We got excited when we heard about a family using Sevenstar Academy who was spending a year traveling the world and documenting everything on YouTube. Many on the Sevenstar team love traveling, so we knew it would be fun to keep up with this family and travel the world vicariously through them.

We first connected with Shannon, the mom, after their travels had begun and her two daughters had completed only six weeks of their Sevenstar courses. First, we were excited to hear what had sparked this adventure, what planning had been done beforehand, and how their initial travels were going.

Eight Years in the Making

The dream of traveling around the world didn’t start with a bucket list or a travel blog. It started with something Shannon’s mother-in-law gave the couple years before they had kids. It was a book called At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe.[1] Shannon recalls having a conversation with her husband, Jonathan, after finishing the book and saying, “When are we going to do this?”

Then life happened—kids, a cross-country move, COVID, and a new job among other things. It wasn’t until 2024 that the Roys felt like the girls were old enough. Then they were ready to begin planning their year-long adventure.

The trip that followed covered nearly twenty countries in roughly a year. This included visiting Denmark, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales, England, Italy, Turkey (Istanbul and Cappodocia), Dubai, Egypt (Cairo and Luxor), Hong Kong, Thailand (Chiang Mai), Singapore, Melbourne AU, New Zealand (both islands), Brisbane AU, Japan (Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo), Hawaii, Boston, and finally back home. Jonathan, an engineer, managed the planning in a series of spreadsheets. Shannon says she’d have been completely lost without these.

Finding a School Flexible Enough to Keep Up

As a school counselor who works with students on career and college pathways, Shannon knew exactly what she was looking for and exactly what wouldn’t work. “I knew I couldn’t have something where the girls need to be logging in to a class [at a specific time],” she said. “There’s no way that’s going to work.”

She googled online education programs and whittled the possibilities down to a short list. Most schools were eliminated quickly, but Sevenstar made the cut. After a call with our team, Shannon was in. “I talked to Brian, and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re good,’” she said. “He answered every question I possibly had.”

They started their coursework in early July, before most students begin their school year. This helped the girls build a rhythm before constant travel made things more complex.

What It’s Actually Like to Learn on the Road

Anya, the youngest, will tell you herself that school wasn’t easy. In looking back at the past year, however, she said: “It gets easier. That’s what I would tell myself if I could go back—it gets easier. Because it definitely starts off really hard.” As an extrovert, it was also very hard for Anya to be away from her friends for so long.

Shannon noted that, thanks to the trip, she has seen a lot of growth and maturity in both girls, but especially in Anya, since she’s the youngest. The girls did Sevenstar coursework in hotel rooms, Airbnb’s, and cafés across multiple continents. Anya did so while managing anxiety, missing her best friend, and learning what her ADHD brain actually needed.

What she figured out is worth sharing with every family navigating online learning and ADHD—whether they’re traveling the world or just trying to get through Tuesday afternoon homework.

Anya’s ADHD Toolkit: What Actually Worked

Don’t look at the whole mountain. Look at the next step.

Anya said, “My anxiety wanted me to look ahead and be like, ‘Oh no, I have all this?’” Her mom’s response was simple: “I’m just gonna write down this, and then that’s all we’re gonna look at. We’re not going to talk about the future. We’re just going to talk about right now.” Shannon would write down only what Anya needed to do that day. As Anya puts it: “Don’t look ahead, or else your anxiety will spike and be like, ‘Oh no, I have to do all this!’ Stay in one thing and then move on to the next thing, the next day.”

Brain breaks are not optional—they’re part of the work.

Shannon and Anya figured out that Anya’s limit per subject was about one hour, but sometimes less depending on the course content and the day. “After an hour, my brain would go, nope, we’ve been working too long,” Anya explained. When that happened, they stopped. Shannon called these brain breaks, and Anya had a routine for them: “I would take a sip of water, and I would lie down for a little bit.” The key to this strategy was that the break had to come before the breakdown, not after. Shannon kept an ADHD workbook on hand with a chart Anya could turn to when she felt overwhelmed.

It’s okay to switch subjects when one gets too hard.

Some days, English Language Arts (ELA) was just too much. On those days, they pivoted. “We don’t have to do things in order,” Shannon noted. “If something’s getting too hard for you, you can just do another math that day and then do the ELA another day.” This flexibility, which is possible because of Sevenstar’s asynchronous format, doesn’t lock students into a daily sequence.

Audible changed reading for her.

Anya isn’t a natural reader, but she found a workaround she loved. Speaking of the audio reading app Audible, she said, “I would follow along [in the book] while they read it to me.” “It felt like someone was also there. It’s definitely less hard.”

For kids with ADHD who struggle with sustained independent reading, listening to the audio while tracking the text can support both comprehension and focus in a way that silent reading alone often doesn’t.

Creative writing became a new thing for her.

Sevenstar’s writing-heavy curriculum was a challenge for Anya at first. The research essays and opinion writing were hard, but she discovered she enjoyed the open-topic creative writing. “One time I stayed up until 11 because I wasn’t tired of writing about my story”—she surprised herself! By the end of the year, Anya felt the shift in her outlook: “I feel like I’m definitely way more stronger in my writing.” The secret wasn’t more pressure; it was finding the format where her creativity had room to run.

The Bigger Shift: “The Way Her Brain Works Is Not a Problem”

Beyond the practical tips they collected, something more significant happened this year. Shannon put it simply: “I think Anya’s come to accept that the way her brain works is not a problem. It’s just figuring out solutions.”

Anya is heading home with more confidence than she left with. She biked to grocery stores independently in Copenhagen. She even navigated train systems. She notes, a little proudly, that she can now stay in her own “bubble” when things get noisy around her—something that was much harder for her a year ago.

What Shannon Would Tell Other Parents

Shannon’s advice isn’t “do what we did.” She’s the first to say this trip required an unusual set of circumstances: her husband was able to keep working remotely; her job offered a sabbatical; they had years of savings; and their two kids were at just the right ages. What she believes is most important is this:

• Know your child. If they’re not self-driven, online school will require significant parental involvement—and that’s okay, but go in with open eyes.

• Rhythms matter, especially for kids with ADHD. Even on the road, the Roys tried to stick with a Monday to Thursday school morning schedule. Predictability was the scaffold everything else rested on.

Sevenstar is what made the Roys’ trip possible. “There were very few programs that would have been as flexible,” Shannon said. “The way you guys have it set up, you are in a different category than a lot of other programs.”

Wherever Learning Happens

Anya didn’t love every minute of school this year. She’ll tell you so directly. But she’s heading home as a stronger writer, a more independent thinker, and a kid who has navigated anxiety and ADHD in close to twenty countries—and now she knows what her brain needs.

These are the kinds of things online education at its best can do: Meet students where they are—literally and figuratively—and give families the flexibility to build something that actually works for their child.

Is your family considering a season of online learning? We’d love to talk. Reach out to our team to find out what flexible, faith-integrated education could look like for your student.

References

[1] Tsh Oxenreider, At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe (Thomas Nelson, 2017).