(upbeat music)
- Okay, good morning everyone.
My name is Isabelle
and today I'm taking over ITA's Instagram page.
And I'm just gonna be showing you what it's like
teaching English online from home today.
So just a a little about me,
I'm 23 years old and I'm from New Jersey
in the United States which is where I'm currently
teaching English online.
I'm living at home to ride out the pandemic
and I started teaching English online this past March.
I work for two companies.
I work for Qkids and BlingABC.
I'm getting ready to start teaching for the morning.
I only have a couple classes this morning
but I'm going to go ahead in the next slide
and draw up a little questions box
so you guys can ask me any questions you have
about, you know, Qkids, BlingABC,
teaching English online in general,
any questions you have feel free to send me in the next box
and I will start answering them after I teach this morning.
Okay guys, so I just finished teaching for the day.
One of the great things about online teaching
is that you get like all of your hours out of the way
by usually 9 or 10 am
which is really great.
So I'm seeing your questions coming in,
I'm about to start answering those.
And one thing I forgot to mention earlier
is that I took ITA's online class in,
it was the summer of 2018.
So if you have any questions about that class
definitely feel free to send those to me.
Okay, so first I wanna give you
just like a little tour of my classroom.
I setup this corner of my room
when I started teaching in March
and I got this desk like really cheap at IKEA.
I think it was $30 and it's been really helpful.
So, yeah this is where I teach.
This is my backdrop that I made.
That was really fun to make.
And the kids really like it.
When I teach for Bling I have to put
the Bling logo up right there where they can see it.
And I just tape that on
and then take it off obviously when I'm teaching with Qkids.
This is the headset that I use.
I love it.
It's great.
Highly recommend, it's, I think Mpow.
And then I have some other like props in my desk
and then larger props down here
like hand puppets and a whiteboard, etc.
So, yeah.
This is my teaching space.
So I chose Qkids
because I applied to a bunch of companies
and they were the first one to hire me honestly.
I kind of was in a situation where I just needed to
start making money.
And the hiring process for Qkids was very fast
and I can talk about that more later.
And then after I started working with Qkids,
the hours were a little bit slow in the beginning
so I wanted to add a 2nd company
to kind of fill up those other hours
and that's when I started being more picky about
where I was applying and where I was looking.
So I chose Bling
because I heard really good things about them online.
I heard people were really happy teaching with them
and their payment,
their pay scale was really attractive,
and again I'll go into their payment system later on.
But they are known for having one of the
higher base salaries in online teaching
and they also have really great bonuses.
So that's kind of why I chose Bling.
I went through application processes with VIPKid,
GoGoKid, Magic Ears,
I can't remember, a lot.
But so Qkids was the first one to work out
and then Bling had the highest pay
so that's why I ended up choosing Qkids and Bling.
So yeah, one of the reasons
that I chose both of these companies
is because I just tell them my availability
and then they assign me students.
I never have to find my own students
or get booked by parents or anything
which I really like.
So yeah, in the beginning it was definitely slow.
Right when the pandemic hit is when I started so
a lot of people were starting to online teach.
I do get full schedules now.
Like for the most part,
my availability that I have open
does get filled every week which is great.
All of my students are located in China
and I haven't had
much trouble the past few months
getting any bookings or anything
because my companies do fill my availability slots.
So yeah.
As you guys can see from what I just posted,
the pay varies a lot
so it's really hard for me to tell you
what I make per month
because it's totally different every month
just depending on what kind of bonuses I get
and how many classes I teach.
So my students are generally
between the ages of like 4 and 12.
They've been as young as three before.
But I'd say on average
they're between like six and nine typically.
So they're very sweet.
Yeah, I was so nervous.
I was really nervous to start,
but it gets easy really, really fast.
With my practicum with ITA I was teaching adults in person
so teaching kids online was very new to me.
So yes, very nervous, but the nerves went away quickly.
My favorite part is getting to know the kids.
The kids are so sweet and a lot of them,
you know, they want to show you their toys
and they want to tell you about,
you know, their days and stuff
and it's just very, very sweet.
