The World’s Best Tutors: Tutors International Share Their Tutors’ Most Memorable Teaching Moments

The World’s Best Tutors: Tutors International Share Their Tutors’ Most Memorable Teaching Moments

Tutors International places world-class educators in private residential tutoring positions all around the world. These educators share their most extraordinary moments in teaching, showcasing the approaches to education that make the world’s best tutors.

The World’s Best Tutors

Every teacher hopes to have their ‘Dead Poets Society’ moment; the moment where their student has a breakthrough or epiphany, a shift in perspective, or a moment of enlightenment where something clicks and changes forever.

Tutors International (TI) is an elite residential private tutoring company that specialises in finding personalised tuition for a select clientele. The nature of tailored matches between tutor and students, combined with the diverse settings around the world in which these jobs take place, makes for some extraordinarily special teaching moments.

Tutors International has established its prestigious reputation by conducting specialist global searches for each client’s specific needs, meaning the tutor who gets the job is undoubtedly the most qualified and the best fit for the student. They find not just the world's best tutors, but the world's best tutor for each specific child.

Some of Tutors International’s world-class educators have shared their favourite teaching moments whilst on TI placements. Confidentiality and discretion are key components of Tutors International’s ethos, so the identities of the tutors will remain anonymous. 

Residential private tutoring can deliver the most remarkable education. One TI tutor states, “the moment students realise that perspective is everything – our thoughts create our world and either imprison us or allow us to fly.” From using dragons in physics lessons to a Caribbean bug exhibition, here are some TI tutors’ extraordinary teaching moments:

Disney, Dragons & Discovery

One tutor resides with a family between their homes in Germany and Austria. She is currently tutoring three of the family’s children. Sometimes inspiration strikes in children from surprising sources, and for one of her students, the source was a Disney Pixar film. The tutor capitalised on this opportunity and some amazing interdisciplinary breakthroughs came about as a result:

“My role is to teach English through play-based activities, therefore observations and carefully planned play areas are really important in order to ensure progression.  All of the lessons and activities that I plan come from the children's interests but I aim to adapt the resources and environment to extend their language development and other cross-curricular skills.

“One of my favourite examples of this was when my youngest student, who was three at the time, had recently watched the movie 'Up'.  He was fascinated with balloons and the concept of buoyancy. I set up a play area with a helium balloon and a selection of his toys. He began to experiment to see which of these toys would be lifted with the balloon. This provided a natural opportunity to focus on weight and size-related vocabulary.

“As he got a better sense for the weight of different objects, he was able to make better predictions about what would be lifted and what wouldn't. He found that his smaller dragon would be lifted but not the larger one. This led to a role-playing game where he pretended the baby dragon had lost his Daddy and he didn't know how to fly. After the game, I told him the story he invented was such an exciting story and suggested we make it into a book.  He loves listening to stories on CDs so he came up with the idea of making it into a ‘CD story’. I recorded him telling the story then added some music and burnt it onto a CD. He drew and coloured a front cover for it and was so proud of his story. He was able to share the story with all of his family and this was a fantastic confidence boost for him, as previously he had still been quite shy to speak English in front of his parents.” 

Second Language Shakespeare

Getting students to engage with Shakespeare can be a daunting and difficult task at times. One tutor based between London and Luxembourg saw his student – who hasn't historically liked reading – engage with Romeo and Juliet in his second language.

“My current student speaks English as a second language and does not read independently, but he has recently had a number of revelatory moments whilst working on his Romeo and Juliet coursework. It’s an incredibly satisfying feeling to see that your teaching has allowed the student to make connections across complex texts, especially when he isn't used to relating to literature in this way. He’s recently had similar breakthroughs in his creative writing.” 

A Rock Climbing Physics Lesson

Not all classrooms have four walls. Sometimes a classroom is the world outside. Residential private tutoring offers so many opportunities to teach outside of a traditional classroom setup. For one tutor in Italy teaching a teenage aspiring architect, the science classroom was a rock face:

“It is amazing to be teaching rock climbing and be able to link directly to a physics lesson we taught earlier in the day on forces, Newton’s Laws and energy changes.  Every day brings incredible new experiences and that is what I live for –  watching the spark ignite in many diverse areas of her life as she finds out a little bit more of the joy in learning about so many diverse things.”

Finding Their Interest Through World Economics

When a student seems disenfranchised and uninterested in most things, a look at world economic history might not be a likely candidate for their lightbulb moment. Well, that goes to show that the things that inspire each student are completely individual, and educating young minds rarely fails to surprise even the world’s best tutors:

“I love when spontaneity allows students’ interests to shine. When teaching about Economics and GDP we were able to use examples of WW2 history in Germany and differences between the Communist and Capitalist approaches. I loved it because the research we were able to do really opened the student's mind as I knew she could see the deep interconnections between politics, economic policy and the future events that would pit these two politico-economic positions against each other in the 20th century in events like the Korean War, Vietnam, and Afghanistan and how those events relate to 9/11 and troubles in the Middle East. It was so fantastic to see a student who was said to have no interests suddenly become massively interested in how the world works and to help her learn how to find out the answers to her many questions.”

Bug Exhibition in the Caribbean

Engaging with the world around them is an important practice to encourage in any student. Learning how to present that new information in imaginative and exciting ways is the mark of the world’s best tutors and teachers. One of Tutors International’s tutors ventured well beyond textbook learning when it came to a biology lesson: 

“The most special teaching moment for me was probably teaching a KS1 ‘Minibeasts’ lesson. We were in the Caribbean and we decided to take the children on a ‘bug hunt’. We found and collected all sorts of incredible bugs from the local area. The children then created their own exhibition to showcase them.”

“Give Me A Challenge”

Seeing a student completely transform is the most rewarding outcome a teacher can hope for. One tutor in Hong Kong outlines the journey he has been on with his student, showing that a world-class tutor does not only teach the curriculum, but helps their student reach their full potential when it comes to personal growth too:

“As I reflect on my time with TI so far, what jumps out at me is not so much a particular moment I have enjoyed, (perhaps because there are so many!) but how far my student has come. 

“I think back to the early days working with her and could not have imagined her becoming who she is now. I remember the rudeness, drama and daily meltdowns, absolute unwillingness to try anything new; the frequent emails from teachers reporting poor participation in school and how she spent every school break time sitting alone reading. I remember small details causing her to consistently lose her temper and the mild embarrassment I felt at her inability to engage with others socially, let alone interpret social nuance. I remember her tremendous difficulty in decoding in relating to humour and how she would consistently alienate people and lose friends. 

“Now she’s a happy, confident girl with friends she loves, and the ability to talk to anyone. She’s witty and considerate and one of her most commonly used phrases to me is, ‘James*, give me a challenge!’”

*a pseudonym.

  • Tutors International provides an unparalleled tutoring service that matches the right tutor with the right child, in order for the student to fully reach their personal potential and academic excellence.
  • Providing a service for children of all ages at different points in their educational journeys, Tutors International is a reputable tutoring company founded on a commitment to finding the perfect tutor to realise the specific goals and aspirations of each student.
  • Private Tutors are available for residential full-time positions, after-school assistance, and homeschooling.
  • Founded in 1999 by Adam Caller, Tutors International is a private company based in Oxford, a city renowned for academic excellence. Our select clientele receives a personally tailored service, with discretion and confidentiality guaranteed.

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