The need for online educators is growing daily as more and more students flock to online learning classrooms. As a teacher it is surprisingly easy to find online teaching work, especially in the English field.
As someone who has worked as an online English teacher for more than five years, I have learned that there are some things to weigh into your decision of accepting or declining an online teaching job. I will highlight these often-overlooked factors below.
1. Calculate Your REAL Wage.
This might sound like a no-brainer, and since many online teaching companies advertise an hourly wage you would reasonably expect to get the amount that is advertised or told to you in the interview. However, you may be sorely disappointed and find out the advertised wage is often difficult, if not impossible, to acquire with certain companies.
Why? Because as you don’t teach consecutively for an hour you will actually get paid by the minute.
And why is that a problem? Because you won’t get paid for the minutes in between your lessons. Some schools have 10 or 15 minutes between scheduled lessons, which means you can’t get paid for 15 minutes out of your working hour. These gaps add up, and they can be extremely frustrating.
This is not always the case though, as some companies pay you per class and do advertise an accurate wage. The companies that pay by class and not per hour normally give you better pay and are more professional than those that pay by the minute.
Make sure you get the details and do your math.
2. Know Your Schedule
Having the freedom to create and have control over your own schedule is one of the best things about online work. However, each school will have “peak” hours and will require you to be available most days for them. Make sure you are aware of what theses hours are, and make sure you can be available for them, as it can make or break your teaching career and reputation with that company and the students.
3. Consider the Amount of Non-paid Work Required
To go along with point number one, each school will have different things—kinds of paperwork, after-class forms, etc.—you will have to fill out. Some of them are easy and take no more than a minute, while others can take a good 5 minutes per class. This doesn’t sound like much, but if you teach a long day with say 10 classes or more, that’s another good 50 minutes of work you aren’t getting paid for if you can’t fit it in between your classes.
4. Check the Student-to-Teacher Ratio
A lot of companies will continue to hire teachers regardless of whether they have the enough students to keep their teachers happy and busy enough to earn a living wage. Do your research, look at blog posts (such as this), and make sure they have a good reputation among the online teaching community.
Take note: There will always be someone who complains about not receiving enough hours or students. So be smart and selective of who you listen to and make sure the worker is reputable and not just a random person who signed up for teaching English online because they thought it would be easy.
5. Live and Learn
Each different teaching platform has its own quirks, its own benefits, and its own drawbacks. You can listen to the advice of other teachers, but the only way to know for sure which platform works best for you is to dive in and try it out.
Even if you like the first teaching platform you try, consider branching out and trying others. I got comfortable teaching on an adult platform and could never imagine teaching young kids, with all the props and backgrounds it involved. But lo and behold, once I tried one of those platforms for young kids, I found it much more enjoyable and practical for my own teaching needs.
Like any job, there will be ups and downs. But if you can find the right platform, online teaching is a great career with incredible flexibility and unique benefits!
