School, school, school.

School. A word some cringe at, some cry at, and some get happy about. I personally feel neutral about school. My thoughts: Yes, the homework and work isn't fun, and yes, I could be doing more fun things. Buuuuuut... Learning comes with all kinds of benefits, and I'm lucky enough to be able to go to school and learn, unlike many children in less privileged countries. I enjoy learning, but not busywork. I absolutely love reading, but it's not nearly as entertaining when I have to read a certain book for school. All of these sorts of things seem to balance out, leaving me neutral about the concept of school.

All of the people we meet on tours, at Airbnbs, at restaurants etc. always ask about how we're doing school for the year. I figured you guys wonder about that too.

The boys do math and spelling using workbooks we bring along. They also do some math and science lessons on Kahn Academy, a free online learning website. They learn history and social studies and do PE through our daily activities. Their schooling doesn't rely on WiFi.

My schooling, however, is almost completely dependent on having a good WiFi connection. My parents signed me up for a fully accredited online school called Laurel Springs so that I could continue on to high school when we get back. In the beginning of the year, I was signed up for 6 courses; Algebra 1, Science, English, Spanish, U.S. History, and P.E.

Each day I was doing a math lesson, a history lesson, and a Spanish lesson. Every few days I was doing a science lesson and an English lesson. Every week I had to turn in a log of what I did for physical exercise every week.

It may not seem like a lot, and if I wasn't on this trip, it would have been a piece of cake. 98% of days on this trip have been spent doing an activity. Whether that be a full day Great Barrier Reef tour, or just a day of visiting bridges and monuments, we're always doing something every day. The only days we didn't do anything were a few days in South Africa for me to catch up after the Safari.

Every month before the beginning of November I had a day of stress... A day of everything building up in my head and feeling extremely overwhelmed.

My parents noticed this, and asked if they could help somehow. Obviously, they can't do my work for me, so there wasn't much they could do. During the first week of South Africa I had a large amount of assignments to do due to the fact that I had missed lots of days when I was on the Safari and in Zanzibar. Those missing days on top of the current week's assignment added up to a lot. Most of the time consuming work was history as this required a lot of reading and writing. PE/health wasn't difficult but it was more tedious writing and proving that I was being active..... Time consuming and therefore stressful. My parents felt I could "give up" these subjects formally to reduce my stress knowing I could read and learn about our own history in books and once we've returned, and we all know I'm an active person without taking photos and writing about it!

The process of dropping P.E. and history took about a month, but by the beginning of November, I was down to only 4 courses; algebra, science, English, and Spanish. This took my work load down by a lot, and I was able to go on more adventures with my family.

Now that doesn't mean I'm not stressed, but it sure has lessened. One of the only major problems I face now is not having WiFi. It's not the workload anymore, but it's the ability for me to connect to the internet that is the problem. In fact, my whole family has problems when we don't have good internet. All of the houses and hotels we've been in in Australia have either had terrible connection, limited connection, or no WiFi at all. This has made it hard for me to study for my midterm exams and extremely difficult for my parents to book flights to and plan our southeast Asia places. I also needed the WiFi to do extra work than normal so I don't have so much to do after we do our RV in New Zealand.

Here's a picture of the home screen to my online learning:

It lists my classes, my grades, and my assignments due in the next week.

If I click on one of the assignments, it will show me the details of the particular lesson.

After I read the lesson, I get quizzed on it. After 3 lessons, I get quizzed on them. After 9 lessons, the module is finished, and I do my module test. A semester is 3-5 modules depending on the course, and at the end of the semester I do a semester exam.

A question that might pop up is: Is online school harder or easier?
My answer is that it is complicated.
Online school is a smidge harder mainly because I have to fit it in with this whole world trip. Being online makes communication with my teachers a lot harder than normal. Having to find my own time to do school everyday (instead of regular school, where there are set school hours) is also a challenge. I am glad I am not a major procrastinator, because otherwise NONE of my schooling would get done. There are only suggested due dates, not set in stone ones like normal school. If I turn a lesson in 5 days after it is due, I get no points taken away. This is helpful on the trip for those times when I don't have WiFi. For some, not having a person there and teaching you might be difficult, but I don't find that to be much of a problem.

I hope this blog was helpful to answer your questions about schooling!