Nick’s Tutoring Journey
Hello! I’m Nick Townsend, a Tutor The Nation tutor, ambassador and, most recently, intern. Below is a blog which plots my journey through TTN from when I joined in September 2023 through to today, August 2025. To new and prospective tutors, I hope it provides some insight into what you can expect. To current tutors, I hope it provides some ideas of what you could do next!
I began my time with Tutor The Nation in September of my second year as an undergrad at the University of St Andrews. I had enjoyed my first year but, having previously spent a year as a classroom assistant in a primary school, I missed the opportunity to teach and help others along the way. It was also at this time that the panic over my unimpressive CV set in and I needed some demonstrable skills and experience if I had any hope of finding employment after university. Out of curiosity, I googled charity tutoring organisations and Tutor The Nation popped up in a Times article.
Perhaps a month after registering my interest I was matched with my first pupil, Emma. Emma was a Year 13 history student battling an eclectic and uncoordinated combination of the Russian Revolution, English Civil War and the American Civil Rights movement. I set up our first tutorial on the English Civil War and we began. The early tutorials were easily the hardest. Despite my undergraduate in History and my love of teaching, I was not an experienced online tutor with years of experience. Meanwhile, Emma would keep her camera off and preferred to listen rather than directly engage or contribute. I think the fear of getting things wrong or appearing stupid in front of a stranger all contributed to that anxiety. It is easy to forget as university students and tutors who enjoy our subjects that engaging with a topic we neither like nor feel comfortable with in front of a random stranger is a mighty task. Whenever I chat with incoming tutors today, I try to remind them to give both their tutee, and themselves, some time to find their groove.
As we neared the end of 2023 things began to change quickly. Emma increasingly engaged both with me and tutorial activities I prepared. Slowly, she became more comfortable answering questions she wasn’t 100% certain about and became more forthright to declare what she didn’t understand. Meanwhile, I was improving as a tutor. Having identified that dates and event sequencing were a difficulty, I introduced a starter activity which required Emma to organise the monarchs, their reigns, Parliaments and key political dates throughout the period onto a timeline. As each lesson went on, we would add the events discussed to that timeline and it would form the start of the following lesson.
After Christmas, things were going well but we had a lot to cover, so we increased contact hours to 2 tutorials a week. 38 hours of tutoring later, and now both experts in the differences between the Short and Long Parliaments, Emma passed her A-Level history and went to university! Meanwhile, I had picked up a new historical interest, the English Civil War, which became the foundation of my undergraduate dissertation and a research scholarship I won along the way.
With the year under my belt, I was approached by Tutor The Nation and asked if I would consider applying as an ambassador for the 2024/25 academic year. St Andrews had 5 active tutors at the beginning of the year with a lot of potential to find enthusiastic volunteers. Over the year, thanks to a pub quiz, a few posters and some far reaching emails, 102 St Andrews students signed up for the program, with 31 becoming new tutors by the end of the year. Unexpectedly, I also had a long conversation with the Assistant Vice Principal of St Andrews, who asked me to pitch the charity to him. The ambassador role was an enjoyable and unexpected experience, which I would highly recommend. To any tutors who would like to get involved and think they could bring on board some new volunteers to TTN, get in contact with the team! You never quite know where these opportunities will take you!
One of those unexpected opportunities was the week I spent interning with the TTN Team in their London Office. I spent each day in a different area of the charity, helping out with everything from the new onboarding process to writing student society constitutions and writing funding proposals. I got a taste of how rewarding charity work can be, but also of the immense challenges such organisations face in the current economic climate. I was lucky (and extremely grateful!) to have been so warmly welcomed into the team by Anna, Sophia, and Jess.
As both a reflection, and a final pitch to any potential new recruits; you never know where your volunteering might lead you or what you will accomplish along the way! I signed up casually out of a love of teaching and a fear of unemployment and two years later I am writing this from the (lush) office of TTN as an intern, preparing for another year of ambassadoring and a dissertation to start that I would not have found if it was not for Emma and her struggles with the English Civil War, a sentiment I increasingly sympathise with as my reading list expands!
