There are two students, sisters of age 13 and 11. They are both polite, well-behaved children from an intelligent, kind, caring and considerate family. Both girls are musical, with one passionate about playing the piano and the other enjoying singing. Both of them would very much like to learn to play a woodwind instrument such as clarinet, oboe, or saxophone.

The 13 year old is a compassionate girl who loves everything about nature and animals. She is artistic and feels perfectly comfortable and content in her own world of drawing. She describes herself as someone who very much lives in the present and enjoys what nature has to offer. She is particularly good at communicating and connecting with people and is a pleasure to spend time with. Her favourite teachers are energetic, fun, light, nice, and fair. She also wants them to be knowledgeable, engaging, and she doesn’t mind if they are slightly pushy because it makes her learn more.

The 11 year old can be a little shy when she first meets someone. She has excelled academically and enjoys anything that challenges her intellectually. Currently she’s doing well at school without much effort. She has a wide range of interests in the world around her. She likes many different kinds of sport including cricket, softball, tennis, horseback riding, and gymnastics, but is far from sporty. She has a keen interest in science and experiments and has also developed a love of baking. She has a keen entrepreneurial streak that has intersected with her other interests on occasion.

This role calls for an extraordinary Tutor to work with the girls to ensure a rounded education is delivered without adhering to the rigid constrictions imposed by following any combination of formal curricula or assessments. The Tutor must be able to create an environment that leaves open the broadest spectrum of academic pathways and freedoms of choice for the students while at the same time not being beholden to any particular direction.

The Tutor must develop a rich and immersive curriculum for the girls, with PBL at its core and as the main mode of learning. The Tutor must be able to devise her or his projects in multiple different styles and durations. The Tutor should find and develop creative projects to introduce the children to a wide variety of topics of interests from a wide range of areas, including biology, chemistry, physics, maths, and music, coding, philosophy, theology, and basic economic and biological systems. The Tutor should inspire in the girls a thirst for knowledge and a hunger for problem-solving by designing inspirational projects. The parents are keen for their children to find and pursue their passions through projects, and to reflect on their learning experience. At this stage, the family have no particular academic aspirations for either of the girls. They believe that exam success should be an incidental by-product of a successful education, not the end goal in itself. However, the Tutor should always focus on the girls’ mastery of their knowledge and skills to make sure that they are fully prepared if they ever do want to go back into school or sit exams. This means that the Tutor will need to map the projects against a British or American curriculum – while not being constrained by them – seeing them merely as points of reference. The Tutor should interknit all of the experiences provided by a well-balanced education program that comprises all of the different avenues and pathways of life.

The Tutor will also be partly responsible for the children’s character education, teaching them how to communicate with people from all over the world, whatever their race, disposition, religion or background. The children should be receptive to different styles of thinking, which will help them grow up to be pluralistic and broad minded. It is part of the Tutor’s role to ensure that there is appropriate peer group social interaction for the girls throughout the assignment. Ultimately, the parents want both children to develop into well-adjusted, happy individuals who have had a good, solid education and the time to follow their own interests.

The Tutor should be prepared to travel with the family while continuing the girls’ education by taking advantage of the change of scenery. They should aim to use resources in the local area to highlight interesting aspects of the world around them. They will need to be careful not to pitch their lessons between the abilities of the two girls but ensure that both students are stretched, all the while making the lessons fun and absorbing. The Tutor will be responsible for structuring the school day (usually Mondays to Fridays), and while teaching will take place within a clear and formal timetable of lessons, the Tutor should be prepared for a high degree of flexibility to accommodate changes in the family’s schedule, as well as for frequent travel.

The Tutor must be an exceptional record keeper as well as an exceptional educator. Although the children will not be following a formal curriculum or doing formal assessments of mastery, the Tutor must keep comprehensive records of the material that has been covered and to what level. Should the girls ever find their academic passions, they will want to move on to more structured study patterns. This record keeping will provide essential proof of their abilities when entering more mainstream education, and provide clarity about where gaps are that might need to be addressed prior to such a move.

