Post: #901

If you wanna roll the dice with an illegal teaching job, you better make sure that the school employing you understands how illegal it is. This one school wanted me to moonlight for them and told me they were gonna make posters and flyers with my face on them to advertise me. I wasn't sure if they were retarded or just straight-up trolling. Probably retarded since humor is lost on many locals.

Unfortunately, a lot of schools are run by inept people who don't know how to keep things on the down low. You're better off finding private students since teaching private classes until 10 kids in the privacy of your home is not illegal. Also, you have way more control and don't have to work with kids who have no business sitting down with civilized adults. I teach some private students in my free time but i screened the hell out of them before I agreed to take their money. I could make a lot more money if I just worked with anyone, but if I don't like the parents or the kid I tell em to take a hike.

Post: #902

(04-02-2018 09:22 PM)Fortis Wrote:  You're better off finding private students since teaching private classes until 10 kids in the privacy of your home is not illegal.

Source?

Post: #903

Ive got a buddy in Jiangmen who looked into all the rules of starting schools and he told me something similar. He and his wife spent many days going to different government offices and chatting with the people there.

What I heard was that unless you want to open a legit "English School" you need like 200 sq meters of space rented and so many teachers. But if you open something called a "Foreign culture center" or something like that, if there are less than 10 kids there then its OK. He rents a space, hires college students to help co-teach paying them very little and has a good gig. So there are in fact laws with very specific details, but there are some loopholes like the one above.

Post: #904

(04-02-2018 09:48 PM)ball dont lie Wrote:  Ive got a buddy in Jiangmen who looked into all the rules of starting schools and he told me something similar. He and his wife spent many days going to different government offices and chatting with the people there.

What I heard was that unless you want to open a legit "English School" you need like 200 sq meters of space rented and so many teachers. But if you open something called a "Foreign culture center" or something like that, if there are less than 10 kids there then its OK. He rents a space, hires college students to help co-teach paying them very little and has a good gig. So there are in fact laws with very specific details, but there are some loopholes like the one above.

The China expat scene is rife with rumors of "loopholes" and other completely unsubstantiated information.

You know what no one ever actually does? Share the actually legal text to back up there claims. It's not like Chinese laws are secret hidden documents. Any qualified Chinese lawyer would be able to confirm the existence of a specific law, yet I've yet to meet an ESL teacher that had actually spent a few hundred RMB to get a lawyer to verify whether the "loopholes" they are exploiting really exists.

You can get away with exploiting "loopholes" only so long as the authorities don't decide to crackdown.

There's literally a different category of Z-visa for teachers that is different from a standard Z-visa for any other type of work. I've personally witnessed teachers getting busted for working at a kindergarten on a standard Z-visa rather than the correct one, a teaching visa.

If your pal is teaching and has a Z-visa other than a teaching visa, he could be deported for doing so. The ONLY reason why this hasn't happened is because the police choose not to.

It's like in Thailand where you see expat dudes married to local women who hang out in the bar their own bar like a customer and can't be seen behind the counter, because while it's legal for them to have part (but not full) ownership of the bar, it's illegal for them to serve even a single glass of water.

Here's a very educational blog post by Dan Harris of the China Law Blog:

Quote:Foreign Schools in China: The Legal 101

Many many years ago, we helped a foreign school “conglomerate” set up a number of schools in China and due to “word of mouth” we have been getting calls and emails regarding China school set-ups ever since.

Many of those communications come from ESL teachers who see a need and want to fill it, but truth be told this is by no means an easy or inexpensive business and so only a tiny percentage of those who kick our tires ever get past that stage.

Because of all the “I want to start a school in China” tire-kickers, we now have a template email to alert them right up front to the difficulties of successfully doing so and I figure that putting it up here could prove useful to at least some of our readers, so here goes:

A School for Children of Foreign Workers is the only type of school that China allows to be 100% foreign controlled and owned. The path for this is sort of school is as follows:

•Start with extremely strong local government support for the school and an established off-shore education institution.

•Register a consulting/technology WOFE with USD$500K+ registered capital and the relevant business license.

•Lease/purchase a facility and fit-out to meet school-level fire and safety regulations.

•Spend 2+ years working on the provincial education bureau license application process.

Note: This sort of school can hire foreign and local teachers, and all relevant staff needed to run a school.

