Road-schooling

What about school?

Another question folks ask us all the time is what we are going to do for John’s schooling. It will be his grade seven year, his final year of elementary school. When we return he’ll be moving to the secondary school to begin grade eight. I’ve gathered from reading other family travel blogs that the rules about schools vary widely between provinces and from state to state in the US. Some of the families I have read about had difficulty getting support from the school system for a year off, others have had to work through fixed curricula for specific grades and subjects, regardless of the relevance of the topic to the place and style of travel the family is experiencing. Fortunately, in British Columbia, we don’t face those kinds of challenges, we can create our own program for him.

For five years I was the principal of my School District’s program to support home learners. During those years I observed the wide variety of ways learning can be structured and experienced outside the regular classroom structure. Even in a conventional school, I believe that the focus of schooling should be on teaching students how to learn, not on covering content to meet curriculum outcomes. Of course we cover content too, but it’s more important to encourage confident, critical and creative thinkers than it is to fill students’ heads with “facts and figures”. They can look up facts and figures on the internet if they really need them! When it comes to schooling, I have the advantage of being able to draw on many resources and my experience as a teacher for John’s school year on the road.

So, what about school? We will take a math book with us; John will have to learn and practice the skills he needs to keep up with his peers and enter grade 8 with confidence. We will have a computer with us, and John will keep his own blog. He can record his experiences, questions, challenges and adventures and along the way learn to use the keyboard, navigate the internet world, and create interesting, readable text in conventional format. The grade seven focus for Social Studies is Ancient Cultures! We will take him too see the places he would only read about in class. Science? PE? Career and Personal Planning? French? Well, those who knew me in my Homelinks days will laugh, but it’s true. We are “unschoolers” this year, and I’m just not going to worry about the rest of it! He’ll learn from living, and live while learning, along with Nelson and me.