Creating A World-Centric Curriculum

The challenges of teaching what you don’t quite know

With just under six months to prepare for our World-Travel, I am frantically ordering books and guides.

Many years ago, I attempted to home-school my two oldest children. The timing for all of us wasn’t quite right. Although we accomplished quite a bit, we decided to switch to an online format and I stepped down as full-time instructor.

With my youngest, I was determined to get it right. I went back to grad school and specialized in teacher-librarianship. It taught me curriculum design and helped me focus on “deep learning” and “collaboration”. Yet, I was happy to find that many of the things I had known and believed about teaching were already correct.

So, we dove in.

One thing I always insisted upon with all of my children, was that they get a strong grasp of Geography. I knew that people in the United States were notoriously considered bad at knowing anything outside of their own country. No child of mine! I declared.

Teaching what you don’t know

In grad school, I took a course on teaching Information Literacy. It reassured me that it is okay to not know everything about everything. The trick is to learn, so that you can teach, and as you teach, you learn more. Repeat.

I have long been aware that my education has been Eurocentric, U.S. Centric, and even California Centric (being that I grew up there). But how was I supposed to overcome that when I had zero idea what an education looked like from any other point of view?

I don’t know if it is even necessary to teach from any other viewpoint, but it feels extremely important. At least in the sense that I want to raise a well-rounded world-citizen.

World Travel

Part of me believes that our journey around the world will be packed full of real life lessons and that could be lesson-enough. There are people who firmly believe this type of immersive and hands-on learning in worth its weight in gold and no textbook or formal instruction can compete.

Yet, another part of me is convinced I need to add some sort of structure to this learning process. A guide. A plan.

World-Centric Curriculum

Much of this process is beginning now, six months out from the first plane ride. I’m including our daughter in the planning as much as possible.

We pour through the Atlas, fingers tracing routes. The globe spins round and round under our gaze. I am ordering History books and travel guides. We read and write about people and events.

Somehow, I feel I am missing something, but I reassure myself it will fall into place out there in the real world. My stomach fills with butterflies. I realize I am learning and discovering right alongside my daughter. We are both seeing the world for the first time.

I trust that this is the natural way of learning. As an adult, with several college degrees under my belt, I often notice my learning is done out here…among the experiences, in the little stories I read, in the books I pick up, on the headlines, within the articles.

I breath and know that travel has always been the best teacher.