forging his own path in life and is a DJ. He travels the world and people pay to listen to him & go to his events. We have creative kids. But we don't feel like this creativity is celebrated, more like kicked out of them.

If you have creative kids that have a lot of character and a real flair at something that’s not thought of in mainstream schools as being anything of importance, we started noticing that this flair starts to disappear. They are getting on in school, but they’re not engaged. They don’t LOVE school. In fact the subjects they do love aren’t in mainstream education or if they are they are not celebrated. So, the things that our kids are naturally gifted in, are not celebrated. Our kids are not celebrated. And that makes me sad.

I sent myself to University to have a back up plan. When I graduated, I set up my first business. My education had nothing to do with this. It was down to my personality, my attitude. The skills of how to do it learnt along the way. But with this said, I don't want to jeopardise their options of gaining qualifications to tick those boxes.

We value the real world scenarios over formal education settings. We value exploration and freedom over rules and restraints of classroom teaching. We value our childrens' happiness over achieving school targeted grades or being bound by a time table. We don't want to create worker bee's. We want to create dynamic, enterprising, curious kids that think ANYTHING is possible in their lives. Not to think that their path in life is to work every hour in a 9-5 job that they grow to hate, that they get 4 weeks of holidays from per year. Until they are 65/70 years old. This is the reality for many kids.

Kids are so unique we don’t believe a one system schooling fits all. How can it. And in trying to squeeze our kids into one, I’ve seen first had their unique talents and skills and what makes them them, slowly fade.

We felt so alone in thinking all of this. Like we were wanting to create unruly, anti establishments kids. Until we learnt that world schooling is a real ‘thing’ that normal families can do and are doing. With success. It’s not something that’s reserved for the rich or elite. And what’s more theres a thriving world schooling community that we’re just dipping our toe into and meeting.

So I mentioned that we’re at a juncture in our life. We think this world schooling life fits our family and we’re going to give it a go. We’re selling up our life in the UK and taking a gap year to travel the world and taste the full time world schooling life. To see if it’s the life for us. Learning new skills right now to move our jobs into a more digital nomadic style.

The world is changing. Everything is going digital and I want my kids to be equipped for this new world. Not the world of yesterday.

How are we going to do it?

We plan to work on our digital businesses, which will enable us to have an income whilst we are away, to make this dream work, and IF we're all thriving, to keep the dream going full time permanently. There are so many ways to make money online. Whether that's through an online business, digital marketing, working remotely for a business or even affiliate marketing. We didn't realise it at the time of deciding to uproot and thought that we'd have to sell everything that we owned to make our dream work. We would have done that anyway, but in learning new skills and new ways to make money, there's a whole world of possibility. I'll share lots about this on the blog.

No more sad toys

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Let me know if you've tried world schooling or are thinking about it. It's felt very lonely these last few months but I'm slowly hearing from and meeting many friends along the way. Reach out - there is strength in numbers.