Long before Richard Engel became NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent and won the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism, he was a special education student at New York’s Riverdale Country School struggling with dyslexia.

He once attacked one of his teachers by hitting her in the head with a xylophone. "The more I was coddled and made to feel like a person with a defect, the more angry I'd feel," he said.

Learning to read can help many adults overcome poverty and become self-sustaining, but in many countries it’s not a high policy priority. At the Shikharapur Community Learning Center in Kathmandu, the Family Literacy Program, developed with funding from UNESCO’s Capacity Development for Education for All (CapEFA) program, mothers and children learn to read together. In Nepal, 75.5 percent of men and 57.4 percent of women can read.

The most important thing any artist can have is the desire and hunger to create. This motivation gets you out the door, challenges you to learn new things, to go outside at ungodly hours of the day (or night) in all sorts of weather, to edit behind a computer for hours, and then to repeat it all over again. This month we travel to the West Coast of Canada through the lens of a person whose desire to create has seen him develop a stable of photography skills, and an impressive portfolio, through a few years of dedicated work.

I'm all for supporting good things, as our Wandering Educators know! And do I have a good one today - it's a smartphone app that is all about sharing travel experiences (read our tagline! We love sharing travel experiences!). It's currently in development, and I'm impressed. Here's why... it was created by a 15 year-old - and we know that millenials know what they are doing online.

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Last week I caught up with a former high school student who happened to be in San Diego, California for a visit. Now a twenty-something graduate assistant and student finding her way in the world, we spent the day discussing travel wishes, living in new cities, dreams, opportunities, and how learning should be fun.