If you are wanting to run an “English training center” (basically for English tutoring), the path we see foreigners go down is usually the following:

•Start with local government support for the training center.

•Lease/purchase relevant commercial space.

•Register a consulting WOFE with foreigner/foreign company as sole investor, and with a fairly generic business scope (local AIC’s do not like to give scopes that permit education activities).

•Open the English training center and hope nobody cares to check your business scope carefully. We have heard of centers getting closed within weeks of their opening and we have heard of training centers remaining open for years and years.

Note: With this method, you cannot officially hire teachers, only consultants or other positions relevant to running a consulting company. Work visas for such “consultants” are often held up due to the skepticism of local officials and a typical foreign teacher’s lack of qualifications to be an actual “consultant.”

If you are trying to use this consulting business to run an actual school it won’t last long unless you are seriously protected by local government. Note that if you are doing this with a “Chinese partner,” it will be your partner with this relationship and it is quite common for the Chinese partner to boot out the foreigner once the foreigner is no longer needed. Because the whole enterprise is so sketchy to begin with, you likely will have no recourse once this happens. Note also that government officials in China change and change often and the new officials generally try to wipe this sort of slate clean.

Registering a fairly generic consulting WOFE would be easy but you would be at big risk for being able to maintain it. Registering a consulting WOFE with something educational in the business scope would be very difficult — but we have done this before — and far less risky once registered. Registering an actual school is a long term and very expensive project, but possible if you have the funding and a will to achieve it.

I won't post any of it here, because it's a ton of information, but here is the link to the fourth article in a series of 4 posts that provide an in depth look at opening and running a school as a foreigners in China. You will find links to the first 3 posts in the series in the first paragraph of the article.

Post: #905

I think the main issue is that this is for 100% foreign owned and run schools. Im not sure anyone actually does that. It doesn't seem like a good idea to have 100% foreign owned anything in China as that would place a person under a serious disadvantage since we as foreigners don't really have any legal power.

Again Im going off what my friend has been doing for a while. Not quite 10 years but close. He says he went through the government offices and there are more than just "English Training center". Which is what I said above, that with the English Training Center, there are a bunch of rules about sq meters, how many teachers must be on contract, etc. But there are other educational centers that can be opened.

A good example would be music schools. I have a lot of Chinese friends who have legit music schools that are small, only have a couple teachers. They have something on the wall at least that they show parents that it is some kind of government certified music school.

I think its not as bad as its made out to be, especially since Ive actually never heard of anyone other than Africans or Pakistanis getting in trouble in China, even working completely illegally. In grey areas, with Americans and happy students, chances of getting in trouble are very low. Maybe Beijing is an outlier for extra bullshit. Since the weather is horrible and it has toxic level pollution with the bad traffic, go to Xiamen or something. People are loaded there so plenty of people to pay 400-600 yuan an hour for small classes. But again, so far as I know from close personal friends who have no reason to lie to me, they have gone through the bureaucratic stuff and there are other things than just "English Training Center" that can be opened and those cultural exchange centers or whatever they are called have much less strict rules. I do believe it is through his Chinese wife that this cultural center thing was opened.

Post: #906

Either way, i'd say it's safer to teach from home unless you're super obvious.

Post: #907

As far as the more than one kind of Z visa, I sent a message out to the office responsible for that at my university and they didn't know anything about it. I've never heard anything like that, not even rumors of something like that. I'm now on year 12 (?) and my visa always is the same. It says 就业 which is just work. It doesn't say anything about education.

Post: #908

Hahah, heads up I was kinda pissy this afternoon. Needed to go to the gym. Just got that over with. Less pissy. Sorry for the attitude!

Post: #909

(02-04-2018 11:15 PM)Road_Less_Taken Wrote:  

(02-03-2018 10:39 AM)STEEL_WARRIOR Wrote:  What the fuck is "Baby shark" and why do my young students keep asking for it. You can have head shoulders knees and toes and be grateful.

What is next I have to do a Kpop routine....





Edit: Wow this is pure aids

WTF so funny!

My kids love the Shark songs and the other Pink Fong stuff, but they are 1 and 3. I likely won't let them listen to it past 4.

Post: #910

(04-02-2018 09:33 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 09:22 PM)Fortis Wrote:  You're better off finding private students since teaching private classes until 10 kids in the privacy of your home is not illegal.

