My name is Miro’ Siegel, and I felt that this post has been a long time coming.
It’s been almost ten years since we set off on our journey, and nearly nine years since the founding of this blog, Raising Miro, and though it’s been less active in recent years due to our involvement with Project World School and other ventures, it still holds a very special place in my heart. This was our first foray into the world of alternative education, travel, and most of all, community, and for that I will always be thankful.
To those who have not kept up with us elsewhere, we are still at it. Over the last few years, we’ve spoken at a handful of conferences, organized our own summits for traveling families and have spent countless hours nurturing that sense of community that we so desperately wanted when we first created this blog many years ago.
We have learned much, and still have much to learn. My mom is still fascinated by archaeology and is thinking about focusing more on that (now that I’ve basically flown the nest) as well as continuing her work in the field of alternative education.
I am still very much inspired to be a writer, and in recent months I’ve been published in the Huffington Post and have given interviews and articles to various other publications that have yet to be published. It’s a real nostalgia trip to go back and read the blog posts I published when I was much younger, and it’s strange to have a tangible place where my earliest ambitions and goals are preserved. In a sense, this is where everything started for me as a fulfilled, engaged adult, but I’m getting sidetracked so I digress.
We’ve traveled to another 15 or so countries, including Indonesia, Cambodia, Greece, South Africa, and many others. Our grand total at this moment is 36 countries, and though it may seem like a lot, I still can’t shake the feeling that there’s still so much more to see and experience in this great, big world of ours.
It is with this sense of discovery in mind that I am returning to Raising Miro with renewed ambition. I want to share my experiences here, with the hope that somewhere out in the world, someone will find insight, intrigue, curiosity and fascination in the words that I have to share. This will be a place for my real world experiences, but that is not all.
I know I’ve been in the public eye for some time. Throughout my life on the road I’ve spoken to many people about my lifestyle and educational path. Some were encouraging, others were simply interested, and of course there were a handful of people who were downright critical. All of these people had one thing in common: Nobody knew how I would turn out. But here I find myself, ten years later, as a capable and adept young adult, and I now see Raising Miro as an opportunity for me to give back to the community that has helped nurture and support me throughout my travels. Think of this as a ten-year case study in worldschooling.
I am no longer a child; from here on out, I will write from my perspective as an alternatively educated, world-schooled young adult who is passionate about learning and experiencing. I am willing to share elements from my own life, because even if my words and personal experiences are able to help and reassure just a single uncertain teenager or concerned parent, then I’ll feel that it’s all been worth it.
And even though I’ve been raised in the literal, biological sense, I still feel that I have much to learn from others and from the world as a whole. In that sense, we are all still being raised.
Thank you for keeping up with me over the years, and please check in regularly for new posts.
May we never stop learning.
Miro’
