So is world school just travel plus home school? Over the last couple of years, we’ve really come to see it as much, much more. And I want to share with you some stories and examples from our travels and why we feel that world school completely surpasses traditional school and homeschooling.
Now for me, traveling is a little bit like walking through and in this field of rocks. And you’re turning them over and you’re finding something new every day. I love the epiphanies that you get while traveling. A lot of it is sort of the mundane, it’s the how to, like how do I find food in this place when nothing looks like a restaurant? But also understanding and getting immersed in the cultures.
One of our very first learning experiences was arriving in Vietnam around midnight. Our taxi driver drove us to the location. I’m looking around and all I’m seeing is dark alleys. So I did a double check on our Google map locations. And so we’re unpacking all of our suitcases while we’re all doing 360s, looking for any indication that we’re in the right place. A street sign, a house number, anything. And the taxi drives off.
And then we started looking down this dark alley going, maybe it’s down that alley, but there’s no clue. But thankfully this little voice at the end of the alley calls out, “Daniels?” And we were saved by Airbnb host!
Experiential Learning
One of the very first times I realized we had some cool cultural learning opportunities ahead was when the kids replayed this story to some other people and just said, “Everybody in Vietnam lives in a dark alley.” It’s because they don’t build out like we do in the U.S. They build up to have their families together. But also like the historical information that we pick up from places like the American History Museum, where we learned about some of the atrocities that were committed in the name of putting down communism.
And after thousands of years of colonization of Vietnam by the Chinese, by the French, and you name it, they were finally getting their independence and then comes the Americans and the others. Some of the things that we learned were actually so bad that my oldest had to take a break from walking through the museum because he was hearing about things that humans were capable of doing to other humans that he just didn’t realize were possible.
And these things only happened a few decades ago. Yet we find nothing but love and acceptance from the Vietnamese people. And understanding why that is because you’ve had the time to interact and meet the people and create such a deep and lasting understanding in a way that homeschool and certainly traditional school cannot, with its over-focus on things like American history.
Flexible Curriculum
Now, I think back to my years in traditional school at seventh grade, and I was taking a pre-algebra class. And then I got to a point where suddenly there were letters in my math, and I did not understand what was happening. Nobody could talk me through it. And I just had this breakdown that you don’t have to have. I’ve realized now through our classical method of teaching our kids that all these concepts, geometry and algebra and things that we’ve sort of discretized in our traditional education don’t have to be these separate learning blocks, but then forget a lot of it as you kind of progress through the math. All these concepts can be brought forward to the earliest years. They’re capable of understanding all of it without pushing. And you just introduce it in an age-appropriate way.
But the value is you’re able to uphold that learning through elementary, middle, and high school in a continuous and integrated way so they have a deeper understanding of all the mathematical concepts, all the English concepts, all the historical concepts, without having to forget them in between classes. You can also be super flexible in the way that you are constructing your curriculum. Like, we don’t have to go all traditional with all the subjects.
My kids are super interested in graphics design. And so rather than just learn graphics design, our oldest learned how to create a t-shirt business from start to finish. Learning concepts like gross margins and net margins, you can learn them now, how much more valuable and how much more confident they will be as they get into their adulthood. Our youngest have published books,
illustrated for themselves and illustrated for other authors. Again, building their confidence and doing things that many adults have always wished that they could do.
Life Skills
We focus heavily on trying to teach them practical life skills through what we call teachable moments. We’re looking for those opportunities to engage, but do so in a way that we can instruct them on how to do them well. So shopping at a local market, it’s very different than going through Walmart, picking up all your beautiful produce, throwing it in the cart, and then scanning your credit card. In these big open, lively markets, you’ve got things spread out everywhere. And how do you have a discussion in a different language? How do you engage in bartering? How do you recognize that things like carrots look different in other countries? It’s not like in the US world. Your carrots have knobs on them and they have dirt.
Maybe some of your produce may have signs of early decay. How do you make sure you’re picking the right produce that’ll last for a couple of days? How do you do things like currency exchanges in your head to ensure that you’re getting local pricing and not tourist pricing?
Family Bonding
These are all teachable moments that are just indispensable. And all of these experiences have created a rich environment for us to bond. I feel closer to my kids than I have ever been. I feel more married than I’ve ever been in my life. And it comes from living life together every day.
Now, I hope that you find these conversations viable. I would love to add an additional podcast to your week and do that by responding to questions that you have. If you have one, record it and then send it to info at worldschooltools.com. And I’ll play it and respond to your question in a future question and response episode.