Source?

It is probably the best option. English schools typically can't pay much and so there are not many native English speakers in those schools but there are a lot of individuals and parents willing to pay high to learn in a private class with native speakers born and grown in USA, UK, Canada...You can also work in schools half time and half time your own thing. Source: my surroundings.

Post: #911

It’s relatively hard to build up a list of private students. You can’t really start from scratch, I’ve found you’ll really need to rely on the help of a local to introduce you to clients at first. This can take a while. It can take as long as 6 months to a year to have a pool of reliable, sustainable private students to make a significant income off of. And even those can disappear on you without notice.

Don’t bother trying to search for private students at your school. If you’re caught doing that, your ass will be canned.

Post: #912

(04-07-2018 08:12 AM)hipster Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 09:33 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 09:22 PM)Fortis Wrote:  You're better off finding private students since teaching private classes until 10 kids in the privacy of your home is not illegal.

Source?

It is probably the best option. English schools typically can't pay much and so there are not many native English speakers in those schools but there are a lot of individuals and parents willing to pay high to learn in a private class with native speakers born and grown in USA, UK, Canada...You can also work in schools half time and half time your own thing. Source: my surroundings.

Sure, so your hourly income might not be bad $50USD per hour, but it's actually relatively difficult to squeeze even two 90 minute classes into an evening (and no one has time to study in the daytime, Monday to Friday). So that works out to $150 a day, which isn't bad, except if you live in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen or Guangzhou, where it's not that great of an income for a day of work. Keep in mind that teaching is far more tiring than most other types of work, so it's not like you can work a 40 teaching hours a week and not suffer from the sort of mental exhaustion that a 80 corporate work week would give you.

Of course, you'd be lucky to get a 40 hour work week doing privates. Most of your hours are going to be on the weekend. You'll only be able to squeeze in one class in the morning, because the identical drones of China will all insist that their children need 3 hours off from lunch (from 11 AM to 2 PM). That class will be from 9:30-11:00 if you are lucky. Then you'll squeeze in three more lessons in the afternoon and evening, maybe four if you are really efficient. That's 2250 RMB per day or $346USD! Not bad, right?

All told, two weekend days, plus three week days will earn you $1140 USD per week or $4900 USD per month. A $59K USD annual salary!!! Except that type of money is barely a living in a city like Beijing where unless you enjoy having three roommates and living so far from the city center that you might as well be in a third tier city, you'll be paying over $1000 a month for housing. And that's for a tiny studio.

But let's not forget that if you include holidays, exam prep time and illness, most classes probably have a 25% cancellation rate. So, now your income is actually $44K.

Then, unless you work out some dirty deal for a visa that leaves you beholden to someone who will use it to their advantage, you'll spend a minimum of $3000 doing visa runs every year, so let's knock down that income to $41K per year.

For those keeping track at home, that's $3,400US per month. Rent costs $1000 (minimum), if you have minimum payments of $50K in student debt from college, that's another $600, so now you've got $1800 to play with per month. That's $60 per day.

Not poverty, but definitely not baller. And this math assumes that you're always able to maintain a 14 lesson a week schedule.

Of course, if you are a very good teacher and great at marketing yourself, this can be improve upon a little by eventually finding some reliable daytime gigs, charging more than the going rate for lessons and instituting some system to minimize cancellations, but that's not going to happen in your first year of doing this and I wonder how many people really want to spend more than a year of their life living with the uncertainty of doing visa runs every 2 months with no real guarantees.

(04-07-2018 11:18 PM)ShanghaiPlayer Wrote:  It’s relatively hard to build up a list of private students. You can’t really start from scratch, I’ve found you’ll really need to rely on the help of a local to introduce you to clients at first. This can take a while. It can take as long as 6 months to a year to have a pool of reliable, sustainable private students to make a significant income off of. And even those can disappear on you without notice.

That's been my experience. It takes about 6 months to build a decent schedule with decent clients.

It's not hard to find a few students to teach if you're a full-time student yourself and just want some beer money or to supplement your income from a day job.

Making a living from it is tough. The first couple students come easy, but as you start to fill up your schedule, it becomes harder. Many people have limited free time themselves and only a couple time slots will work for them. Most people also work day jobs or have school during the day, which means that they only have time in the evenings and on the weekends. Also, no one wants to study between 11AM-2PM on the weekend or at dinner time.

