hey everyone welcome back to the traveling teachers series did you know that firstly not only
has brick and mortar schools in china but they also have an online platform now where you can
teach as a native speaker anywhere in the world no i hadn't either before i met today's guest
nenad so thanks for joining me today nanad it's uh it's great to be here and uh speaking to you
ali in today's episode nanette is going to tell us all about first leap and if you're interested in
knowing more information or getting in contact with ned to apply to firstly i'll leave his
linkedin down in the description and you can also find his referral code so if you're interested in
applying i always recommend people use a referral code to get employed with one of these online
schools so without further ado let's learn more about firstly and why it might be the right online
school for you the reason i got you on today was to talk about a company you're actually working
for first leap well yeah i came i came across them i think it was either towards the end of
last year or the beginning of this year they're a company based out of china and they have school
their own schools but but this online program was something that i think has been launched
very quite recently so the online school system is basically functioning as a sort of extracurricular
working with um with native english speakers and getting the children really focusing on
um on their english speaking skills their interaction and i think that's how the program is
actually based around because some of the material they've already been through in their own classes
and then you know it's it's a kind of mix and match that that they've done which i kind of
see that is having good effects and i've also seen the kids um some more so than
others really kind of recognize the the teaching material when you're teaching them in the lessons
yeah that's a really important point because when i typed in first leap into google it came up with
the brick and mortar schools in china and it's a massive company like fully like super developed
and things like that i was quite shocked and then and then to know that they had an online version
and it makes sense if they're like complementing the material how can like someone go about getting
a job there like what like qualifications do they need do they need to be because i know chinese
companies are quite strict on you know being a native speaker or having a native passport right
well um yeah so as i mentioned i'm i'm a native english speaker but um i mean it's from what i'm
from what i recall it's basically the same standardized issue as everything else so
being a native speaker uh having your tefl or tesla whatever one of those english speaking
certificates and um having uh a bachelor's degree pretty much going through the basic details
uh taking a video of your self-intro video and um then it starts off like everything anything
else going through the interview process doing a demo with a with an instructor i applied back in
february everything has been smooth since i know you've worked for a few companies i think you've
worked for cbc why did you choose first leap over you know other well-known companies like in the
online teaching online industry i guess i mean it seems like it's a it's a well-known company
like as a brick and mortar you know well i i started off in poo and pusheen i was working there
for about six to seven months but then they made a switch going from one-on-one lessons to one on 20
lesson and i still haven't got my head around how i can do that via web camera that to me is still
absurd so i never got involved on that side i took a few months uh off came back and started working
for cbc which was a great company uh the platform i loved the materials i loved it was truly great
but then i think even since i started everything kind of started going down slowly slowly slowly
in some way yeah and um i i again i took took a few i took a while off and when i decided to get
back into it i was looking there was whales um english there was uh i think zebra zebra kid and
uh i actually applied to vio to vip kid but as soon as i passed the interview they um
they they put a hold because i think they they had hired too many teachers classic and and so in my
search for the next company i came across first leap applied to them got through and uh and yeah
it's um it's been great uh just to have it have a new experience none of the three schools that
i've worked for previously um contain the same parameters so each school can be compared to each
other but they they're also so vastly different that it's uh kind of great to see because
it doesn't really make all esl schools let's say equal or the same but there's so much dynamic
involved that each company offers kind of its own um unique approach and and selling point which
which i find amazing so like i said even even though that it may seem that every day is the same
no two days are ever the same within in any school so the kind of that's why i love doing this
yeah it's good i feel like i've worked for cbc in wales english and i feel like if i could take some
of say abc and some of wales and put it together it'd be like the perfect company but you can't
please everyone that whilst people think that you know all the chinese companies offer the same
sort of service it it it's true but like there's also a difference in like your communication and
things like that so um i think i'm going to get on to communication in a second but i kind of want
to know about like class sizes because you said one to 20 with that other place surely this one
yes life is not one to twenty the class size is that first sleep go from us pretty much
standardized one to four however there's always the opportunity that a student
