The past few months have been interesting. I went from having a full time job in India and teaching 7 hours a week to having no job and teaching 20 hours a week. While getting up super early every morning is starting to get old (and makes the days feel really long), seeing the bright, smiley face of a little girl or boy is enough to improve my mood even when I am at my grumpiest – which is fairly often since I can’t travel and am under lockdown. (If you want to find out more about how I got into online teaching, keep reading to the bottom :). Since teaching has been a way to stay sane during some tough times in my life, I decided to share stories of some of my favorite students. Hopefully, it will brighten your day just like the little kiddos do for me.
Top 5 Student Round-up
# 1 – One of my all-time favorite students, #1 has an infectious giggle and an adorable little brother who routinely makes appearances during class by pulling her hair or hitting her on the head and who she is extremely patient with. He joins us for our “star dance parties” at the end of class where we spend about a minute dancing to the sounds of the award stars that I have to give the students. In a recent class, I looked down to click on the next “star” and in those two seconds, her younger brother stepped into view and stood directly in front of her. I looked up and my 10 year old girl had turned into a 5 year old boy. To say that I was surprised is an understatement.
#2 – One of my first students and my longest standing one, #2 is hilarious. She started off so nervous that I could see her trembling and her voice would shake whenever she spoke. Now, she is super confident and loves being silly. She told me once about two years ago that she was going to summer camp and I asked if I could go with her. She said no because it was too far. I reminded her that I was living in India and could be in China in a few hours. She looked at me in horror and whispered “But teacher, it is for children!”. That still makes me laugh to this day.
#3 – One of my few boys, #3 loves to give extremely dramatic renditions of whatever stories that he is reading. Character voices and dramatic arm movements make every class seem like a one man play. He also has an amazing imagination and spins intricate tales that go way, way beyond the scope of the stories he is reading.
#4 – #4 tries to be as grumpy as possible then explodes into giggles. For some reason she has called me Green Banana for about the past year and has started slipping swear words into class whenever possible. I asked her what she likes to do and she responded “jump rope”. I asked what else and she said “shit dance”. I asked for clarification and she repeated and then even typed it into the classroom chat box to make sure there was no misunderstanding and then giggled like a maniac. I love her.
#5 – One of my newest students, #5 is perpetually smiley. She tries incredibly hard and despite me repeating words over and over again, she will smile and then say the word incorrectly. She is able to make herself understood by putting some very interesting word combinations together and always says thank you when I give her her award stars. During our first few classes, I felt a weird connection to her and couldn’t figure out why. Finally, I realized that she is basically me trying to learn Spanish.
#6 – Another new student, I am lucky enough to have this 4 year old cutie every day. She recently told me that she like to fly like a genie. I kept trying to get her to say fairy but she was adamant that she was a genie. I finally showed her images of fairies on google and she began to make the connection. I then showed her an image of Genie from Aladdin. Her response….”What?!?! What?!?!” I told her that that was exactly what I thought. I am not sure if it is physically possible to finish a class with her without a humongous smile on my face.
These are just a few of the many wonderful students I have had the opportunity to teach. I can honestly say that they have helped me through some dark days when I was feeling really lonely and isolated and I will be forever grateful for this.
Getting Started
Yet, as much as I love teaching and my students, I still struggle with the idea that this is now my ONLY job. I am a teacher and that is it. While I think teachers are amazing and have a tremendous impact on society, I will be completely honest here. I never saw myself as a “teacher” (in most ways, I still don’t. I am basically a glorified tutor). Growing up, I always wanted to be a journalist and even went to one of the best journalism schools in the US. Halfway through college, Daniel Pearl was murdered in Pakistan and I realized that maybe I wasn’t THAT passionate about it. While I still graduated with a degree in journalism, I took a ton of marketing and advertising classes and eventually got a variety of jobs focusing on sales & marketing and account management in the tourism industry. In my early 30s, I finally had the opportunity to go back to school to get my Master’s degree. I chose to study in Europe because it was way, way cheaper than going to school in the US and it meant that I could legally live and work in Europe. Talk about a win-win!
It was while I was in Prague that I finally seriously thought about teaching English as a way to pay my rent. I had always thought about it in the past as it is one of the easiest ways to live abroad but I had always kind of rejected the idea thinking that it was something that people in their early 20s did and since I had a “real” job that I was better than that. So when I found myself unable to get a real job thanks to language barriers and visa issues, I finally bit the bullet and started tutoring privately. My first students were adults with advanced language skills which made it much easier than starting with young kids. I learned how to read people’s learning styles and adapting accordingly. I figured out that most people care more about whether or not they feel comfortable with you than if you come armed with worksheets and lesson plans because in all honesty, who wants to embarrass the hell out of themselves over and over again with someone that they don’t even like to be around?
I eventually found out about teaching online through a digital nomad Facebook group and decided to give it a try. I was rejected by VIPKid after a relatively painful demo class with an adult pretending to be a kid and sweating profusely in an orange sweater (it was the only orange thing I had and you HAVE to wear orange). I thought that that was the end of it but decided to try one more time with DadaABC. I got to do a demo class on geography with a real child (yah for me!) and was surprised that I was actually hired.
I have now taught nearly 2,500 online classes with them and over 1,100 children over 2.5 years. The pay is decent (especially when you are living in a “cheap” country and using it as a supplement and I have been able to teach on 5 different continents and in more countries than I can possibly count. Thanks to COVID, I am now looking at probably at least a year with teaching as my only source of income and I am incredibly grateful that I have this as a backup when so many people are out of work.
While the money has helped me travel pretty much as much as I want and still save some money, what is actually more important though is how much I actually love the job. For someone who a) never really wanted to be a teacher and b) doesn’t really like kids that much, this came as a big shock to me. When I talk to people about online ESL, most often people either tell me that they don’t want to teach kids and that the hours are a definite-no. While the hours suck (I get up at 4:30 every morning), you do get used to them. Also, Chinese children are generally way more respectful than most other kids and teachers are held in a much higher regard than in the US. For me, it has been a win-win as it helps pay my rent and keep me sane. You can’t say that about too many jobs!
If you want to have more information about teaching online, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
