This Woman Travels Around the World With Families To Teach Children; Here’s How Much It Pays

Many look for jobs that enable them to travel even while earning a living, and statistics say that people are increasingly moving towards alternate lifestyles like digital nomadism. Thanks to the diverse opportunities offered by the digital world, some people are shaping minds while getting to see the world. Lucy Alexandra Spencer spent 16 weeks last year in Oman, France, Switzerland, and Portugal. These trips were paid for by Spencer's employers, who are typically wealthy Europeans and Americans who pay her to travel with their families for weeks and sometimes, months at a time.

Alexandra Spencer is a former primary school teacher. She is specially trained for teaching students with learning difficulties. She took on her first-ever traveling-teaching role seven years ago. There has been no going back for her since then. In these seven years, she has spent about two years traveling, including an eight-month trip to Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, per CNBC. Hiring a teacher like her is pretty expensive. Families pay her about £8,000 ($10,149.83), a month for teaching three children along with also paying her for her meals, accommodation and flights.

According to CNBC, these rates can climb up to £10,000 ($12,686.95) if families require teachers with specialist skills such as foreign language or musical instrument instruction. However, hiring teaching assistants who will help with the basic curriculum starts from £2,500 ($2,700) a month.

According to Spencer, four hours that she spends with students is equivalent to three hours of regular school. She sits with the kids to create lessons that cover what they would be learning back at home. She also prepares them for exams that they have on their return. She also incorporates information on local culture, customs as well as cuisines in her sessions. "It’s not about me imparting knowledge,” she told CNBC Travel.

"It’s demanding on your teaching skills because you’ve got to understand the family and their cultural beliefs, and how you can make those little humans that you’re working with into better versions, even than their parents," Spencer said. Spencer chooses the families that she wants to work with. She says that she likes working with startup founders who want to expose their children to alternative ways of thinking. She also likes to call herself a "facilitator" rather than a teacher or a tutor. According to her, there will always be demand for private tutors like her and she calls her way of teaching "just like school."

Spencer hopes to make traveling teaching accessible for more families in the future. "There are lots of very engaging young people who are paying a lot of money to travel the world as part of a gap year and will likely go on to good degrees and careers in the future," said Spencer. "Why couldn’t we position a gap year as, instead of someone having to pay, they could educate students as they go around the world," she added. She wants to help the teachers as well as the students. 

"We see our role as an important one, supporting the most privileged children globally and the most disadvantaged locally," she added.

Spencer has now opened a private tutoring business called Education Boutique. She can now match families who need a traveling teacher with more than 30,000 teachers, now a part of her community at Education Boutique.