We’ve all heard of the opportunities and challenges facing families who choose to home school their children. But there’s more to homeschooling when you take it on the road. Welcome to Roam Schooling. Take homeschooling, add RVing, mix in experiential learning, sprinkle on remote learning, and you baked a Roam Schooling cake.
In the 1970’s, K-12 education was being turned on its head. The students had no idea what was happening to them. But what education is today was largely defined by the research, theories, experiments, and fads of that period.
From the 1970’s to today, school system “re-forming” has been a nonstop practice, which is more like slash and burn than “re- making.” We’ve ended up with salad instead of steak dinner, just tossing miscellaneous bits and pieces into the bowl, each new element diluting the rest, rendering all of it tasteless.
Schools should start by admitting that they are not the be all and the end of all things to all students. If we start from that position, then we can focus more on what schooling can and should be for students. First and foremost, schooling should not be an experiment on students. The more things change, the less students can benefit from the good within any education system. Changes should be within and not without existing conditions. The most dynamic, productive and successful systems are not rigid, but neither are they disposable.
Of course, education can not be all about self-discovery for students. If it were, then schools are just babysitters. There are valid, valuable lessons in school, all of the socialization, all of the benefits of the experts teachers, qualified coaches leading sports teams, and the ever-important music teacher. These are important aspects of traditional schooling.
In this article from July 27, 2012 in the Wall Street Journal, Quinn Cummings offers a glimpse of how the old and the new can be synthesized into something more. He calls it Roam Schooling
My Education in Home Schooling: Teaching kids at home can be terrifying, but it’s sure to grow as families demand more choice
Online classes have already become part of an extended curriculum for many students, especially in this age of Covid. As our habits evolve, it won’t be home schooling as we’ve known it, but it won’t be brick-and-mortar schooling, either. Let’s call it “roam schooling.”
Imagine that your high-school junior spends two afternoons a week logging into an art-history seminar being taught by a grad student in Paris. He takes computer animation classes online at the local college. He studies Web design on YouTube. He and three students see a tutor at a public library who preps them for AP Chemistry. He practices Spanish on FaceTime and he takes cooking lessons at a local restaurant at some unique location.
The idea is simple. Take the best of traditional learning with expert teachers and a well designed curriculum. Access the traditional learning from expert teachers through distance learning. Sprinkle in copious amounts of experiential learning lead by dedicated homeschool-capable parents. Blend in a comfortable home on wheels and a new location each week. Now you have more than a steak dinner, you have an entire feast.
‘The best way for students to learn’ is a subjective term, but certain learning styles offer definite advantages over others, depending on the subjects of study. Below are several learning styles commonly practiced in many classrooms:
Visual learning is traditional learning where students read, remember, and recite the information on a page, in reports, on tests, and from quizzes. This method is most frequently used by teachers during early childhood for school-aged children, where information is traditionally taught using picture books, flashcards, and later, textbooks.
Auditory learning relies upon the student to take in an instructor’s information through listening to them live, or via a pre-recorded session, requiring students to take notes throughout the process. This form of learning may or may not encourage discussion, depending on the preferences of a given teacher.
Kinesthetic learning combines the elements of both visual and auditory learning, compelling full participation from the student. Named after kinesiology, the study of human movement, it’s most commonly referred to as hands-on learning or experiential learning. This blended learning technique allows students to become comfortable and familiar with the hands-on processes and skills of what will hopefully become their careers.
Experiential learning is uniquely positioned to improve any type of learner. Everyone has a preferred style when it comes to learning. Students that learn better while listening to their lesson can hear the instructor as they follow along, and those that do well with visuals can watch the instructor, repeating his or her steps after they’re finished. Rather than a learning style alone, experiential learning should be a functional part of every lesson plan.
Experiential Learning is what happens in the biology lab that teaches a future scientist to be comfortable with dissection; the auto shop experience that helps a future mechanic understand how an engine runs and sound, giving students the opportunity to self-correct as they learn, with guidance near by. Certainly notes can be copied down incorrectly and learning can get buried under a teacher that talks too quickly or with bad intonation. Add in poorly-written textbook and a student shuts down. Contrary to this delivery, live examples of core concepts register in the brain as holistic experiences, giving the student’s mind more “anchors” to tie the memory to.
Properly structured, experiential learning encourages students to think outside of the proverbial box, coaxing them to experiment with and explore the real world around them and developed skills that transcend the text book or the overhead projector. This learning style also offers a welcome change from the usual lecturing, note taking, and book learning. Most teachers dont likes to think about it, but the fact of the matter is that students do have a limited attention span, even when they’re really trying to pay attention. The sound of an teachers voice may become monotonous after an hour of class. The words in a text book may blur together as eyes become tired. Legs may get restless from sitting in one place. Thoughts drift as students become a passive, rather than an active, participant in their learning experience.
Experiential learning upends this tired, traditional classroom instruction, allowing students to move, interact with, and truly engage with in the world they live in and wish to learn about. Rather than a chore (listen, take notes, remember) it becomes that unique organic experience and students retain the content from the museum they visit or the nature preserve they explore. It’s interesting and the subject matter becomes easier to recall and more exciting to explore.
Julia Jargon reported in the Wall Street Journal, in an article entitles “Roadschooling” 101: Families make Remote Learning Work in an RV:
Patricia Winters and her family decided to take advantage of her husband’s remote work arrangement, so they bought a camper. In June, they left their Annapolis, Md., home for a trip out West, with plans to be back in time for school.
“At the end of July, our school district decided to go virtual, so I said, ‘I guess we can keep going,’ ” Ms. Winters said. The family of five has logged 11,000 miles visiting 16 states and 14 national parks.
So back to Roam Schooling; homeschooling, mixed with RVing, and blended with experiential learning. No restless wiggles, no wandering minds, no dozing off during class – instead, they get to tackle challenges in real time in real places.
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