that missed a lesson can catch up in another lesson so you might be looking at let's say
one on five so there's always that kind of dynamic that you don't know what you're exactly going to
get but as long as you're flexible and adaptable it's not going to really affect you in any
you know vast way yeah the lessons are 45 minutes which is the longest that i've done but i've also
found that complemented with the material it's sufficient maybe at times not maybe at times
i'd say like having 30 more minutes wouldn't be sufficient but um but uh the material is
is created in such a way that it really requires that you kind of go through it and really pace
yourself because you can get stuck on one point too much get you know taken aback with the kids
it's fun it's enjoyable and then you'll be stuck of that at the speaking speaking session which
should last for 20 minutes you're kind of there at the with seven minutes towards the end of the
lesson and starting to panic so like with um with cbc like they had a platform that you could drag
people onto the screen and it would mute the other people but with wales english you can't
like you have to like mute them and it's not as interactive like is the platform have they
created their own platform and can you like move people around and move the students up and down
well i've been well i probably that was the first time i learned about it i've been using
this platform called we we classroom uh okay yep and uh you've got all the capabilities
dragging down muting everyone uh giving everyone the the pen which i love because back in cbc as
soon as you move them down they'd get all the capabilities here they still don't have anything
they're just down and you can you know manipulate the little power i love the thing here is that you
can annotate and make it so much more interactive you've got your squares your circles your lines
your arrows your text boxes you've got an error we've got the eraser so pretty much you've
you can also move everything you know as long as you make a text you can move that text so making
an annotation slightly resembling a some sort of a powerpoint is good because then you can put
everything on screen and make it more visualizing for the kids yeah on top of that you can you know
add your own pictures um and the thing that i've loved the most is that you've got games
you've got an interactive dice you and you have some other interactive games you can uh create
like like a little test or true or false answers so you can really get them involved and engaged
with um and what we have this this kind of red packets game i don't know there's this thing
that kind of gives them points and whenever they kind of seem a bit dull or bored i just let them
play this and it's like you know you've given them the the key to to their own marvel comic movie and
they're in this whole new dynamic and completely loving to learn english again so it's uh the games
really do help out when it comes to engaging them and motivating yeah i think games are so important
like they change everything like i think that's one thing that i struggled with with wales english
like you have to kind of like invent your games through the material rather than like games being
you know given and but like the kids the kids love the game so that's awesome planning and marking
of homework giving feedback the the planning comes in to do with the prepping the material so
let's say you want to go through the material beforehand you want to know
uh how the slides are like so just so that you can make sure that you have a smooth flowing
uh delivery of the of the material and the class itself because you don't want to get stuck on
uh oh wow what do i do here let me just waste five minutes and then that's kind of the back
draw so it's it's as long as you go in and you can pretty much just go run through it quickly
you're fine so it's maybe it doesn't take you more than 20 minutes to 30 minutes to just
assess all your prior lesson plans so i think it's pretty straightforward when it comes to homework
or giving feedback we don't have any which is again the first time that i've encountered this
and i have to admit i love this probably one of uh one of the top things i'd have to say um
but yeah there's no there's no feedback so you don't you don't really have to give them
although i try to give as much feedback as i can during the lesson but writing everything
uh afterwards it's uh we don't have that so it's quite nice what about like this is slightly uh not
off topic but like uh is there do you get like assessed by the the the staff in china because
like in wales english you're being assessed like all the time so there's someone watching unless
yeah that's that's a good question sorry to cut you off yeah um because if we if i mean i don't
i don't remember uh i remember back in say abc we we had parent feedback and but we never got
assessed by the actual company itself as far as i can remember whereas here uh so you've
got a monthly qa where they'll spontaneously take one of your lessons and um run through it
and then they'll give you the feedback based on your delivery and it's a based on criteria how
engaging you are what your energy was like your error correction um your background prop usage
delivery of instructions and i think they're trying to you know it's it's not that it's
supposed to be literally that you know they can't assess all of your lessons so even if you do get
some bad feedback it's important not to take it on a personal note because again they have taken
one lesson out of the let's say 100 that you've done across the month so it's just there to be
to keep a lookout okay out of all the lessons one i didn't do my best in so it's kind of you know it
gives you a reference to look back at it and the good thing with um i would say as well is that
