Back in September, our oldest kid started high school. “Well, I guess that’s it for your traveling!”, quipped a friend of mine. Of course, the norm-challenger and relentless problem-solver in me led my brain to almost immediately sing out a silent “challenge accepted!”. But, the truth is that we could see that our family was changing and our conditions were changing. We knew this meant that we might need to evolve too.
Fast forward to half-way through the school year. So far, we’ve been able to keep our travel up, spending a month in Costa Rica and planning for an upcoming 3 month RV trip. Our commitment to “life travel” remains strong. With that said, we’ve definitely made some alterations in our approach to adapt to our changing family and our kids’ evolving needs.
Here are three things that have changed as our kids are getting older, and how we’re adapting our family travel to accommodate the changes.
School
I imagine that the experience of taking your kids out of school for chunks of time depends on the particular school and board administration, so I completely acknowledge that our experience may not be everyone’s experience. With that disclaimer out of the way, I will say that for us there have been a lot of pleasant surprises in working with the three schools our kids have been in (2 elementary and 1 high school) and I think it’s worth sharing. In the least, it’s helpful for dispelling some common myths and concerns.
I remember being intimidated and nervous about taking the kids out of school the first time we traveled this way (for a one-month trip during the month of June). I had no idea what I was going to need to do, or frankly, if we’d even be allowed to take our kids out of school! Would they no longer be welcome to come back the next year (particularly because we were in a specialized french immersion program)? Would I need to provide evidence that we were educating them in another way? How difficult would the administrative process be?
Turns out, I didn’t need to worry at all. Each time we planned to leave, the school provided us with a simple, one-pager to fill out, called a “Temporary Excusal from School” form, in which we simply needed to indicate the name of our child, the dates they will be away and the reason for their excusal (I like to put “travel experience”). Some teachers sent work with us, particularly when they were younger. Others did not. The main lesson here was that the schools really didn’t seem to care! And that was great. There may have been other processes or implications if we were taking them out for a whole year, but this was how simple it was for 1-2 months at a time. Also, if you’re interested in your kids following along with the topics that are being studied in class, this is even easier now in a post-Covid world as the teachers will generally post assignments, lessons and communication in their online classroom hubs (like Google Classroom or Brightspace).
So far, the experience in working with a high school has been even better. The school has a guidance counselor assigned to each student and our counselor has been incredibly supportive. Here are four ways she has worked closely with us and our daughter to help set our kid up for success in school, while also supporting her opportunity to learn through our travels:
1. Planful Course Scheduling
Let’s be honest, some courses are more intense than others. This probably depends on the interest and strengths of your kid too. We’ve been able to work with the guidance counselor to proactively select which courses we’d like to land in which semesters, being thoughtful of when we’re away. We consider things like:
- Which courses are better done in person? (For example, it may be harder to do some of the hands-on science lab work on the road, whereas something like math just requires a textbook)
- Which courses is it easier to miss part of? (For example, missing the first 5 weeks of a vocal or drama class shouldn’t make it impossible to catch up and reintegrate into the class when we’re back)
- Which courses will be harder for my kid? (For example, if my kid finds math to be a challenging subject then maybe that’s a course best left for the term she’s more consistently in school)
If your kid is in a semestered school, having the ability to influence which courses land in which semester can be really helpful.
2. Taking Advantage of Summer Courses
We often like to travel in August and in the shoulder seasons, which means that sometimes we find ourselves around our home base in July. It turns out that our high school offers courses during the summer that allow students to earn a full credit toward their diploma in just that one month! This is another good option because getting a course under your belt in the summer means one less course you need to take during the school year when you may want to be travelling. Combining the summer course option with virtual courses can also be really powerful because it’s possible to free up a whole term for travel! Speaking of virtual courses…
3. Taking Advantage of Virtual Courses
Nowadays, virtual courses are not only a viable option in high school, they may actually be a requirement! In our board, students need to take at least 2 eLearning courses to graduate. I’ve been amazed to learn about all of the courses that are offered virtually, especially at a grade 11 and 12 level. And this is just through the local school board! There are also organizations like WorldStrides that offer virtual courses that may count toward earning your high school diploma, and depending on the partnership they have in your area, it could be entirely free! Lining up some virtual courses for periods of travel is a great option. You can also consider adding virtual classes at other times of the year so that you’ve covered the credits ahead of time and can then travel school-free.
4. Consider an Extra Year
High school can be a very quick four years! When I was growing up in Ontario, we were in high school for 5 years, which meant we left for post-secondary school at a slightly more mature age. There were advantages to that – we were legal drinking age and we had a bit more life experience to draw on. Many kids now will engage in an extra year of high school to improve their marks or try different courses and just take a little longer to marinate on what they want to pursue. Making a decision to take an extra year in high school can provide more flexibility throughout the high school journey for lighter semesters or a semester fully devoted to travel. When you really stop to think about it, what’s the rush?
Timing of Trips
Up until recently, our favourite time of the year to take long “life travel” experiences was in the Spring. Depending on our destination, heading out in early April could extend our short Canadian summer from 3 months to 6 long, sunny months! We love travelling in the shoulder seasons because there are fewer crowds and we end up feeling like we have these amazing places all to ourselves. The prices can sometimes be better too.
As the kids have gotten older, our preferred April – June period has become less desirable for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we’re cognizant of the January and June exam periods for high school and, unless we’ve designed a fully remote term, we know it’s important to be here for those times. Secondly, our kids enjoy participating in extracurricular activities (such as musical theatre) that culminate in a big performance around the end of the school year. For these reasons, we’ve chosen to shift the timing of our trips. This year, for the first time, we’re trying out a big trip during the other shoulder season – September and early October. Yes, they will miss the start of school. However, their extracurricular activities often don’t start up until close to October anyway and we’ll manage the missed school with the tactics above. This also means we can make use of the summer months to help us extend the length of our travel time.
Another new timing that we’ve experimented with is February/early March. We have made use of this period for travel for the past two years and it’s worked out well. From a high school perspective, it’s at the start of the term so less impactful than later on. There’s also a long weekend and a full week of March break in there that helps to minimize how much we are missing.
These shifts in timing seem to be working well for us in our current era. It’s powerful to be able to adjust as needed and I’m sure we’ll have changed it up again in a few years. It all comes down to flexibility.
Being Flexible & Letting Go
When our kids were younger, it felt like our time with them was endless. It was as if whatever plans we made with them, we could do again year after year, forever. Once our oldest hit high school, it was like a switch was flicked and all of a sudden we could see the four short years we had left with her bearing down upon us and then the end of the road as we knew it. We’ve had to adapt to appreciate that, while she’s still really into our family adventures, she’s also forging her own path and this will mean increasingly following her own pursuits.
When it comes to our “life travel” this has encouraged us to pull those problem-solving skills out again and also embrace our flexibility. For example, our oldest is keen on doing a full month of overnight camp this summer. The rest of us will be heading west in our RV. Deal breaker? Not at all! I’ve already made the arrangements to hop on a plane three weeks into our trip to come back home and collect her. Then both of us will fly back to rejoin the rest of the family mid-trip. Of course, I wish I could have her with us all of the time, but I’m proud of the person she’s growing into and glad that we can still do our life travel without it limiting her.
There you have it! That’s the scoop on how our family travel is changing as our kids grow. What changes have you made to your travel to accommodate the teens in your life?
