Pulling kids out of school for travel

Move over homeschooling—here comes educational long-term travel.

THE DREAM OF quitting your job to travel for six months to a year is a familiar one, but it’s also one that seems less likely the older you get. Once you have a career and kids, as conventional thinking goes, it’s time to settle down and let go of those lingering romantic notions. However, more families are thinking unconventionally, embracing travel as not only a lifestyle but also as a one-of-akind educational opportunity for school-aged children. We spoke to the Thibodeau family in Sturgeon County about their experience of taking a year off to travel, and what that meant for their sons’ education.

Fad or New School of Thought?

The Thibodeaus and many other long-term travelling families are acting act out of a genuine desire to see and learn about the world around them. Still, the idea of worldschooling feels like a very ‘now’ thing to do. The allure of a nomadic lifestyle that is the antithesis of our structured lives that are moving faster than ever, the relative ease of long-distance travel, the popularity of bucket-listing, and a growing emphasis toward collecting experiences rather than things—these and other factors appear to be turning worldschooling into a fad. It’s certainly become more visible online, in the numerous articles and listicles on the topic that have popped up in the last few years, as well as blogs and social media posts by worldschooling families.

Learning on the Go

How a worldschooling family handles the education component of their trip depends on where they’re going and for how long. Some families are always on the move, with their children never brightening the entrance of a school building for years. Others move more slowly and stay longer in certain places, thus choosing to register their children in local schools. Others yet will work with a school district back home, as the Thibodeaus did, knowing that they will return eventually.