Today, we meet the Gypsy Gameschooler and enjoy a lesson about learning through play. Read on to learn more about Ashley Wright and how her family employs gameschooling as their alternative education method.
Ashley Wright is a homeschool mom to two kids. When neighbor problems made their home unlivable, they decided to hit the road! They now live in a converted school bus, traveling around the country. Along the way, they love learning about the different places they visit, read amazing books and watch great documentaries, and also play lots of board games!
Q1 – What do you do for a living?
That’s a complicated question, isn’t it? I workamp (work at a campground in exchange for a free place to stay and sometimes pay) and am a freelance editor. My husband is a handyman through Task Rabbit. Weboth have blogs that we’re trying a variety of different ways to monetize.
Q2 – What is the name of your latest project? Tell us more about why you embarked on this project.
My latest project is a new game called Pizza Parlor. It’s a fractions game, but instead of just working with addition and subtraction of fractions, I also figured out how to incorporate multiplication and division. I actually came up with the idea years ago when my kids were still playing Auntie Pasta’s Pizza Fractions Game. I kept seeing requests for more help with multiplication and division of fractions, and thought I could make a game for it. When I went to try to get it made professionally, though, it was too much of a hurdle for me at the time so I put it on a shelf and forgot about it. More recently, however, someone inspired me to try making a game again. I knew that my review of Auntie Pasta’s was consistently my top-performing game review, but I also kept getting requests for fractions games for older students. Since Auntie Pasta’s is both out of print and made for younger kids, I knew something else was needed. I pulled out the files that I’d saved for Pizza Parlor, and went to work finding somewhere I could get it made. The Game Crafter came through for me and while I had to learn a ton to do it, I did just get my copy of my own game!
Q3 – Saint Augustine said, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” How does travel (global or local) play a role in both your life?
Back when my husband and I were just dating, we bought our house that had some land on it. I told him I never wanted to move again. We built up our farm, and eventually started raising our kids there. Weloved living on our little farm, but our kids had never seen the ocean (we lived in WA state; it’s not like we were far from
it), gone camping, stayed in a hotel, or traveled more than 3 hours from our house. Since we had milk goats, we couldn’t take overnight trips.
After we decided to sell the property and travel, I sold all our farm animals. That summer, we visited the ocean, stayed in a hotel, went camping several times, and visited the eastern half of the state. Sincemoving into our bus a year ago, we have visited 14 states, spending considerable time in 4 of them. We’re finishing up our season at our current campground, and are getting excited to get moving again!
Q4 – Do you believe travel provides positive or negative effect on the world? How?
Yes. (As in, both.) Positive: It helps us be more understanding and accepting by learning about others.We’re able to see that there are more ways of living than just the way we were raised. We’re able toexperience different foods, climates, interact with people who look different, hear different ways of speaking and communicating. We can really experience more.
Cons: Unless we all go back to walking or riding bikes everywhere, we contribute a great deal to global warming. By settling in one spot for a bit, we may contribute slightly less than those who movefrequently, but driving our house around doesn’t exactly lead to great fuel mileage. It’s harder to recycle while living on the road; most campgrounds we’ve stayed at do not have recycling facilities. Donating items we no longer need gets more difficult, too, as there are only so many stressors a person can take. Sometimes, we have to prioritize mental health and just get the extra stuff out. I’ve also read quite a bit about how native people are exploited. Not just Native Americans, but people living all over the globe. White Americans and Europeans sometimes come in with their money and expectations, and take advantage of others.
Q5 – What does responsible travel mean to you?
Responsible travel means we are trying our best to mitigate the cons I listed above. We do what we can tomaximize our fuel mileage and minimize how much we drive our bus (we tow a small car to maketraveling during a stay easier). We try to recycle and donate unneeded items. And really importantly, we do our best to be conscientious visitors. We learn about the places we are visiting and why different things are important to different people. We treat others with respect. When we visited Mexico, we didn’tbargain much because we felt the people deserved to make a good living, and their prices were plenty low enough to begin with. When we visit historical sites, we treat them with respect.
Q6 – What do you think is the biggest threat travel could pose on the world? How can that be mitigated?
Two of the cons I mentioned above: fossil fuel use contributing to greenhouse gases and global warming, and the exploitation of native peoples. Global warming and fossil fuel use is mitigated by furthering research and development of more sustainable ways to travel. It could be that we decide the best way is to go back to walking, but I think there’s a way we can continue with vehicles that don’t produce as much in the way of greenhouse gases. I don’t think electric vehicles are necessarily the answer, as I’ve heard about how terrible lithium mining is for the earth. But I think there’s an answer out there, somewhere.
The exploitation of native people can be mitigated by responsible travel. Respect. Paying others for their time, energy, and efforts. Shopping local and supporting those communities through which you travel,but in a sustainable way. Don’t take their ideas and designs and use them for your own gains.
Q7 – How does education come into play in your life?
