#53. Field School of Hvar with Carolyn

In 2020, Carolyn found her paradise on the sunniest island in Europe: Hvar, Croatia. The delightful conversation in Episode 52 covered Carolyn’s accidental pandemic move, her heartwarming integration into a traditional Mediterranean community, and her mission to cultivate a sense of belonging through nature-based education.

The Field School of Hvar: Pedagogy of Belonging

Carolyn’s passion project, the Field School of Hvar, is a pioneering educational hub designed for world schooling families and locals alike. For those unfamiliar with the local dialect, Carolyn helpfully clarifies that foreigners should pronounce Hvar as “war”.

The school responds to the shortcomings of the traditional Croatian public education system, which can be rigid, desk-bound, and book-centric. The Field School offers an alternative grounded in wonder and nature-based pedagogy. "We offer island kids, as well as our international families, an encounter with learning that is much more grounded in wonder and curiosity and meaning, versus just achievement," says Carolyn.

The school operates across three seasons, summer, fall, and spring, with a focus on community building, family co-living, and intellectually demanding child enrichment. Unique to the academic year program (fall and spring) is its genuine home base offering for traveling families, allowing consistent accommodation and a faculty that follows students through cumulative learning journeys. This makes slow travel truly sustainable for families, who can remain based on the island from September through early June.

Born to Travel

Long before the sun of Hvar shone on her, Carolyn’s life was steeped in travel. Born in Vienna, Austria, to a diplomat father, she was raised predominantly in Virginia and Massachusetts. While her birth abroad set the stage, it was her childhood road trips that truly shaped her perspective. "Those early travel experiences as a seven- or eight-year-old, it just opened my heart, my mind, to there being a bigger world out there and allowed me to experience different ways of life," Carolyn reflects.

These long summer journeys visiting family in Arkansas, Texas, and Colorado introduced her to vast, open landscapes that felt simultaneously lonely and full of opportunity. This early exposure fostered a "travel bug" that followed her into adulthood.

From COVID to Hvar: Falling in Love in Paradise

Carolyn’s move to Croatia was fueled by classic COVID serendipity. After graduating from business school in 2020 only to have her job offer rescinded, she received a severance check and a desperate need for a change. "Croatia was the only country admitting Americans," she explains.

She arrived with no prior knowledge of the country and immediately fell in love. First with the landscape and the organic connection to nature that is a way of life there. Soon after, she fell in love with a “specific Croatian human," now her partner and the father of her four-year-old son, Mate.

Raising her family in Croatia has been a humane and supportive experience. Her son attends a local preschool housed in a beautiful, pink-painted former palazzo for just $90 a month, where he is learning the local language and dialect alongside peers he will grow up with. This deep integration into the tight-knit community has been vital.

To learn more about the Field School of Hvar, you can find them on Instagram, Facebook, and at their website, fieldschoolhvar.org.

Listen to the full episode (and like and subscribe on your favorite podcast player) at www.wanderworldschool.com.