I teach wealthy kids with special needs. Money can't solve everything, but it can give them the education they need.

As a travel tutor, Nathaniel Hannan has taught students with special needs across the world.

Nathaniel Hannan

• Nathaniel Hannan has been a travel tutor with Tutors International for 18 years.
• He said that weaving travel into his curriculum has helped his students tremendously.
• Enabling his students to learn provides the greatest emotional fulfillment, Hannan said.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nathaniel Hannan, a travel tutor at Tutors International. It has been edited for length and clarity.

At the end of my time at Oxford in 2004, I faced two very different job offers: a private equity position and a teaching job in Washington, D.C. I couldn't see myself doing private equity for 80 hours a week. It felt like it would kill my soul, no matter the money, so I chose teaching.

My experience has been incredibly diverse, but almost all my clients involve students with special educational needs. This refers to a range of educational disabilities, from autism spectrum disorders to dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and anxiety disorders, which might not be supported by traditional classrooms.

I never expected to teach students with special educational needs, nor do I have the formal training or credentials for it. But over the years, I've worked with a wide range of children, from those with simple dyslexia to a student missing a piece of his brain due to a motorcycle accident.

The first family I worked with had two kids with dyslexia and attention deficit problems. I was with them for a year before moving on to other clients. Each 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 traveling with tutoring

One memorable job happened during the pandemic from 2020 to 2023. I worked with a family in the movie industry who traveled to shoot their film across six countries. I became the child's school for three years, allowing her to learn consistently despite a hectic filming schedule. She had special needs and is now at an Ivy League university.

It was a unique experience because we were among the few people allowed to travel freely, and the only people I got to know were the actors traveling with us.

Almost every job I've had involved travel, whether on a boat or moving from country to country. To date, I've lived in 13 countries. As an educator, it presents a wonderful opportunity for me because it allows me to interweave aspects of the local culture, history, and geography into my lessons. That'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 just can't do by sitting in the family home in the United States.

Enabling children to learn

A memory I cherish was when I spent a summer tutoring a dyslexic student in chemistry and math to prepare him for the next school year. As a final exam, I got creative when his dad panned gold dust from a shipwreck.

I challenged the boy to figure out the purity percentage of the gold. His dad didn't believe he could do it, but after days of hard work, the kid did it and brought his findings to his dad, who was so moved he actually cried.

The dad had the gold dust preserved in Lucite, and now it's a paperweight on his desk so that he can always remember when his son surprised him.

It's a special thing to enable someone to do something they otherwise wouldn't be able to do. Teaching for me goes much deeper than just teaching people facts; it also involves showing them new ways of doing academic things.

Wealth is an enabler

Many clients I've worked with have resources on par with countries' governments. Still, I don't think there's a whole lot different about teaching students of a certain socioeconomic class — except that they likely 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 a way that nobody else can. It gives you all the tools to exercise your advice as deeply as possible by removing many societal restrictions.

I will do this until I no longer need to work for money. There is a children's cancer hospital in Atlanta, where kids usually go for six to nine months of treatment. Currently, there is no provision for them to continue their education while they're being treated, so that's what I am going to do next.

Do you have a story to share about working around high-net-worth individuals? Email this reporter at lwee@insider.com.

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