Bragg Creek family globetrotting and home-schooling for all of next year

As students across Bow Valley and Canada bring out the prom dresses and try on their tuxedos in preparation for traditional graduation ceremonies, Bragg Creek’s Chloe Grindal is in the midst of preparing for a non-traditional year of ‘home schooling’ in 2023-24.

The world will be her classroom.

Chloe, a Grade 8 grad who gave a speech at the Banded Peak School ceremonies in Bragg Creek last week, will be joining her parents in a year-long trip around the globe, learning about life as they go.

Both parents recently retired from careers in environmental science, which involved a lot of travel. Carol Stefan and Scott Grindal speak glowingly of Chloe’s scholastic abilities and character, and are looking forward to making the world their classroom as much as their 13-year-old daughter is.

Chloe said her Grade 8 grad ceremony and the ensuing James Bond-themed dance at Banded Peak School was fun, but she’s really looking forward to following her love of Greek mythology all the way to where it originated.

Her parents point out that given the increasing prevalence of home-schooling, the idea of travelling is not as big a departure from traditional schooling as it once was.

“We've sort of made this a bit of a life choice, to really experience the world with Chloe,” Scott Grindal said. “Even since she was three months old, we took her off to Costa Rica for a month.

“So she's [already] been a world traveller.”

He said Chloe would have been transitioning from Banded Peak School to high school in Springbank this year anyway, so the timing was right. The guidance counsellors and teachers at both schools were supportive of the family’s plan, and offered suggestions to ensure she would keep up with certain aspects of learning that would be important when she returns to the traditional system.

One of the overriding goals is to make sure Chloe’s being set up for success in life, both from an academic perspective but also socially. Stefan said the experiential learning experiment is learn-as-you-go for all of them, and they’ll revisit their plans after a year.

“So, while we currently have these plans, they're not written in stone,” she said. “If we feel Chloe needs to have the more formal education, then we'll revisit it.”

They plan on having ongoing discussions with Springbank Community High School to track her progress, but not on a structured schedule.

The actual travel plans are constantly evolving, but as of now, they intend to begin with a warm-up canoe trip on the Milk River in southeast Alberta, starting the morning after the last school day. After that, a trip to the west coast through Washington is on the agenda, including some ocean kayaking, before returning to Bragg Creek for the preparations for the real trip.

After a pit stop in Paris in August, it’s off to Africa for a self-directed safari game drive, where Grindal and Stefan’s backgrounds in wildlife biology will come to the fore. Grindal has travelled the world to work on orangutans in Borneo, lemurs in Madagascar, and bats in the Barbados.

Three months camping in the bush in in Kenya and Tanzania will be followed by about five weeks in Egypt, before returning home for three weeks at Christmas, where Stefan’s brothers are looking after their home.

January 2024 will see them in London during the rainy season, before heading for warmer climes in Morocco. From there, they plan to move on to Jordan in the Middle East, then to Turkey to visit more ancient history sites.

“From Turkey, it'll be less planes with more trains and automobiles, making our way over to Greece and then up through the west, likely the west coast of the Adriatic Sea,” Grindal said.

The itinerary after that sounds less carved in stone, but could include visits to Croatia, Budapest, Prague, and hopefully a canal trip in Wales before returning home in June. There are some friends and family visiting them at certain points along the journey.

Grindal said they are concerned about safety, but will rely on their experience travelling in Africa to make the right judgment calls.

“We’ve travelled historically so we do gauge the risk involved with the reward,” he said.

Chloe’s feeling eager, although acknowledging she's “a little sad to be leaving Canada because all my friends and family are here and a bunch of other things I love.”

“But I'm really excited to go into the world and get all of these new experiences and memories,” she said, adding she thinks Greece will be her favourite stop.

“It's just going to be so much fun – learning more about Greek mythology while I'm in Greece and then I can teach my parents about it,” she said. “I'm very incredibly lucky and grateful.”

Her parents aren’t voicing any concerns about Chloe’s work ethic or study habits. Grindal said when they were in Belize last year, she was enrolled in a private school and excelled. They would normally take afternoon breaks to go swimming, but Chloe was focused on her studies.

“She said, ‘You know, Daddy, I think I’ll go do my homework first before I join you at the pool,’ so it was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant surprise,” he said.

She took on a leadership role at Banded Peak School this past year, helping suggest and organize events, which she said she enjoyed.

Grindal said some people they interact with refer to the family as ‘The Griffins’ – a combination of their two last names, Grindal and Stefan.

The mythological creature is a combination of an eagle and a lion. In heraldry, it stands for courage, leadership and strength, which are three things Chloe is learning about day by day, in the real world.