The field of education is in turmoil these days, for a variety of reasons. Countless families are searching for additional ways to provide the best education possible for their kids.

But where to start?

How do you know what to look for, whom to trust, and educational outcomes that prioritize your kid and their educational journey?

Enter Cicero Learning. 

Created by Paul Bennett and Lani Bevacqua (of our favorite travel learning program, Context Travel), Cicero Learning is a game-changer for kids and their families.

Based on an historic educational idea used for millenia, Cicero educators work with students (no ancient stones required to sit upon to learn!) one-on-one to wake up curiosity in learners.

As our family knows, such educational curiosity is an extraordinary, lifelong gift. 

Cicero features core courses and elective/topical courses. Dig into one or more as a way to improve understanding and knowledge, or set up an entire education program for your kid. It's that flexible...and important.

Whether you're traveling, moving abroad, or looking to find a new way to get your kids to love learning again, Cicero is well worth exploring.

It's an extraordinary way to spark a love of lifelong learning, adapt to any family travel or circumstance, and truly provide an incredible education for your kids.

Highly, highly recommended!

We had a chance to catch up with Paul, and chatted about Cicero, inspiration (and his family), educational customization, and more. Here's what he had to say...

Paul, Lani, and their boatschooled kids in the Chagos islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean

Please tell us about Cicero Learning...
Cicero helps families find private teachers who build personalized courses for their children and then lead those courses, one-to-one.

We work with homeschoolers, worldschoolers, and students for whom traditional school just isn't working.

One-to-one learning is an ancient model of personalized education that has been shown to deliver significantly better results than classroom learning, or the so-called industrialized education model.

You and your family set off to travel the world on your sailboat—how did you prepare to worldschool?
To put it simply: We didn't.

Our kids were relatively young when we set out—5, 9, and 10—and we sort of winged it. We used travel itself as the core teacher, and tried to build "unit studies" around the places we were visiting. This worked for a little while; but we soon realized that we also needed to layer in core academic learning, specifically in math and English language arts. We tried many different programs—some online, some DIY. We had mixed results from this.

As the kids got older and the stakes higher, we decided to try hiring a private teacher to deliver a single course (English language arts) to our oldest daughter, who was 16 at the time.

This changed our lives.

The amount of learning and our daughter's relationship to learning with the one-to-one model was night and day different from our experience with off-the-shelf curricula. Stella, our daughter, came alive. She built a deep relationship with her teacher and fell in love with learning for learning's sake. Her intellectual curiosity was sparked! We knew that we'd hit gold, so we rolled out the same model to our other two daughers. Flash forward 6 years and my two oldest daughters, who did all of their high school this way, are now enrolled in crazily selective universities (University of Chicago, Pomona) and our youngest, Jade, is doing four of her six courses this way, while we continue to sail.

Jade doing school in Namibia 

Cleo diving in the Seychelles

What inspired you to start Cicero?
The results. As you know, we value education very highly. When we saw how one-to-one, personalized learning was so transformative we knew that we had something special.

At the same time, it's also a highly portable model that is ideally suited to the emerging Work from Anywhere / Live Anywhere lifestyle. We enable families to try out digital nomadism without sacrificing academic quality.

What might parents and students be surprised to learn about Cicero?
I don't think many people realize how powerful one-to-one learning is. There are a couple of studies that have shown that having your own private teacher (like Alexander the Great!) can drive educational results that are two standard deviations above the norm. That's staggering.

If, like me, you value education then it's hard to ignore this.

The other thing that's maybe not obvious is how this form of learning is personalized. In a traditional classroom setting, a teacher is forced to teach to the mean. No student exists at the mean. Some are above, others below. All move at their own pace. It is very difficult to gear classroom learning so that it addresses this reality. We sort of ignore it. But, with Cicero you don't ignore it. You embrace it. The course is built around the student and delivered at their pace. It works equally well for the kid who is ahead as the one who is behind.

Is the learning within Cicero customizable for each student? What might that look like, as an example?
Here's an example. We have a student who has a health issue—chronic Lyme—and was pretty seriously disrupted by the pandemic. When he started Cicero, he was behind in math and ELA and feeling really down and unconfident about his abilities. As a result, we tailored the courses to go at his pace: The booklist in his English 9 course was developed in collaboration with him, around his interests; and we built courses around his interest in politics and pop culture. When his Lyme flared up we were able to dial back to accommodate his depressed energy. It took a little while, but he eventually began to get traction with school. By his third semester with us he was reading James Baldwin, a seriously challenging author.

Here's another example. A student started with Cicero in the fall who was just setting out with her family on a grand, multi-year, multi-country worldschooling adventure. She needed portable school that could adjust to time zones as she traveled. At the same time, back in traditional school she'd struggled with math and lost a lot of confidence. We built a math course tailored to her level and an executive function and teenage wellness course to support her in building study habits. She's flying!

Who are your educators? How did you choose them?
Our teachers all have at least 5 years of teaching experience—often many more. Most have taught in private schools or international schools; many hold master's degrees in the topics that they teach. We recruit teachers from all over the world and have a pretty rigorous vetting process. They have to have facility and comfort with teaching one-to-one, online.

How can people learn more about Cicero?

https://cicerolearning.com
https://www.instagram.com/cicerolearning
https://www.facebook.com/cicerolearning
https://www.youtube.com/@cicerolearning5890

All photos courtesy and copyright Cicero Learning, published with permission