ISO part-time retirement jobs that allow for travel
 

My favorite fantasy--aside from travel fantasy--involves what kind of little job I'll have in retirement. After 30 years of teaching high school English, it must be a job where I only deal with civilized human beings.
I'd love to know what ideas or actual retirement gigs people here have, and is there some kind of employment agency that specializes in part-time jobs for retirees?

There are plenty of part-time jobs out there listed in local papers. They may not pay that well, as part-time jobs by definition, or often jobs where people are somewhat interchangeable easily, and they don't usually offer benefits. If you don't need benefits, which I expect you don't, a lot of employers love to hire part-time people. That's one of my big labor issues in the US, actually, how many employers scale jobs to be part-time strictly to avoid benefits. The retail industry is a real big one that does that, for example. Many nonprofits may hire part-timers without benefits, also.

There are agencies that specialize in such things, but for part-time work, I'd say they pretty much will have to be local to your area, so you'll have to ask around and find out. In my area, you could probably contact AARP or the local nonprofit council on aging or places like that to find out which they are, if it isn't obvious from the phonebook.

I know some retired people who work for the general part-time staffing agencies, which gives them plenty of flexibility, certainly not great pay (but if you have some skills, not too bad in contrast to retail), and they have plenty of job offers. The advantage of temp agencies is that those employers don't care about age, etc., by definition, because you aren't a regular employee on the payroll. We had a guy working in our office from one of them who was about 75, and he said he had more offers from them than he could handle. This probably only works in large cities pretty well.

gee, I thought lots of others would comment on this, by now.

However, I realized after posting that you want to be able to travel a lot, I guess as you wish, and thus a part-time job in terms of hours isn't really going to work unless it is part-time only part of the year or that you can easily come and go as you wish.

I still think temp agencies are thus the best suited for that kind of work. They have some with higher-level skills, although probably not something you'd acquire as an English teacher (ie, there are some for accouting, etc.). My uncle worked for one of those tax agencies (like H&R Block) part of the year, and places with definite busy seasons are thus good possibilities, also. They really don't need a lot of staff other than tax season. There are always jobs related to tourism or resorts, etc., that only need a lot of staff during part of the year, also.

It's hard to be specific if one is looking for a job that doesn't require any particular skills, though, as the best part-time jobs (or people who can write their ticket more or less) require very specific skills and lots of experience. I'm in consulting, for example, and while I work for a consulting firm with regular hours, I know plenty of people who don't in my field -- but you can only do that with lots of experience and contacts.

You're probably sick of teaching by now, but I think substitute teaching is a great part-time job for retirees.

bennyb...you must not be a teacher.

No, I'm not a teacher. But I've thought about substitute teaching when I retire - I'm an engineer, can probably teach high school math and science.

I know teaching is hard work (my parents sent me to public school) but what about teaching adult education classes, or GED classes? The environment might be different from what Leonora has dealt with up until now.

Leonora, I don't have first-hand experience. Based on your background, would it be possible to do free-lance work for publishing companies? I don't know what the market for such positions is like but editing books, manuscripts and so on should be relatively civilized.

I have a lot of respect for teachers and think being a substitute teacher in high school would be a nightmare.

Free-lance or editing would be a dream part-time job for me. As much as I'd like to get out of education, it seems like MANY retirees are lured back into the field on a part-time basis, either as long-term subs, student teacher supervisors etc. I'm not discounting that I may want to do something like that and the hours would accomodate my travel dreams!
Yep, benny when you retire, you can do a quick career switcher program and teach all the math your heart desires. My school, which is actually a good public school in an affluent area, hires about 3 new math teachers a year and loses about three by November.