A Love of Teaching Takes Her Around the World
by Judy Wolf

Thirty years ago, Carole Beauclerk was living in an affluent suburban home, driving her Mercedes to and from work as a school teacher in what she describes as “a golden ghetto -- it was a very privileged community.” She had a loving husband, a luxurious house -- “I got the American dream early on” -- but she wasn’t satisfied. “I could see my entire life stretching out in a predictable way…vacations in chichi resorts, and so on.”

Then she went to Mexico and fell in love. Sure, she met a dramatic and sensuous young man who became her lover, but more important, she fell in love with scuba diving. “You know you’re alive -- the bubbles going past you, you’re surrounded by textures and colors of a rich and beautiful environment.”

When she first arrived in the mid-70s, Isla Mujeres was “lovely—sand streets, you could rent a hammock on the beach to sleep, the coral reefs were untouched. When you were diving, you were just a little dot in the middle of a thousand fish that would all turn at the same time like it was choreographed.” She had soon divorced her husband (‘He thought I was crazy!”) and started a small dive shop that provided tourist information and sport fishing tours for visitors. “I created jobs for about 15 different fishermen on the island. I discovered I was really good at this.” So good, in fact, her outfit made it into guide books and developed a reputation for excellent reliability and service.

Six years later, the island had been “discovered.” Streets were paved, tall buildings had replaced the simple architecture, and her lover had lost his charm. “He was the epitome of machismo.”

It was time to move on. She had become fluent in Spanish, absorbed Mayan culture, learned to cook and make hammocks, but she wanted to get back to her profession. “I met a wonderful tourist who’d been in the Peace Corps in Liberia. She got me interested, and I decided to leave and pursue that.”

The Peace Corps took her to Thailand, where she spent six weeks in a village living with a family while learning to teach EFL (English as a Foreign Language) and speak Thai. “They told us ‘We know you’re here to save the world, but you’re going to get more out of this than you’ll give.’” Little did she realize, she says now, how true that statement would prove to be.

After a year teaching in a tiny, isolated village in the fruit-growing region of southern Thailand, she was transferred to Phuket, promoted to regional supervisor, and put in charge of teacher training. “I went from a lovely little village -- to this beach spot full of foreigners, prostitution, and drugs: a sunny place for shady people, I call it. All these foreigners in this other little world of their own -- bums on a beach selling drugs to each other.”

Her stay was extended by the Peace Corps for a year, and then she stayed on for three additional years as a freelance teacher. “Tourism was expanding, and all these hotels and businesses needed staff training.” She developed programs and curriculums for a wide variety of clients before deciding to see more of the world.

“I wanted to go someplace else. Once you’ve learned a lot of things about a place, the language and inside details, it becomes easy, and you get complacent. I wanted to go out and start problem solving again.”

So she went to Japan to “make money, study a new language, and also to study Aikido.” Her credentials allowed her to get excellent, high-paying jobs during a time when the English teaching market in Tokyo was booming. She found a little apartment close to her Aikido dojo. She taught sociology and women’s studies classes at universities and legal, medical, and business English to various private clients.

Tokyo itself was full of energy and opportunity. “I lived the wild life.” Her friends were drawn from a rich cultural mix of diverse foreigners and alternative Japanese. “There wasn’t enough time in the day to do everything.”

Since she worked seven months out of the year, she had plenty of time to travel during the nine years she was there. She traveled extensively in Asia, South America, and Central America. When she became enamored of Africa, however, she decided to put her skills to work for an NGO (non-government organization) working in Nigeria. After nine months there, she gave up her airline ticket home, having decided to take a “permanent sabbatical” and just travel.

After a year of wandering, she realized she “wanted a purpose,” so four years ago, she returned to Thailand and became involved in the Marine Turtle Project run by Golden Buddha Beach, an eco-tourist resort. There, she contributed the monies to build the center’s first yoga platform and started teaching environmental education in Thai to local children. Today, the spot has become “quite a venue for famous yoga teachers,” and Beauclerk also teaches yoga at the resort, donating her earnings back into the project.

A “confirmed expatriate,” Beauclerk spends her winters in Thailand, then seeks out opportunities such as her recent summer experience as an interpretive naturalist in Alaska, where her work earned her a small stipend and a cabin. “You see bear and moose practically every day. It got boring after a while!” She also makes a point of going to northern India at least once a year -- “I love the Himalayas” -- and stopping in the U.S. to visit her mother.

While her life may have taken her to many locations around the globe, her experiences are tied together with a common thread: her love of teaching. In fact, she’s now planning to pursue teaching opportunities in eastern Europe or China. “That’s the way I interact with the world. Teaching is learning, and I love to learn. I don’t like to have an inactive mind.”