our all our lessons are recorded so pretty much once you start the lesson anything you interact
on the screen will show up on the lesson itself so let's say if you're online and decide you want
to spend 20 minutes on facebook it's going to be too you know transparent that you're not really
involved in the lesson itself but um but it's good because you can actually review your own lessons
because you've got the ability to play back so then you can exactly go back
and run through the playback of the lesson whilst taking note of the qas
the quality assurance team and then seeing exactly where you went wrong how you can improve
so i think that aspect is very is very good and beneficial to all teachers who can uh
you know just just keep an eye on themselves and make sure that you know how they can improve in
which areas and whatnot i think people are especially like at wales people are scared
of like the the assessments um because you know sometimes they can choose your worst class and it
could literally like i don't know if you get a bad you know report they you can be put on
try like you can be put on watch for two for two weeks so it's kind of like people are scared of
that you just gotta like yeah it's pretty strict over there so it sounds sounds nice that like
you know it's gonna happen once a month and like you know you can learn from that so it's not like
getting assessed every three months where there's a bit more consistency there so that's
nice so that the big question is people love to talk about pay when it comes to online teaching
what is it like comparable to you know uh well what's it like is it do they pay
in us dollars uh do they pay to paypal or to your bank account what's what's the go there
well the pay is uh in u.s dollars and they pay um uh from what i gathered i think everyone is
either using uh sort of uh whether it's a revolut or a payoneer or paypal although i'm not sure
that they actually do paypal transfer wises i think a majority one bank uh bank account
direct so it's across the board of different bank accounts i'm not sure on paypal actually but um
but all the other ones that that have a card i think fixed to it is pretty much um easygoings and
uh the pay comes in very it's very smoothly it's on time it's as pretty much all other companies
on the in and around on the 10th of the month uh there's a bonus uh they always add in a bonus um
which is one dollar per class is it do you have like a a person or a group that you can get in
contact with yeah so we'd we i don't i don't know if everyone is using it we we're using think talk
talk yeah classic i had to get accustomed to it which i can say i'm very professional now
which i'm happy uh that i can actually use it and it's that is our pretty much go-to
for the time being we've got uh different groups one is uh for signing in and out
every day so you need you need to sign in every day at least 30 minutes before your lessons
just too so you're ready and that you know they can keep on tabs if they need subs or whatnot uh
we have one for exchanging materials and just keeping on top on top of the whole
teaching structure and the third one is um for just class problems and um making sure that if
uh students or teachers are having problems with the application or the program or connectivity
issues that the that the teams can uh can manage it in the best possible way
that's pretty good seems like there's plenty of support then yeah yeah i mean given that
it's uh i think even the app runs uh runs off uh other servers at least it doesn't really
uh sometimes it doesn't really in the best way you show your own internet speed because i think it
runs uh through foreign servers so um so it does help to have someone on on hand that can help you
out with connectivity issues because if you have a student that's in class that you can't hear or see
and you really want that student to kind of be participating then it does help if someone else
can uh can kind of help out and to wrap it up why should someone who's looking for an online job
consider first leap uh well it's a company that offers a lot of flexibility depends depending on
how much time and you know commitment you want to make to it uh semesters last for three months so
one of the main regulations is if it's that you maintain the commitment you've set out
for then for the duration of three months that's a good point which is which which is i guess it's a
short period in it within itself so it's not that hard to maintain but um it does it offers that
flexibility for example if you want to work uh the full schedule you can do it you'll have a lot of
classes if you don't if you want to walk off that you've got that as well the kids are amazing from
my experience i've had the same students only once per week so you get them every week you're going
to see the same students once and it offers that kind of let's say it it lets you create a bond
with your students and you can kind of prepare even better for the lesson you can uh build up
on to the next lesson what you're going to show them so it allows you to create a good bond
and the pay like i said the pay is uh very good and satisfying the support structure is there and
it's just an overall great company where it's uh one of the best things that i like about it
is compared to the other ones it starts an hour earlier so that's at 5 00 pm beijing time i mean
that's quite nice which is which is which is a great change and um and what else was i gonna
say it's um and yeah there's no feedback at the end so i mean that just you know that saves you
automatically at least an hour off every day so uh right now we're going through a hiring
process so anyone that wants to apply i think now is a great time to do so i'm going to leave your
referral link in the description thanks so much for joining me today it was great thank you ollie