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Worldschooling Support Networks for Traveling Families

Posted by Tim Roberts on Jan 16, 2025 2:38:03 PM
Worldschooling Support Networks for Traveling Families
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World schooling family posing for photo with their traveling dog

With more parents working remotely and children home-schooling than ever, families are seeking new ways to learn about the world by exploring it firsthand. Lonely Planet calls this new breed of digital nomads ‘anywhere workers’. Unlike their younger twenty-to-thirty-something single freelancing counterparts, ‘anywhere workers’ are generally slightly older and have full-time professions they can do from anywhere. A report by Lonely Planet and Fiverr showed that an incredible 70% of ‘anywhere workers’ are parents who take their families with them on the road.

However, the nomadic lifestyle can come with some challenges, one of the most common of which is the lack of steady and stable friendships. As glamorous as the travel lifestyle can be, it can sometimes be a lonely experience. As a result, worldschooling communities (known as ‘hubs’) are growing worldwide to support traveling families. Besides offering a sense of community, these world schoolers help each other navigate education and social networks. As you can imagine, if you were to decide to embark on this journey for your family, your first question might be:

How in the world (excuse the pun) do they do it?

We will examine some of the world schooling communities that can help you take the leap, support you on your journey and connect you with other globally traveling families.

 

What is World Schooling?

World schooling family learning about ancient ruins

For a more in-depth look at this form of holistic education, check out Storylines’ World Schooling: Travel Education blog on the subject. In short, worldschooling is an educational approach in which students learn by exploring and interacting with the world around them. Usually, this involves world travel and embracing the idea of global citizenship. As described by Eli Gerson, “It’s when the whole world is your school, instead of school being your whole world.”

 

Worldschooling Families

World schooling traveling family walking through ancient ruins

World schooling families are those who travel and learn as a natural part of their global experiences. The parents recognize the incredible educational benefits that traveling the world and exposing their children to different countries and cultures brings. These families adopt a self-directed education where the children learn through cultural immersion, foreign places, and the local community, with kids often utilizing remote eLearning to complement their education from travel experiences.

 

WorldSchooling Online Support Communities

Three kids sitting together on excursion and learning from tablets

As many world schoolers utilize eLearning, having several communities and resources available online makes sense. Some of these are in the form of websites, while others are simply Facebook and social media groups. Here are a few online groups offering tremendous support for the global world school community:

 

Worldschooling Hub

One of the best features of World Schooling Hubs is their ability to connect world schoolers worldwide. Their website hosts a secure interactive map enabling you to find and connect with fellow world schooling support and families. You can also set up a free family profile and add your location to the map, allowing you to be found by others. (In order to access the map yourself you must become a full ID-verified member, an essential step for security.)

 

World Schooling Central

World Schooling Central acts as a forum where a worldschooling family can share their stories and tips as well as learn from other like-minded families. Their community consists of homeschooling, unschooling and worldschooling families. It doesn't matter if your family travels full-time, part-time, domestically, or internationally; you are sure to find answers to any of your questions or concerns. This excellent resource center is free to join.

 

Remote Family

Remote Family is not a worldschooling community as such but rather "a magazine for families living outside the box." It is one of the best resources for traveling families around the world, publishing quality articles across a range of topics, including the future of family life, experiential learning, slow travel, slow living and ideas for the worldschooling curriculum. They also have an excellent global database to find a world school community wherever you are going. 

 

World Schooling In-Person Support Communities

Teenagers sitting around in college as part of a world schooling community courtyard wishing

World Schooling Pop-Up Hub

When seasoned world schooler Rachel Carlson's children became teenagers, they wanted to pack up their globetrotting lifestyle and return home for more autonomy. They loved the travel but desired to make deeper, lasting friendships.

Rachel's answer was to create Worldschool Pop-up Hub, hosting week-long events for both children and parents to connect wherever in the world they happened to be. The innovative new community was so much of a success that her children decided to keep traveling. Moreover, they now create dozens of pop-ups, temporary learning communities, and ongoing workshops all around the world. The kids have the opportunity to connect and relate to peers living the same unique travel lifestyle as themselves, while the worldschooling parents get to discuss challenges and exchange ideas.

 

Think Global School

For older students ready to embark on their worldschooling adventures without parents, Think Global is a school like no other that focuses on teenage development by exposing them to the wider world. The traveling high school enables students to live and learn from four countries every year with a curriculum that involves real-world exploration and project-based learning. From learning about conservation issues in Botswana to cataloging marine life while diving the Great Barrier Reef, the education is as varied as it is spread out around the world.

 

Boundless Life

Boundless Life is a renowned world schooling support community that provides traveling families with a turnkey solution (currently in six locations). They look after the whole worldschooling family, providing innovative education for homeschooled kids and co-working spaces for anywhere workers (parents). Perhaps most importantly, they have a large community of global citizens, allowing members to be surrounded by other like-minded worldschooling families. It doesn't matter if you're a seasoned globetrotting family or just dipping your toes in the water-- Boundless Life is always actively seeking members.

 

As you can see, no two world schooling options are exactly the same, but one of the common themes of all these communities is the unschooling families they attract. With this non-traditional approach to education, these worldschooling kids are self-directed learners who get firsthand experience of different people and cultures from a young age, giving them a great foundation to be leaders of the next generation.

 

Storylines School: Circumnavigating the Globe

MV Narrative residential ship

As worldschooling progresses, so too does the means by which people practice it. Worldschooling families deal daily with the logistics of travel - catching flights, waiting in customs, sorting visas, arranging transport, and checking in and out of accommodations with your kids in tow. Just never really feeling settled can be, well, unsettling!

Enter a new, better way to world school. Storylines' MV Narrative is the world's first environmentally sustainable residential ship, taking an intentional community around the world every three years. The ship is designed for anywhere workers and world schooling families and will host a unique globally traveling school.

 

Storylines World School

World schooling family on African safari watching elephants play in the water hole

Storylines Global Academy is creating an education program, a globally traveling school, to suit this unique form of world-schooling. There will be a school where children can learn both in class and online, combined with curated shore excursions around the world. This highly personalized education is tailored to each student's individual needs, interests and strengths. 

During Storylines educational shore excursions, children can learn about ancient Egypt from a historian guiding them through the King’s Chamber, work on their French through language immersion in Paris, and see wild animals in their natural habitat of the African Savanna. These are more than just lessons; they are life-changing experiences they will never forget.

 

Here is a snapshot of what students will walk away with from the globally traveling accredited school:

  1. Fluency in two or more languages
  2. Conversational skills in multiple languages
  3. Ability to play a number of musical instruments
  4. An unparalleled rich learning experience, having visited over 150 countries, UNESCO World Heritage sites and traveled around the globe multiple times.
  5. Influences from an amazing group of 1000+ residents from diverse backgrounds, all successful in their chosen fields from all over the globe, including CEOs, medical leaders, musicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs and everything in between. These are people that your child will consider friends and can call upon as mentors.
  6. A vast array of lifelong friends in many of the countries they will have visited and lived in.
  7. Potential passive income they will have learned to generate as part of financial literacy and entrepreneurial learning..

 

Most importantly, traveling families are part of the Storylines community of like-minded global citizens exploring, learning and supporting each other while traveling the world. To find out more about how you can give your child the ultimate education, check out our traveling school website and world-schooling program here.

 

Topics: Families, Travel the World, World-schooling, Tours

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