I’ve been an educator for a long time. I started in high school; student teaching private violin lessons, and volunteering at my local zoo educating visitors. During college, I volunteered at the local rehab center and part of my duties were assisting with outreach programs. After college, I ran my own violin lesson studio teaching private lessons. I ended up getting my master of arts in education, which is actually what convinced me to homeschool my kids. And then now, of course, I’m homeschooling my kids.
Q8 – What is your experience with alternative education?
We do a mix of unschooling, unit studies, and gameschooling. And of course, our road/worldschooling. I’d say that’s pretty alternative. We have seldom had formal lessons, used worksheets, workbooks, textbooks, or curricula.
Q9 – Eckhart Tolle said, “Awareness is the greatest agent for change.” In your opinion, how can education affect awareness?
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes that’s referred to often in the world of conservation: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love; love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.” ~Baba Dioum
You can’t be aware of something unless something – either an experience or someone else – makes you aware of it. I try to provide my kids with a variety of experiences to expand their awareness. We supplement with reading different books, having lots of discussions, watching documentaries, and more. All of this education helps to broaden their world and make them more aware.
Q10 – What is education lacking today?
It depends on what you mean by “education.” Public school? Then definitely a lot of life skills, emotional/social education, and the arts. Many homeschoolers are trying to do better. There is still a lot of whitewashing, though, even among the homeschool community. I think we need more diversity, all around. Diversity of people, diversity of viewpoints, diversity in topics, diversity in resources.
Q11 – How do you think travel and education can support each other?
We learn so much when we travel! We love visiting historic sites and science museums, and especially love it when our reading is able to match up with our travels. Since we do spend a fair amount of time in the car (not as much as some people to be sure, but more than we used to), we often listen to audiobooksin the car.
Education supports our travels as we all have a better experience when we are better educated. When we learn about what to expect before we arrive somewhere, our expectations and experiences are more aligned and we feel more satisfied with our experiences.
Q12 – Have you ever volunteered or supported a local cause or initiative while traveling?
We haven’t yet, but I would like to. It can be difficult to find opportunities that children can participate in. Also, between workamping, editing, my husband’s work, blogging, and all the normal day-to-day of cooking and cleaning, I don’t have the energy for anything else at the moment. One day, though, I’d liketo get to where I can work less and spend some time giving back to our local commuities.
Q13 – How do you support your local community? If you don’t, no worries. Is there something you’d like to help with in the future?
Right now, I’m helping a neighbor boy learning to read. His mother is totally capable, but it’s one thing off her plate a couple days a week. I know it’s not much, but it’s something. I would like to do more. I’dlove to be able to volunteer at a soup kitchen as a family, or a homeless shelter.
Q14 – What struggles have you run into along the way while accomplishing your goals? If you travel, how does that impact your goals?
I ran into struggles with my game, Pizza Parlor, and getting it made. Blogging has been a huge learning curve for me, and using social media as a blogger even more.
Travel can make things more complicated. I need to plan ahead, as it’s difficult to get a lot done on travel days. We don’t always have reliable internet wherever we go, so that can definitely make things challenging. And then there are all the usual challenges of traveling; rigs break down (we lost all our coolant three times before we figured out how to fix it properly), tempers flare, fuel prices fluctuate, delays happen, things aren’t as we expect, money runs short, things break or are lost.
Q15 – Aldous Huxley said, “I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.” How have you changed throughout your creative process? How do you improve yourself every day?
As a child, I always hated writing despite being told I was a good writer. It took me a long time to getpast my aversion to writing, but that is definitely a huge way I’ve grown since starting my blog. I really feel like my writing has improved, and my confidence even improved enough to write my book.
I don’t know that I do improve myself every day. Many days, I’m just trying to get through them. Ideally, I’d get back to daily meditations, using herbs daily, yoga every day, etc. Maybe when I’m not workamping and we’re boondocking instead, I’ll have time and energy for more self-improvement activities.
Q16 – Intolerance and divisiveness are prevalent across the globe. Our voice may not be loud enough to right every wrong, but it is enough to make a difference one person at a time. Small acts move mountains.What one thing would you ask your audience to do to help inspire social change?
Choose kindness. Assume that everyone is doing the best they can with what they have. Not only will yoube more pleasant to others, but you’ll be much happier, too.
Connect with Ashley Wright and take a gander at game schooling!
GypsyGameschooler.com is Ashley’s blog with game reviews. Her husband’s blog (where he shares about our travels and the adventures of being a parent on the road) is DaddingOnTheRoad.com.
Socials:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gypsygameschooler/
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/gypsygameschooler/
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/gypsy-gameschooler/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gypsygameschooler
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gypsygameschooler/
If you want to hear my guests’ stories in their own words, check out our video interviews on my Worldschooling Junction YouTube Channel. Be sure to go subscribe to hear about Ashley and other mindful travelers.
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Until next time…
Keep learning!