The family are passionate about community service and social responsibility and giving back to society by funding and supporting children and schools in disadvantaged backgrounds and systems. They want their children to be socially conscious and they believe that philanthropy will also form a significant part of their lives. This means that the Tutor should seek opportunities for volunteering wherever they are based, and where possible, use these opportunities as the basis of their lesson planning. Litter picking on beaches, for example, would provide a good platform to study ocean currents, and the environmental impact of litter, or perhaps it could form the basis of a mathematics project by categorising the litter and subsequently presenting the data and trends. Making a shirt from scratch – sourcing raw materials such as cotton, wool, silk etc, spinning yarn, weaving or knitting fabric, dyeing and fixing the colours, and then sewing the pieces together would offer tremendous potential for learning across several subjects. Another example might be recording moth species and population in the local area and uploading the data online to help underpin nature conservation. Indeed, anything that helps make them aware that they are small parts of a much bigger world and community would be of value.

The family believes that the ever-accelerating development of science and technology is bringing significant changes to many industries and professions, and society as a whole. With information being mostly freely available and knowledge developed collaboratively as part of a global community, the challenges of navigating the new world are vastly different than the challenges humans faced just 20 years ago. It is crucial to prepare their children as best as they can to be curious, flexible and adaptable for a future that is inherently less predictable than at any prior period, as well as ensuring that they are technologically savvy and able to keep up in a world where advances in computing occur on a daily basis.

The ideal Tutor would be, as the family described, “a modern-day renaissance kind of person”. The successful candidate must be enthusiastic and friendly, able to inspire the children in a range of subjects. The Tutor should be a natural communicator with a kind and caring disposition, and a firm-but-fair approach to their work. The Tutor should have an enquiring mind and a good sense of humour. She or he will be a qualified teacher with experience in planning a curriculum that is centred around experiential, project-based learning, incorporating an educationally rich program of study. The Tutor must be open to different education methods and techniques, introducing them as appropriate into their own lessons and projects. She or he must be able to balance excellent teaching with accurate record keeping, research and administrative skills. Preferably they will have at least one additional language to a high level (ideally Italian or Spanish). Although not mandatory, it would be a bonus to find a Tutor who has a musical ability, who can read music and play at least one of the woodwind instruments or any other instruments.

The Tutor is expected to spend six hours with the girls every day – some periods of this time individually and some together. When full time home schooling, tutoring will likely be over five days, usually Monday-Friday, but there may be occasions when the Tutor is required to work weekends. Regardless of the eventual timetable, flexibility from the Tutor is essential as the assignment progresses. Preparation time is not part of the contact hours above. The timetable must be established with reference to any extracurricular activities and travel arrangements, and be flexible enough to accommodate unexpected changes.

The Tutor is entitled to two consecutive days off per week, but should not expect these to occur at weekends or to be regular in their timing. As far as possible the Client will try to give the Tutor at least two weeks’ notice of when their ‘weekend’ break will be, but the Tutor must understand this is not always possible. The standard minimum 9 weeks (45 working days) of paid vacation allowance applies to this contract (pro-rated) with these breaks being taken at times convenient to the Client.

Any untaken vacation allowance or untaken weekend days that have accrued will be compensated by payment in lieu at a pro-rated day rate.

While in South Africa, the Tutor will be provided with a self-contained, one-bedroom studio apartment in Stellenbosch, which is about 40 minutes’ drive from Cape Town. Alternate live-in, self-contained accommodation is also available if the Tutor prefers. When traveling, the Tutor will be provided with furnished accommodation either next door to the family, or within an easily commutable distance of the family home. The rent, utilities and Internet on the accommodations will be arranged and paid for by the Client. The Client is not responsible for the Tutor’s personal phone bills. While aboard a yacht, the Tutor will have his or her own cabin and will be treated as a member of the family rather than a member of the crew. The Clients are very warm and considerate people who regard staff as an extension of their own family.

The successful candidate will be able to offer more than the minimum requirements of this position and must have been raised in a socially appropriate background. She or he will not only be an excellent educator, but also a good role model: educated and polished, with excellent manners and personal values.The Tutor must ensure that they have the requisite travel and health insurance, required vaccinations, and necessary visas.

The Tutor should be physically fit and lead a healthy lifestyle, a non-smoker.