Most people think that they are too good to teach children, so they focus on adult clients, which seems like a great plan until you realize that adult clients are horribly unreliable (cancelling 50% of their classes is not uncommon), rarely continue to study with you for longer than 3-5 months and are too busy/lazy to do homework, so they never really make any progress, because two hours of language study a week doesn't do anyone much good.

Sure, you could try requiring them to pay up front for 6 months and have a no-cancellation policy, but good luck with that.

Kids are a real gift in this business because parents are willing to pay far more money for their children's education than an adult student is willing to pay for their own. "Classes" with adult students if being taught by an inexperienced teacher usually devolve into "conversational progress," which rarely results in definable results. At least with kids, you can teach them a ton of vocabulary and it's not unusual for their parents to actually practice with them in between classes, so they do make steady progress, at least in that regard, even if the teacher in question has no fucking clue how to teach.

Kids also attend class far more regularly (because their parents force them to). By kids, I mean 12 and younger. High school students are also horribly unreliable, because studying for exams always takes priority and these teenagers in China always have exams.

Keep in mind that living costs (especially in housing) often go up 25% every year (or more), so the fees you were willing to settle for when you were just getting into the game are not going to cut it even a year after you go started.

If most of your income comes from these private lessons, you're going to have a fair amount of stress wondering if enough money is going to come in to pay rent some months, unless you live in a third tier hole, where your income may considerably outpace your expenses, which means living in a city that will bore you out of your mind if you stay for longer than six months to a year.

Of course, you won't have much to show for it in the end, because just because you have more money left over, doesn't mean that the dollar value of the fees you earn from teaching in a third tier city will add up to much savings if you were to ever move back to somewhere that people actual want to live.

Post: #913

(04-07-2018 11:18 PM)ShanghaiPlayer Wrote:  It’s relatively hard to build up a list of private students.

True!

1. Getting your first students is the hardest part. They will come from recommendations of people you know socially.

2. This is a service based on trust, so advertising is not very useful. Once you have a few students, the best source of new students will be recommendations from current/former students.

3. You want quality students, people who have the motivation, the time and the financial resources to take classes with you over the long term. Most students who say they want to improve their English do not fit this profile. Be prepared for this.

4. If you teach in a public place, you will occasionally get inquiries from onlookers. Once in a while, these turn into real, paying students.

5. Private students come in with high expectations. You must manage this. They start out thinking that a few private lessons will solve all their problems English.

6. I don't give test prep sessions. You can charge more for them, but expectations, pressure and preparation are higher, plus if they stop taking after the test, you have not gained a long-term client.

7. Adult 'beginners' are actually 'false beginners' who have tried and failed to learn English many times. You are their last hope. This never works out well. There's a reason they haven't been successful with English, and it's not because they haven't found the perfect/magic teacher. I also avoid kids, but that's just me.

I've written a longer post or two earlier in this thread about giving private and group classes as a freelancer.

Post: #914

(04-08-2018 07:03 AM)ElFlaco Wrote:  

(04-07-2018 11:18 PM)ShanghaiPlayer Wrote:  It’s relatively hard to build up a list of private students.

True!

1. Getting your first students is the hardest part. They will come from recommendations of people you know socially.

2. This is a service based on trust, so advertising is not very useful. Once you have a few students, the best source of new students will be recommendations from current/former students.

3. You want quality students, people who have the motivation, the time and the financial resources to take classes with you over the long term. Most students who say they want to improve their English do not fit this profile. Be prepared for this.

4. If you teach in a public place, you will occasionally get inquiries from onlookers. Once in a while, these turn into real, paying students.

5. Private students come in with high expectations. You must manage this. They start out thinking that a few private lessons will solve all their problems English.

6. I don't give test prep sessions. You can charge more for them, but expectations, pressure and preparation are higher, plus if they stop taking after the test, you have not gained a long-term client.

7. Adult 'beginners' are actually 'false beginners' who have tried and failed to learn English many times. You are their last hope. This never works out well. There's a reason they haven't been successful with English, and it's not because they haven't found the perfect/magic teacher. I also avoid kids, but that's just me.

I've written a longer post or two earlier in this thread about giving private and group classes as a freelancer.

