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Thomas "The Education Man" Kelton

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“The Education Man” has arrived! Packed with 1,000s of pages of pure educational material, Thomas Kelton, a traveling peddler-of-knowledge, is here to help get your children equipped with knowledge, weather they are studying for their SAT’s, or just starting kindergarten. 

Setting out on a journey across Clarendon County, from Turbeville and New Zion to Summerton and Remini, Kelton is going door-to-door for a summer internship provided by his alma mater, Lee University in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“The internship is through Southwest Advantage,” said Kelton. “We get a county or a school system to cover, and we sell education materials to families.”

Southwest Advantage is America’s oldest entrepreneurial program, and was recently selected as the “top-rated internship/cooperative education program in the nation, winning the 2019 Charles F. Kettering Award.”

This program disperses its interns across the United States, assigning them to various counties, communities, and school districts. To see the scope of this on a larger scale, one can simply search “The Education Man” on Facebook for a long list of current interns that have established a social media presence across the country. As for Kelton, he is more than happy to be selected for Clarendon.

“I’ve been working my way through the Turbeville and New Zion area for the past few weeks, and I’m now heading through Manning,” said Kelton. “It’s really challenging, but it’s really awesome to interact with so many different people.”

A typical day for Kelton starts around 5:45am when he wakes up. From there, he grabs some breakfast and begins to plan his day, reviewing appointments and plotting his route. He starts on this route before daylight and sees any appointments he has scheduled.

“From that point forward I’m just breaking turf, which is just moving up and down roads and finding families to serve,” said Kelton. “That is from 8:00am to about 9:30pm. Then, I’ll head to sleep as early as possible and do it again.”

Kelton is in South Carolina with a group of other interns, but Clarendon is his coverage area alone. This group works six days a week, and then meets at a central location on Sundays to “debrief and train.” During his time here, he stays with a host family in Sumter that also provides a home base for other interns that are covering Kershaw, Lee, Sumter, and other surrounding counties. The interns will stay with their host families until the internship is complete, normally at the end of the summer. 

“The vast majority of interns will return for a fall semester,” said Kelton. “I graduated with my Business Degree back in May. So, a couple us who don’t have a semester to get back to might try for a couple more weeks, so we might be here until the first week of September.”

Kelton offers a wide variety of different options available in educational material.

“I have ABC material for 4-year-olds up to ACT SAT prep for students that are getting ready for college,” said Kelton.

These books are ordered through Kelton, and delivered to families in August. 

For more information, or to schedule an appointment with Kelton, head to his Facebook Page at “Thomas ‘The Education Man’ Kelton”.