So, I love working with the little kids.
So I work six days a week.
I work Monday through Saturday.
I work in the mornings
generally from about 5:50 am until about 9:00.
I change my schedule sometimes.
And then Friday and Saturday nights also
from like 7:00 to 11:00.
Nope, just a regular TEFL certificate.
I did like the normal ITA online class
and I did the extra modules for young learners
and teaching business professionals,
but the young learners one
has obviously come in really helpful.
But nope, just the normal ITA class.
So I'll get into the actual hiring processes
for both companies after this,
but with Qkids, which was my first job,
it took about two weeks from start to finish.
And then Bling took a little bit longer.
Okay, so the hiring process for Qkids,
I submitted a resume and prior teaching experience
and my TEFL certificate
along with a video of myself reading
like a children's book.
And once I passed that initial screening
I did two demo interviews.
And these were just showing off, you know,
basic teaching techniques TPR, modeling, etc.
Um.
And then after my 2nd demo interview
I was invited to do trial classes.
So these were teaching actual students
and I had never taught children online before
so I was definitely very nervous.
I think I did a total of four trial classes.
Sometimes they have you do two,
sometimes you do five, it just depends.
And I was offered a contract after my fourth trial class.
So that was the process for Qkids.
So it's a different process with BlingABC.
Bling takes a little bit longer.
With Qkids it was like two weeks,
but Bling took about a month
so you send in your resume
and they want to see some prior teaching experience
which your practicum with ITA is perfect for.
And then you do about like a 30 minute interview,
a Skype interview,
explaining why you want to work for them,
basic questions like that.
And after that there is an orientation
where they test your technology, your laptop,
your
audio,
and after that is a two hour training with other teachers
which was kind of fun.
After you pass your training you do a mock class,
which is a full 40 minute class
but it's not with kids it's to one of their staff members
who's pretending to be like a five year old child.
And
you get an A, B, C, or F
and your grade kind of,
like depending on what you get on your mock class
that will impact your prioritization for scheduling.
If you don't like your grade than you can redo it a 2nd time
but as long as you get an A or a B
you can start scheduling classes.
Yeah, so there's no lesson planning involved
with either of these companies.
You are given your lesson ahead of time and you can prepare.
Bling expects you to prepare
like props, they want you to use a lot of props
that go with each lesson.
So that's kind of the only prep that you really have to do.
So actually with my practicum with ITA
I taught once a week,
it was a volunteer position once a week,
a 2.5 hour class to beginning level adults at a non-profit.
So that was my only teaching experience prior to online
but I did that for a year.
Bling is great because they have lots of
different types of classes.
You can teach phonics, you can teach pre-school,
World Explorers,
I think they have a new middle school program,
so there's a lot of different types of classes
which is great.
But you have to submit your availability
at the beginning of each term
and it cannot change.
There's no flexibility.
Great question, so BlingABC has four terms,
kind of like semesters per year,
seasonally.
So you admit your availability at the beginning of each term
and that's your availability for the entire term.
So the two companies that I work for
do require a degree but there are plenty of companies
that don't a require a Bachelor's degree
to teach for them, so.
ITA has a really great article,
I'll try to include it in this post,
you can swipe up and find companies
that don't require a Bachelor's.
I've heard great things about VIPKid
but it was the booking systems with Qkids and BlingABC
that made me choose them
because I don't have to go out and find my own bookings
and build my own client base.
I just get automatically assigned students
which I really like.
So next year I'll hopefully be attending grad school
but I do hope to teach English abroad at some point,
you know, either online or in person.
That's the great part about having a TEFL
is it gives you so much flexibility to,
you know, travel and find work really anywhere.
So I do see that in my future.
Okay, so I finished reviewing
for all my classes in the morning
and I'm going to go ahead and log out.
Thank you guys for joining me today.
I'm sorry I couldn't get to all of your questions
but I'm gonna leave my Instagram handle down below
and you guys can feel free to message me with any questions.
Thank you, bye.
(upbeat music)