Who do you teach then? Advance adults?

Post: #915

(04-08-2018 12:30 AM)Suits Wrote:  

(04-07-2018 08:12 AM)hipster Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 09:33 PM)Suits Wrote:  

(04-02-2018 09:22 PM)Fortis Wrote:  You're better off finding private students since teaching private classes until 10 kids in the privacy of your home is not illegal.

Source?

It is probably the best option. English schools typically can't pay much and so there are not many native English speakers in those schools but there are a lot of individuals and parents willing to pay high to learn in a private class with native speakers born and grown in USA, UK, Canada...You can also work in schools half time and half time your own thing. Source: my surroundings.

Sure, so your hourly income might not be bad $50USD per hour, but it's actually relatively difficult to squeeze even two 90 minute classes into an evening (and no one has time to study in the daytime, Monday to Friday). So that works out to $150 a day, which isn't bad, except if you live in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen or Guangzhou, where it's not that great of an income for a day of work. Keep in mind that teaching is far more tiring than most other types of work, so it's not like you can work a 40 teaching hours a week and not suffer from the sort of mental exhaustion that a 80 corporate work week would give you.

Of course, you'd be lucky to get a 40 hour work week doing privates. Most of your hours are going to be on the weekend. You'll only be able to squeeze in one class in the morning, because the identical drones of China will all insist that their children need 3 hours off from lunch (from 11 AM to 2 PM). That class will be from 9:30-11:00 if you are lucky. Then you'll squeeze in three more lessons in the afternoon and evening, maybe four if you are really efficient. That's 2250 RMB per day or $346USD! Not bad, right?

All told, two weekend days, plus three week days will earn you $1140 USD per week or $4900 USD per month. A $59K USD annual salary!!! Except that type of money is barely a living in a city like Beijing where unless you enjoy having three roommates and living so far from the city center that you might as well be in a third tier city, you'll be paying over $1000 a month for housing. And that's for a tiny studio.

But let's not forget that if you include holidays, exam prep time and illness, most classes probably have a 25% cancellation rate. So, now your income is actually $44K.

Then, unless you work out some dirty deal for a visa that leaves you beholden to someone who will use it to their advantage, you'll spend a minimum of $3000 doing visa runs every year, so let's knock down that income to $41K per year.

For those keeping track at home, that's $3,400US per month. Rent costs $1000 (minimum), if you have minimum payments of $50K in student debt from college, that's another $600, so now you've got $1800 to play with per month. That's $60 per day.

Not poverty, but definitely not baller. And this math assumes that you're always able to maintain a 14 lesson a week schedule.

Of course, if you are a very good teacher and great at marketing yourself, this can be improve upon a little by eventually finding some reliable daytime gigs, charging more than the going rate for lessons and instituting some system to minimize cancellations, but that's not going to happen in your first year of doing this and I wonder how many people really want to spend more than a year of their life living with the uncertainty of doing visa runs every 2 months with no real guarantees.

(04-07-2018 11:18 PM)ShanghaiPlayer Wrote:  It’s relatively hard to build up a list of private students. You can’t really start from scratch, I’ve found you’ll really need to rely on the help of a local to introduce you to clients at first. This can take a while. It can take as long as 6 months to a year to have a pool of reliable, sustainable private students to make a significant income off of. And even those can disappear on you without notice.

That's been my experience. It takes about 6 months to build a decent schedule with decent clients.

It's not hard to find a few students to teach if you're a full-time student yourself and just want some beer money or to supplement your income from a day job.

Making a living from it is tough. The first couple students come easy, but as you start to fill up your schedule, it becomes harder. Many people have limited free time themselves and only a couple time slots will work for them. Most people also work day jobs or have school during the day, which means that they only have time in the evenings and on the weekends. Also, no one wants to study between 11AM-2PM on the weekend or at dinner time.

Most people think that they are too good to teach children, so they focus on adult clients, which seems like a great plan until you realize that adult clients are horribly unreliable (cancelling 50% of their classes is not uncommon), rarely continue to study with you for longer than 3-5 months and are too busy/lazy to do homework, so they never really make any progress, because two hours of language study a week doesn't do anyone much good.

Sure, you could try requiring them to pay up front for 6 months and have a no-cancellation policy, but good luck with that.

