Two of the bigger obstacles we faced when thinking about traveling
for a year were the cost, and the inevitable 'taking our children out of school’.
I wrote an earlier blog
‘SE Asia not on a Shoestring’ on how we arrived at our decision to fund the
trip and how much it would cost.
This blog is about home schooling - how
we have gone about filling the void of ‘no school’ for our three daughters Ella
(12), Amy (9) and Anna (6).
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We ‘started’ by agreeing on a realistic objective whilst we were
away; simply put – we want our children to be in a position to re-join
mainstream education, without incurring difficulties, when we return. As we
are not teachers, we consulted the experts…. our children’s teachers, and the
school principal for advice on how we could do this!
We established we had two viable options:
1. We take control of
each child’s curriculum.
2. We enrol in a
prearranged distance education curriculum
The first option whilst
potentially more gratifying and cheaper, would be more ‘labour intensive’ for
us. There was also a greater likelihood that the children would not get as
extensive education than if we enrolled into a distance education curriculum.
We chose the second
option. We also agreed that I (Dad) would teach Ella and Amy, and that Justine
(Mum) would teach Anna. This would enable a single point contact with the
school, and the allocation was sensible as Justine would need to spend much
more time hand-holding Anna who had just finished Kindergarten.
PREARRANGED DISTANCE EDUCATION CURRICULUM
We have found in Australia that distance education is more widely accepted and established primarily due to their being no other option for many children dispersed across the country.
Some children in Australia are simply unable to attend schools since they live on outback farms, mines etc, and it is too far for them to travel to the nearest school.
State funding has thus been provided to fund dedicated distance education schools, which we thought would be ideal to support us whilst we were travelling.
As for any school, we were required to apply for places for the children. We also met with the teachers and assured them that in our role as supervisor, we would ensure the children would follow the curriculum, submit work on time, and return materials as we finished with them – and that we would respond to communications. They were subsequently offered places that we accepted. The cost for each child is around $300 per year for the enrolment fee, and costs towards post.
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Amy and Anna are enrolled with Sydney Distance Education School; this is a primary school catering for children up to and including Year 6. (aged 12ish).
Amy is studying Year 4 and uses an Ipad App called Ebackpack, which is effectively a virtual classroom. A typical fortnight involves:
- assignments
are added to Ebackpack by the teacher
- we
download the assignments for completion in PDF Expert
- we
upload the completed assignments into Ebackpack
- the
teacher marks them and provides feedback
- we
aim to skype every fortnight
Anna is studying Year 1 and most of the materials are provided in hard copy. A typical fortnight involves:
- fortnightly
work batch is posted by the teacher
- Anna
completes these
- we
post the completed assignments
- the
teacher marks them and provides feedback
- we
aim to skype every fortnight
Karabar Distance High School http://www.karabardec.com.au
Ella is enrolled with Karabar Distance High School.
Ella is studying Year 7
and uses an Intranet Application called Moodle, which is effectively a virtual
classroom.
The process is very similar to Amy’s. We do not skype often as Ella is older and is not as reliant on face to face discussions, and Ella also has a different teacher for each topic.
We agreed with the school that Ella's major project for the year would be to manage our travel blog.
The schools provide the usual semester reports summarising performance and improvement opportunities.
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Tips for Home Schooling via Distance Education
1. Prepare the kids before you leave.
Stress to your child that the social aspect of school is nothing to be missed for a year and that their life training while traveling is equally valuable. Afterall, this year will be around 1% of their whole life, and 5% of their time in formal education.
2. Invest in appropriate technology.
In addition to ensuring you are clear on your approach to schooling, ensure you have appropriate tools! If your child is going to use a computer for their education, it needs to be a good one as they may be using it most days. Similarly it is not going to work if they are sharing technology as they are likely to need them at the same time. Pack enough chargers (with iphones, computers, cameras – we can easily be charging 6 devices overnight!).
3. Make some room for school materials.
In total we would be carrying around 15 kilos of school materials at one time …. around 25% of our luggage – mostly for Anna, given her materials are more paper based. Ensure you have allowed for this in your baggage allowance!
4. Ensure you have lots of school-time allocated in your first months of travel.
You all need to learn how to use new software, and adapt to a new way of schooling. You are likely to need good internet access for downloading information and for research.
5. Enjoy your time home schooling the children.
6. Communicate frequently with teachers.
It is important to build trust with teachers. Communicate with them if a course work is going to be submitted late, or if you are struggling with the workload. They are extremely professional and are supportive of what we are doing and show great interest in how our trip is progressing. This is because they do not actually support that many travelling families; if you take Anna's year - she is the only 1 of 9 children who is actually travelling.
7. Be resilient – the supervisor role is a different role to the parent role!
We found it difficult in
the first couple of months to get into a rhythm for home-schooling. It takes a
lot of planning to factor in time for schooling, particularly if you have a big
itinerary (we have 20 countries in total).
After a couple of months it becomes easier as you know the technology, the teachers and type of work,…..you also know your children more than you did before!
8. Ask for help if needed.
After two months into our travels, we discussed with our teachers the volume of work and agreed for all three children that their study would be reduced to a smaller number of subjects: Maths, English – and a couple of subjects of their choice. This was in context of our objective for their schooling, which we will reach comfortably based on our first six months of home schooling.
9. Ask for assignments where the children can work together.
We have found our youngest two children are happy to work together on some assignments. The teachers have responded to this by allocating some assignments that are completed by both of the children.
10. Confirm education for your children when you return.
Communicate to the schools that your children will return to, ensuring any application forms are submitted on time, and ensuring they have confirmed places prior to your return to ‘normality’!
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Some questions we have had....
Do you homeschool every day?
Not in the conventional sense - although we try to incorporate learning in every day. Sometimes, we will book a day or two out at the start of the week to get through the assignments set; other times, we will fit work around our activities.
What are the types of learning you can do when travelling?
We had some great suggestions from friends who are teachers:
- spelling tests and times tables tests in the car
- giving the children the chance to be in charge of our travel - eg when catching planes in foreign countries - working out where we need to checkin, what time we board etc
- help remembering what we have spent money on for our budget tracking
Do you think you will continue to homeschool on your return to Australia?
No - we are fortunate to have great schools in our area. Our children are already enrolled and accepted into schools starting in January 2016.
How long do you spend homeschooling per day?
The guideline is 4 hours per day. The actual time varies, although we will use additional time if needed to keep up to date. Remember our objective is not for them to become brain surgeons this year - more to keep up so they can rejoin mainstream education without difficulty when we return.
Do you ever think about packing the schooling part in to just focus on travelling?
See Tip 5 above
There are many countries that do not have state funded distance education schools. Whilst prearranged curriculums take much of the onus (and the pressure) off of parents’ shoulders and keeps them from wondering if what they’re doing is actually the right thing – there are other options you can discuss with your children’s teachers or find through the internet:
Sydney Distance Education Primary School provides access to information about distance education at http://www.sdeps.net; this can help you decide which option to choose.
Sydney Distance Education Primary School provides access to information about distance education at http://www.sdeps.net; this can help you decide which option to choose.
Homeschool Central has a huge list of links to courses for parents to follow to educate children away from an established methodology.http://homeschoolcentral.com/resource/distance.htm.
Achievement First is a charter school organisation with a huge list of resources for the homeschooler to circle back to: http://www.achievementfirst.org/resources/login/
The Vagabond Family has prepared a resource page to help out the traveling high school homeschooler. They have links to places to find education resources in writing, math and sciences.
Thanks for Reading
