Alternative Schooling: The What and Why

We know there are a lot of people out there grappling with decisions around what the upcoming school year is going to look like due to the effects of Covid-19. Regardless of which direction you are leaning, it can feel like a really tough choice. We want to share with you some of the nontraditional, alternative types of schooling we’ve come across in our time educating our son in the last few years that you may have heard about as you’ve started looking into alternatives.

A little background for our situation: Eric has autism and attended our public school district’s amazing early education preschool program. We saw great strides educationally, therapeutically, and socially with him while he was there.  Granted, it wasn’t always easy, but the people who were a part of his team there were one-of-a-kind and talented. 

When he sadly aged-out of that program, it was time to make a choice. In some ways, a traditional public school kindergarten would have been just fine for him, although challenging. He would have been a part of the special education program while also attending a typical classroom, but would have needed a para or teacher’s assistant for a lot of his time at school. Eric, the astute and distinctly unique kid that he is, is still highly aware of the people around him and the words/curiosities/feelings directed toward him. And he’s quite sensitive to it. At times, this has made being social with other kids his age hard: would you want to go to a birthday party, day camp, or park if you felt like everyone was looking at you and asking aloud why you do things differently?

We also felt like he was somewhere between preschool and kindergarten both socially and educationally. So, we made the choice to homeschool him for a couple of years. Now, it seems, we’re homeschooling him beyond that original timeframe!

At the same time that we were making these decisions (because life rarely hands you one good-sized challenge at a time), we were also in a place with our adult lives and business that a change was becoming needed and wanted. After a lot of late night conversations and daytime shuffling, we took the plunge for a non-traditional lifestyle that involves Eric’s education, too. 

So here is the “quick guide” to some different types of alternative education that we’ve personally run across and experimented with, in hopes that it shortens your own research while you juggle the bigger parts of managing life right now.

A Variety of Schooling Types

Homeschooling: We know this term, right? Kids that get an education at home by a parent usually. Back when we were kids, there was quite a stigma around this. However, times have truly changed. The resources, curriculums, online offerings, even outside-of-the-home class offerings for homeschoolers at museums, zoos, science centers, and more are better than they’ve ever been. Why? If one parent has the gumption to be both parent and teacher while the other parent’s income can support the family, it might just work. It also depends on how your child does being at home more, self-motivating, and learning from Mom or Dad (that’s a big one). Switching hats between parent and teacher both for you and for the way your child sees and interacts with you is one of the biggest challenges, but it can work and some kids thrive in this setting. There are also many opportunities for extracurricular sports and social opportunities, homeschool group get-togethers, and co-op options (different parents with expertise teaching several kids a course, for example). 

We’re also going to lump hybrid learning (a combination of homeschool and classroom time) and singularly online schooling into this, since a lot of the learning happens at home. These are both versions of education that are woven in with the traditional school in some way, either through setting, time, or curriculum. Special needs kids can find therapies at private practices, or they also still have access to therapies through the public schools. This and how you report your child’s educational records all depend on your state, so make sure you fully understand what your state requires from you if you choose to homeschool.

A great place to start and find some friendly voices around this topic is through blogs that center around the art of homeschooling. This link has a bunch of different homeschooling blogs that also review a variety of curriculums, in case you’ve decided to homeschool but don’t know where to start. 

https://www.homeschooltracker.com/our-favorite-homeschool-blogs/

Unschooling: You might hear this term and think it means going completely hands-off with your kid, allowing them to go feral. Nope! Unschooling is actually pretty cool: it’s all about allowing the student’s interests and curiosities drive the learning. You still cover all the subjects, it might just be differently than working problems in a book or following a formal curriculum each day. We do a structured form of unschooling with Eric because, frankly, he learns differently. For a child who needs motion or activity, we can integrate that into the subject. When he gets really interested in bees, for example, we learn about bees lives (science), can turn it into a counting game (math), work on spelling and reading words having to do with bees (English and handwriting), can create an imaginative beehive (art), and even go out to find bees in the garden or yard (field trip!). The kid knows a lot about bees and elevators right now because he’s fascinated by them. He’s still learning (a lot) and we’re not losing our minds trying to fit him into a curriculum that is build for a differently-shaped mind. We still find times to use those great learning books, but we integrate them into the activities rather than the other way around. 

This might not work for every kid, truly. Some kids really, really need that defined structure to their learning and this might be a little too loose. We, too, have to create structure within this method: kind of like making a box to contain all the scribbles. Before socially distancing, our days revolved around a lot of field trips, turning every day errands into chances to learn. Obviously, that’s changed a lot.

Here’s an article that goes into a little more depth about unschooling if this interests you: https://www.time4learning.com/homeschooling-styles/unschooling.html

Roadschooling: Imagine homeschooling smashed together with traveling in the United States while you drive/camp in an RV, let’s say. That’s roadschooling - taking the education with you. This is definitely a lifestyle in and of itself, so it does require some pretty big choices and changes. You must have a “home state” in which you declare your kids are homeschooling and you follow their requirements. How to support your family and make a living are also big things to consider. Some people follow seasonal work, there are also many who’s jobs require travel, so their families move with them (think oil rig workers, traveling nurses, railway workers). There are also many who can work from anywhere, so they work on the road (graphic designers, writers, media managers, and different types of tech jobs are common for this). The lifestyle can be either full-time or part-time (we’re part time throughout the year). 

There are some serious considerations with this: do you keep your house, rent it while you’re gone, or sell it? How are your kids with this kind of change (age can make a big difference)? How is your family at making friends with strangers (believe it or not, there are a lot of roadschooling families roaming around the country)? What is your travel style like and how adaptable are you (road warrior vs sit and stay)? It’s also a more minimalistic lifestyle in which you don’t want to haul all the things you currently own with you, so how will that go?

It’s also incredible to get to visit historical sites while your kids are learning about them, see the wild animals they might have just read about, or learn about the people of our country by meeting them. 

This family has been living the roadschooling lifestyle for a long time and have a great getting-started guide: https://www.nomadswithapurpose.com/guide-to-roadschooling-how-to-start-what-to-teach/

Worldschooling: Last but not least, worldschooling is like the magical unicorn of education for the adventure-minded family. It takes energy, tenacity, adaptability, and planning ahead with finances, current home/belongings, education, and current events. To be honest, there are many worldschoolers right now who are staying put in foreign countries due to Covid. Some chose to return to the U.S. until something changes because staying in-limbo didn’t feel very secure - understandably. Worldschooling may be by airplane, train, sailboat, camper van, camel… it all depends on where you go. But do consider that it’s like roadschooling on the biggest scale we have: global. Again, some folks do it full-time, some part-time (that’s us), or for only a set amount of time. This definitely require a minimalist lifestyle and a lot of adaptability when it comes to being a visitor to foreign cultures. The idea is that “the world is a classroom.” 

You can imagine the pros and cons of this lifestyle and form of schooling: high highs and low lows. Making friends can be challenging, but the ones that stick seem to last a lifetime and tend to be quite diverse. Planning ahead and being prepared for a myriad of complications when you have kids with you can be imperative: money, insurance, homesickness, etc. Before jumping into this, really weigh whether you want to worldschool or take time for a good long vacation or sabbatical. 

Here’s a link that talks about worldschooling in different forms: https://kidworldcitizen.org/what-is-worldschooling-approaches-families/

And another link that is a great resource but also a collection of different families’ takes on what worldschooling is: https://familyadventuresummit.com/2018/04/18/what-is-worldschooling/