This so-called essay is based on a conversation with travel tutor Nathaniel Hannan of Tutors International. It has been edited for length and clarity.
At the end of my time at Oxford in 2004, I encountered two very different job offers: a private equity position and a teaching job in Washington, DC. I can’t see myself doing private equity 80 hours a week. It felt like it would kill my soul, even if there was money, so I chose education.
My experience is incredibly varied, but almost all of my clients involve students with special educational needs. This refers to a range of learning disabilities, from autism spectrum disorders to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and anxiety disorders, which cannot be supported by traditional classrooms.
I never expected to teach students with special educational needs, nor did I have the formal training or credentials to do so. But over the years, I have worked with a wide range of children, from mild dyslexia to a student missing part of his brain due to a motorcycle accident.
The first family I worked with had two children with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. I was with them for a year before moving on to other clients. Every child is unique, and there is no one way to help every student understand a concept. My job is to think outside the box and determine the best approach for each child.
Weaving travel with tutoring
During the pandemic from 2020 to 2023, a monumental task took place. I worked with a family in the film industry who traveled to six countries to shoot their film. I became the child’s school for three years, allowing her to continue learning despite a busy filming schedule. She had special needs and is now at an Ivy League university.
It was a unique experience as we were among the few allowed to travel freely, and I got to know the actors traveling with me.
Almost every job I’ve had has involved travel, whether it’s on a boat or moving from country to country. To date, I have lived in 13 countries. As a teacher, it presents a wonderful opportunity for me as it allows me to intersperse aspects of local culture, history and geography into my lessons. It’s a rare circumstance in which I can help them fall in love with the Latin language and Roman history in a way that I couldn’t while sitting at a family home in the United States.
Enabling children to learn
I remember when I spent the summer tutoring a dyslexic student in chemistry and math to prepare him for the next school year. As a final test, I got creative when his father dug up gold dust from the shipwreck.
I challenged the boy to find the purity percentage of gold. His father did not believe he could do this, but after several days of hard work, the child did it and brought his findings to his father, who was so moved that he actually wept.
Dad had the gold dust preserved in Lucite, and now it’s a paperweight on his desk so he can always remember when his son surprised him.
It is a special thing to enable someone to do something that they would not be able to do otherwise. Teaching to me goes much deeper than teaching people facts; It also involves showing them new ways of doing academic things.
Wealth is enabling
Many of the clients I have worked with have resources in common with countries’ governments. However, I don’t think teaching students of a certain socio-economic class is much different – unless they probably couldn’t afford to hire me without their resources.
I used to believe that money was the root of all evil, but what money does is enable people to behave in ways that no one else can. It gives you all the tools to use your advice as deeply as possible, overcoming many social restrictions.
I will do this until I need to work for money. There is a children’s cancer hospital in Atlanta, where children typically go for six to nine months of treatment. Currently, there is no provision for them to continue their education while they are undergoing treatment, so what am I going to do next.
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