Briefly describe your family (who you are, ages, where you are from, backgrounds, profession(s), etc.)
We are a family of 4. David and Carla and kids Roberto (6 years old) and Greta (4 years old). We are from Canary islands, Spain. David is an electromecanic, knows about industrial automatization, coolers and almost any machine, he worked many years in an elevators company… Carla, me, i studied physics, did my PhD in crystallography and worked in research at university. Also, we both have something to do with music. David plays drums and i play cello… But all this is now part of our history. Nowadays our only house is a campervan and we are traveling the world, reinventing our profession and raising our kids on the road.
Describe your worldschooling travel style. (how long you’ve been doing it, how it works and briefly where you’ve been)
In our head we are slow travelers. Our goal is to spend around 3 months in one place to get to live there. But still we are building this lifestyle because all our movements go by the hand with many others things. We started only one year and a half ago when we left our island with our campervan hitting the road to cross Portugal and part of Spain. Then, we parked the van and flew to Thailand to our first worldschool family Summit and we spent two months there. After that we came back to Spain and spent 8 months in Catalunya where David was building a van. Actually we have being moving guided by a mix of where projects were calling us, events that were taking place or i don’t really know, is something a bit spontaneous. Now we are preparing ourselves to go to Mexico to the next Summit!!, that is for us a great opportunity to arrive to new continents. So we are just starting to build this kind of life, still not economically sustained.
Describe your worldschooling – education style.
We are unschoolers in all aspects of living, so this is called radical unschooling. Although our kids are still little, 4.5 and 5.5. But we just do almost everything with them, letting them be part, doing, speaking.., and we give them tools to learn anything they want to learn. The only curriculo we follow is guided by their own interests.
Why did you choose this learning path?
We chose it before we knew it. Labels came after. It’s something we had inside, we really ARE unschoolers, we really feel FREE in our life about raising our kids. But, how we discover this? We learn a lot in a project kids went for a couple of years. That place was for self-directed learning kids and we actually learn a lot. That was the spark of the fire for us, for our adult de-schooling. This lead us to the need of moving, meet diferent people and visit other cultures.
What are the greatest gifts (benefits) you’ve experienced as a worldschooling family?
The best thing is that we can spend together all the time we want, although it has associated the tricky part of finding time to work, but we are learning about that. We adapt to circumstances and kids also are learning that. They see us working and they want to know more… everything is an opportunity for learning! But this is more because our way of raising them not because of worldschooling… I would say that as worldschoolers we learn things at the same time, kids and adults, and this is a message that i love because what i’m perceiving is that we are equal, i’m still learning, me, as adult, i’m not superior, we are the same, and this give the kids completely fredoom to BE. I love that.
What are your greatest worldschooling challenges (education, travel, health, work) and how have they played a role in your worldschooling journey?
The challenge is, of course finding time for everything. Life is so amazing and there are so many things to do. So we are not just working, we are inventing, creating these jobs that does not feel like jobs, because we are taking things that passionate us and transform them into jobs, is that possible? it has to be. So our brain never stops. Is like an alert state, life is like this when all the time new things are coming up or happening. I guess the challenge for us is the profesional reinvention and to fit all the thing in 24 hour a day… to keep the balance equilibrated… that’s the challenge.
Why did you choose to worldschool?
It kind of happen without a formal decision. We wanted to move from the Canary islands to the mainland of Spain so we could travel anywhere with our campervan, but to find the perfect place for living we needed to go around and discover, living the places. So that was the start. Three months later we were flying to Thailand to the Summit, and that was it. Nowadays our only house is the campervan, and we have a community of people all over the world.
Share a big powerful worldschooling “aha” moment ( an inspiring story from the road)
I think everything go slowly until you can put words on it, and breaking all this reinforced neuron connections of an struturated life requires time. For me the most powerful realization is about the way we live our life. How we have lost control of our LIMITED time in this planet and how we spent more than half of our life designing that moment when we will have all the time (we have left) to do what we want. My “aha” moment is so simple and basic and came from this sentence: “We all have two lifes, the second one starts when you realize there is only one”
What would you say to other (hesitant) worldschooling families that may be considering this journey?
If you are considering the journey of worldschooling, you must try it. Just try! you won’t have many opportunities in your lifetime and if you are thinking about it now is because it is your time to let it happen, so just go for it. Think your strategy and go. Say yes!
The words that describe Carla the most are: Energy and smile. She is a non stop machine of ideas,options and solutions. She is a scientist reinventing herself in whatever she feel like doing and fit in the lifestyle she want. Maternity brought her a new view and renovated goals, so simple and so difficult as just BE. To pursue this,Carla and her family sold everything in order to by time, a time she believe was not given to her. a time to discover what we want to do, how and where. and that’s what they is doing. Following their butterflies, constructing and living their lifes.
You can follow them searching for Ligrones en Ruta on Instagram, facebook, youtube or in
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