We Are Worldschool Academy

We help families become heroes of their own life story.

Rachel Denning

I'm the writer, web designer, curriculum designer, and trip planner. I'm also a worldschooling mother of seven children and education change-maker.

Best Friends

We've been happily married since our wedding day in 2001. We do everything together -- homeschool our kids, build a business, plan epic trips, and travel the globe with our family.

Greg Denning

Walking anti-depressant and Chief Enthusiasm Officer, Greg leads trips, mentors online classes, and coaches parents. Amazing father to seven and favorite mentor to hundreds of teens.

Hey! It's Greg & Rachel Denning (founders of Worldschool Academy).

So grateful you're here reading this page!

Have you ever read The One World Schoolhouse by Sal Khan?

If you haven't, you should.

In it, he dives deep into why the old classroom model simply does NOT fit our changing needs.

It's based on a fundamentally passive way of learning. Today's fast-changing world REQUIRES a more active approach.

Yet while the world changes at a faster rate every day, the education system is changing at a glacial pace (if it is changing at all).

Every single day the gap grows wider between the way kids are being taught and what (and how) they actually need to learn.

What's a parent to do?

From the beginning, even before we had children, we decided to homeschool.

After our fourth child was born -- and we had four children under the age of four (!) -- we began our worldschooling journey by driving to Costa Rica.

That was in 2007, and since then we've traveled and lived in 35+ countries on five continents.

Learning languages, exploring castles, ruins, deserts, and beaches, and immersing ourselves in a foreign cultures has been an incredible education for the whole family.

But as powerful and transformative as it is, traveling for education is not enough.

We knew there was something more.

We know our children NEED an education that develops deep creativity and analytical thinking. These skills are no longer optional in today's world. They are REQUIRED.

We also want them to experience the joy of learning and the thrill of understanding.

We want them to make connections and develop true mastery -- not just a Swiss-cheese, gap-filled education like we received in the public school system, or even, if I dare say, learning through travel only.

But that's not all. We also want to:

Inspire each of our children to find a calling, become the hero of their own life story, and change the world in their own small (or big) way
Facilitate self-directed learning (meaning they buy into owning and pursuing their education)
Utilize a style of learning that is in alignment with how the world actually is, and how human beings actually learn
Focus on learning something because you need to know it or because you love it
Focus on developing mastery of understanding in core areas (reading, writing, arithmetic)
Digging in deep in the subjects they're passionate about, instead of obtaining gap-filled knowledge on lots of disconnected subjects (Swiss cheese learning)
Use a curriculum that is real versus one that is flat (i.e. a real kitten vs. a picture of a kitten; living in Germany vs. reading a book or looking at a map)
Help my children 'learn to be', 'learn to do', and 'learn to know'
Use badges to prove mastery instead of grades
Create portfolios of real world projects instead of transcripts
Show my kids how to learn, how to respond and recover, how to be innovators and creators in their own way

These are lofty ideals, we know.

And the education system system needed to achieve them does not exist.

So we knew we had to build our own 'school' (although it wouldn't look like any school you've ever seen).

"Successful people build the community they need."

It's not a path for everyone. It takes guts. And lots of hard work.

It takes a belief that your children have genius within. All they need is the right environment and powerful mentors who can spark the flame.

So that's what we set out to create. An ENVIRONMENT where our ideals could grow.

An environment where our children could embrace the growth mindset of the heroes journey, take responsibility for their education and life, get back up after failing, and learn HOW to learn and LOVE it.

Educating our children -- and creating CHANGE in how education is done -- is our life and work.

We passionately love what we do, nearly as much as we love our children. :)

We wake up everyday excited about taking the next step toward realizing our lofty ideals and preparing our children to be heroes of their own life story (while modeling the journey for them).

What about you?

Would you love to join us on this quest?

If so, I'm sure we have something for you.

You can also enter you name and email below, to continue this conversation, or get in contact with us directly.

Reach Upward!

Rachel & Greg Denning