Worldschooling: A Comprehensive Guide to Long-Term Travel

Curious about Worldschooling?

You’re not alone! In recent years, families all over the world have felt freed up to explore different lifestyles, untethered to offices and classrooms, with a new ability to work and learn from almost anywhere. Leaving your country and planning the journey that’s right for your family takes time and intention, and this course will walk you through each step.

The worldschooling community is expanding. You can be a part of it.

By the end of this course, you’ll understand the challenges and opportunities associated with worldschooling and be fully prepared to leave your home. You will understand how to:

• Fund your journey for stress-free travel

• Choose destinations, speed of travel, and pacing

• Recognize and address true risks to stay healthy and safe

• Keep your children socially well-adjusted

• Engage with other worldschooling families

• Educate your children in ways that are right for them

• Respect people, the planet, and wildlife as travelers

• Influence concerned or unsupportive loved ones

Are You a Worldschooling Family?

Each day, people say goodbye to friends, family, and neighbors for extended journeys that last several weeks, months, or years. Some have firm dates of return. Some know they’ll go home but without an end date in mind. Some plan never to return, having sold and stored their belongings.

Worldschooling families have children of all ages. We travel anywhere outside of our national borders. We sleep in guesthouses, five-star hotels, campervans, tents, hostels, Airbnbs, or RVs. We unschool, purchase curriculum, follow national standards, or encourage play-based learning. We stay in one flat for six months, move hotels every two nights, spend one month in ten countries each, or exhaust an entire continent.

Any family can worldschool. While each family bases their choices on a variety of personal variables, we all share a few common beliefs.

· We understand the power of international travel to deepen learning through experiences.

· We know that personal growth in traits like self-confidence, grit, open-mindedness, and perseverance can be immense.

· We prioritize quality time with our children, strengthening relationships and creating memories.

· We understand that travel can build and strengthen empathy, which our planet sorely needs.

Above all, we believe that we can make our trip happen, that we can surmount barriers, create a funding plan, garner support from friends and family, and educate our children. If you don’t carry this belief yet, this course will give you that confidence, coupled with the knowledge you require.

How This Course Can Help

COMPREHENSIVE: As evident by its title, this course is a comprehensive review of the common topics family’s tackle prior to worldschooling. Most families have similar concerns and barriers when making their journey come to life. We address each in enough depth for you to understand the main points and challenges and to consider their impact on your specific family.

INDIVIDUALIZED: You’ll be encouraged through videos, resources, and assignments to consider what your family needs, wishes for, and desires. Instagrammers and bloggers paint beautiful portraits of their family travels, but their approaches may be completely wrong for you. After all, your family is unique. I’ll walk you through each step of how to create the trip that’s right for you.

ILLUSTRATIVE: I apologize in advance for the millions of pictures of my daughters. I include them not because they’re two of my favorite people in the world but because they’re modeling a worldschooling experience. Not only do they illustrate a day-in-the-life to help you visualize your own children in these places, but the richness, color, and beauty of the settings might keep you inspired and motivated.

INCLUSIVE: Because each worldschooling family differs, my voice alone isn’t enough. I’ve reviewed elements of this course with multiple families prior to mass publication, and I include a special lecture devoted solely to the advice and insights of other worldschooling families with different experiences out in the world.

DETAILED: For those of you who want to move from dreaming and visioning, you’ll be able to get down to business! I provide resources like task lists, budgeting templates, methods for earning money while traveling, three pages with up-to-date worldschooling hubs, and more. You’ll get as much out of working the assignments and resources as you will consuming the videos.

SUPPORTIVE: Most worldschoolers report that the biggest hurdle in leaving their country was their mindset. They felt overwhelmed by all they needed to accomplish to depart. They wondered if they were ruining their children’s relationships and educations. They feared they were compromising their careers. In this course you’ll see that, not only are these concerns normal, but they’re surmountable. And indeed, surmounting them may be the best decision of your life.

Meet Your Instructor

When I was 12-years-old, I traveled to the Dominican Republic with my mom, sister, and new stepfamily. We were meant to bond. We booked a house in a 7,000 acre gated resort with endless buffets of Western fare, golf courses, and swimming pools. One night, my mother and stepfather inquired about eating authentic food beyond the gates—they always enjoyed varied cuisine—and later that night, we found ourselves in the center of La Romana, then a small city in which most resort workers lived.

My mouth dropped open as we walked down uneven streets past typical homes, stray dogs and cats, and bits of trash, and into a worn restaurant to sit on plastic chairs for the most delicious meal of our trip. Later, we laughed with the owner over our horrendous Spanish as we munched on sweetened corn pudding.

That was the night I got it: Vacations are not all equal. Some can keep you comfortable, and others can blow your mind.

Thirty five years and nearly 50 countries later, I still search for moments like this for my own daughters who are both near 12 themselves. Moments of connection, of simplicity, of authenticity, of experiences beyond the gates.

Now for the boring part: I’ve spent almost 20 years in the nonprofit sector in Portland, Oregon, USA as an executive director, fundraiser, and marketing executive. I’ve traveled as a teenage exchange student three times, founded a non-profit to take teenagers from low-income families abroad, lived in West Africa for more than two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and worldschooled my own children through 15 countries… and counting.

I own Deliberate Detour which supports traveling families in making their dreams come true through online courses, coaching, and writing. I'm contributing to a book coming out in 2023 entitled Worldschooling: Innovative Parents Turning Countries into Classrooms published by Nomad Publishing.