ROADS SCHOLARS
Van life goes elementary with ‘roam schooling’
WHEN Anna and Michael Roberts put their five children on a bus for the first day of school, their kids didn’t have to get out of bed. “We are a skoolie family,” Anna, 35, told The Post. “We live in a 1995 40-foot school bus that we converted into our home-schooling space last November.”
The term “skoolie,” a newly viral social media hashtag, describes nomadic folk who’ve opted to make their homes inside of a redesigned school bus. The lifestyle mirrors the “van life” movement, in which people transform cargo vans into chic mobile homes. Some include fully functioning kitchens, heat and air-conditioning units and plush furnishings. Video posts tagged with the popular terms have racked up a combined 6 billion views on TikTok.
Anna and Michael, 37, ditched their 2,300-square-foot house in Kansas City, Mo., to become skoolie teachers to kids Elise, 12; Micah, 10; Elijah, 7; Jude, 5; and infant Nora — who was born on the bus in February.
They decided to move into the $3,500 motor home in an effort to reunite their family after Anna and Michael separated for nine months in 2019.
Their brood is among the approximate 400,000 Americans who dumped stationary home life for full-time nomadic living as of 2020, according to RV Industry Association spokesperson Monika Geraci.
And as the lifestyle grows in popularity, more parents are experimenting with onthe-go home-schooling, or “roam-schooling,” in order to enrich their family’s quality time as they explore the country.
“Every day we’re on the road is like a field trip,” Anna, who works as a photographer, said. “The beauty of home-schooling on-the-go is that we get to work through each lesson at our own pace. We can focus on subjects that intrigue our kids.”
She and Michael — who works odd jobs in construction when they’re on the road — teach four hours a day, Friday through Monday, from a Bible-based program.
Following a reverse and shortened school schedule allows the family to visit national parks and landmarks midweek when fewer people are visiting the sites.
“It takes about 15 to 30 minutes to teach our kids each subject,” Anna said, noting that they’ve been to 19 national parks in more than 20 states across the Midwest and West Coast. “So that gives us more time to explore in whichever state we’re visiting.”
BUT while school on-the-go suits the Roberts kids, a lack of a traditional educational structure could have a negative impact on a child’s academic development, according to experts.
“A child can certainly have unique experiences with nontraditional schooling, but the key is to have planning and consistency every day,” said pediatrician and former WebMD senior medical director Hansa Bhargava. “[On-the-road schooling] can work, but there needs to be organization and education, just like traditional school.”
She warns that road-schooled kids may also have trouble cultivating friendships with kids outside of their immediate family.
“Traditional schooling has many benefits, including not only academics, but social activities where . . . there are opportunities to make friends,” Bhargava added, noting that a child’s sense of community can be diminished if they are living as a nomad. “[Going to school] not only supports structured learning but also helps with [a child’s] emotional wellness.”
Jessica McCorkle begs to differ. She says her three kids have excelled academically, socially and emotionally since she and husband Dub, both 34, removed them from public school, sold their four-bedroom home in Irmo, SC, and moved into a 400-square-foot camper to escape the dangers of the pandemic last September.
“We’d been toying with the idea of moving into our camper since COVID-19 hit [in March 2020],” Jessica explained. But her oldest daughter, Addison, 13, had Pediatric Autoimmune Neurological Syndrome — a disease which severely affects a child’s nervous system — and was undergoing IV treatments at the time.
Once Addison was finally in remission, Jessica and Dub hit the road and enrolled the teen and her younger siblings — Grace, 10, and TJ, 8 — in a digital learning program.
“My kids are learning far above their grade levels,” said Jessica, who oversees her children’s two-hour school days. “Beyond the curriculum we follow, they’re getting a unique opportunity to actually see and experience the world around them, rather than learn about it from textbooks.”
On days the McCorkle crew isn’t following a lesson plan, they take part in the National Park Service’s junior ranger program. The family earns money through paid promos on their social media accounts @family.of.nomads, sharing everything from RV air purifiers to dental retainers to their 107,700 Instagram followers.
And when it comes to making friends on the road, her brood is brimming with buddies.
“There’s a huge community of families that travel full time,” said Jessica. “We’ve been coordinating our stops with another family since January.”
And Dub, who was initially against nomadic living, now says it has helped his children develop healthy conflict-resolution techniques.
“When we were living in our house, if the kids got upset with one another, they’d just storm off into their separate rooms and not speak. Now they’ll gather themselves together, rationally discuss their issues and make peace, because they know they can’t get away from one another in the camper,” he said with a laugh.
WHILE home-schooling programs might be a bargain — most cost about $500 a year per kid — families aren’t saving a ton of dough on the road thanks to paying for gas, repairs, eating out and excursions. There’s also the question of cleanliness.
“It does take us hours to all get showered . . . The water runs out pretty quick when there are five people trying to take a hot shower every evening,” said Jessica, adding that they have to refill their freshwater tank every four to five days at campsites. “We take Navy showers. We soap up, put shampoo in our hair, turn off the water, scrub down and then turn the water back on to rinse off.”
But many skoolies believe the benefits outweigh the inconveniences. Ingrid and Eric Hildebrand call abandoning their jobs as a real estate agent and an accountant, respectively, and moving their three kids into a 280-square-foot school bus that they bought for $4,500 the “best decision we ever made.”
“I was working over 80 hours a week most of the time,” said Eric, 44,
who previously lived in Tampa, Fla., with Ingrid and their three kids, but is originally from Queens.
He was laid off just months before the pandemic. “And Ingrid and I were both tired of outsourcing our parenting to the educational system.”
So in May 2021, they rented out their 1,500-square-foot abode, pulled their 4-year-old son Lendon out of preschool and began teaching him and sisters Finley, 3, and Madeline, 1, in their school-bus home.
“Losing my job when I did ended up being a blessing,” said Eric, who relied on YouTube to teach him how to renovate their bus-home. “Now, I’m living my life by design, traveling with my family and having an active role in my children’s education.”
And the Hildebrands — who earn a living through their rental properties — plan to continue travel-teaching Lendon when he starts kindergarten in 2022.
“Home-schooling on the road really gives us and our children a chance to learn what their academic and personal strengths are,” said Ingrid. “That’s something parents can miss out on when their kids are attending traditional school or when everyone is living separately in a huge house.”