What is World Schooling?
October 12, 2017 Meet WSE Members
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.“
Albert Einstein
“I never let my school interfere with my education.“
Mark Twain
We asked some of our World Schooler Exchange members the question, “What is World Schooling and what does it mean to your family?”
Here are their responses.
Colin Clapp from Parenting, Passports and Profits.
We’re Little Miss, Colin and Elly. We’re from New Zealand but consider ourselves ‘global citizens’. We currently live in Penang, Malaysia where we’re building a new life as a digital nomad family.
Our family values are ‘freedom of choice’ and ‘meaningful relationships’. They help guide our decision-making during the tough times we all have to experience on our life journeys.
For us, world schooling allows us to live our family values without borders; whether they be geographic, physical or cultural. World schooling helps us live our life by design.
World schooling takes home educating on to another exciting level.Seeing the world as our classroom brings limitless opportunities to educate our little girl AND further educate ourselves. World schooling delivers an eclectic and priceless richness to our learning environments. World schooling lets us see, hear, smell, taste and FEEL things that will help make our family valuable global citizens!
Nicole DeBickes from Family With Latitude
Our first day of “school”.
We love that world schooling provides our family an opportunity to spend more time together. Before world schooling, we would have a frantic morning to get everyone off to school and work. And a hectic evening, getting dinner ready, homework complete, and activities attended. Now, instead of a few rushed hours in the morning and the evening, we get to spend all day together. This lets us have leisurely conversations and enjoy our time together.
Martha Nieset from Nicaragua Immersion
During our second multi-month stay in Nicaragua we were at a pottery demonstration by a local ceramic artist who creates pottery in the manner of his ancestors. The artist invited each member of our group to come up and try the foot-powered pottery wheel ourselves. My son eagerly hopped up to the wheel at his turn and began giving it his best effort (it’s a lot to coordinate, even for an adult… feet pushing, hands forming, add water, keeping the pace, squeeze a little, not too much…).
Realizing the challenge my son glanced to the teacher standing next to him and said, “Puedes ayudarme?” Can you help me? (as he looked down at the wheel).
It was that moment, watching him up there, trying out that foot powered pottery wheel, paying attention, and asking for what he needed in a second language that my heart nearly exploded with pride and joy! He was doing it all, “ALL” which mattered so much to me: He was listening and learning from someone who looked different than him, interested and curious in this art he was teaching, connecting in that interest, and he was using a language (which he was not completely comfortable in) to ask for what he needed.
That was the moment I said to myself, “Ya, we’re worldschooling!”
Amoya Knudson from Trippin’ Momma
It is challenging to define worldschooling. For our family, worldschooling is letting the world be our classroom. It means getting rid of the restraints of traditional schooling and opening our hearts, eyes, and minds to the world around us.
We spent a month in Puerto Rico back in May. This truly opened my girls’ eyes to how little others have. With the hurricane, they are able to truly envision the horror that is happening there instead of being disconnected from the situation. Worldschooling has transformed us and brought our family closer than ever before. I am so thankful to be a part of the movement.
Kirsty Bartholomew from Barts Go Adventuring
World schooling to me is a complete breadth of education away from the basics. It’s about learning about different cultures, religions, foods, languages and ways of life. The best way to bring about this for me is by travelling and we try and do this as much as possible, both home and away.
When we travel we try to focus on learning about new foods in the area, learn about the customs and also learning some of the basic phrases of the language. If possible we stay in apartments rather than hotels so we get away from the more tourist side. Our absolute favourite thing to do is to read books about the places we’re going to go – it helps the kids get a visual picture and they love to see places they’ve read about.
What does World Schooling mean for your family?
Do you have a story to tell?
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