Kids are a real gift in this business because parents are willing to pay far more money for their children's education than an adult student is willing to pay for their own. "Classes" with adult students if being taught by an inexperienced teacher usually devolve into "conversational progress," which rarely results in definable results. At least with kids, you can teach them a ton of vocabulary and it's not unusual for their parents to actually practice with them in between classes, so they do make steady progress, at least in that regard, even if the teacher in question has no fucking clue how to teach.

Kids also attend class far more regularly (because their parents force them to). By kids, I mean 12 and younger. High school students are also horribly unreliable, because studying for exams always takes priority and these teenagers in China always have exams.

Keep in mind that living costs (especially in housing) often go up 25% every year (or more), so the fees you were willing to settle for when you were just getting into the game are not going to cut it even a year after you go started.

If most of your income comes from these private lessons, you're going to have a fair amount of stress wondering if enough money is going to come in to pay rent some months, unless you live in a third tier hole, where your income may considerably outpace your expenses, which means living in a city that will bore you out of your mind if you stay for longer than six months to a year.

Of course, you won't have much to show for it in the end, because just because you have more money left over, doesn't mean that the dollar value of the fees you earn from teaching in a third tier city will add up to much savings if you were to ever move back to somewhere that people actual want to live.

The ultimate guide to teaching in China. This is a hidden gem that you would not find on Dave's ESL Forum.

One would do well to take note of Suits's advice.

Post: #916

(04-08-2018 07:33 AM)Heart Break Kid Wrote:  Who do you teach then? Advance adults?

Intermediate adults = the sweet spot. Professionals who need stronger English to get the next promotion or make a career move, working for an international company, a company that does business abroad or working/studying abroad. A few students take classes just out of personal interest, but they're not the majority.

These students are roughly B1 or B2 on the European scale. Lower intermediate, intermediate, upper intermediate. If a student is capable of holding a conversation in English about a variety of topics (with mistakes, of course), that's good enough. I also teach advanced students (C1) but fewer of those.

An additional problem with adult 'beginners' is their income. If they really can't hold any kind of basic conversation in English, they're unlikely to be able to afford private classes at the rate I charge. And they're going to be a pain in the ass, as I explained above.

These comments reflect the market where I am, a major metropolitan center in Latin America. The situation could be very different elsewhere.

Post: #917

Hey y'all, I'm currently traveling throughout Asia and gonna land in Taiwan for a bit. Anyone got any tips on getting ESL jobs in person?

Post: #918

(04-08-2018 10:33 PM)Heart Break Kid Wrote:  Hey y'all, I'm currently traveling throughout Asia and gonna land in Taiwan for a bit. Anyone got any tips on getting ESL jobs in person?

What are your credentials?

Post: #919

(04-09-2018 08:24 AM)RaulValdez739 Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 10:33 PM)Heart Break Kid Wrote:  Hey y'all, I'm currently traveling throughout Asia and gonna land in Taiwan for a bit. Anyone got any tips on getting ESL jobs in person?

What are your credentials?

Pretty bare bone.

American, 4 year degree, some tutoring experience, a crappy TEFL certificate.

Post: #920

(04-09-2018 10:37 PM)Heart Break Kid Wrote:  Pretty bare bone.

American, 4 year degree, some tutoring experience, a crappy TEFL certificate.

Mate that's all you need to get a good gig (not that I'm some sort of authority just an excited beginner who is impressed with this amazing travel/work opportunity that is TESL I am in month 5 of teaching).

Post: #921

(04-10-2018 09:04 AM)STEEL_WARRIOR Wrote:  not that I'm some sort of authority just an excited beginner who is impressed with this amazing travel/work opportunity that is TESL I am in month 5 of teaching

This may be the most astounding thing I've read in this 37-page thread.

Post: #922

(04-10-2018 03:41 PM)ElFlaco Wrote:  This may be the most astounding thing I've read in this 37-page thread.

25 USD an hour for flashing flashcards and singing old McDonald? I had to experience it firsthand to believe it.

Post: #923

Good opportunity in Japan

Post: #924

(04-12-2018 11:36 AM)Bangnutter Wrote:  Good opportunity in Japan

No.

(04-11-2018 02:02 PM)STEEL_WARRIOR Wrote:  25 USD an hour for flashing flashcards and singing old McDonald? I had to experience it firsthand to believe it.

That would be great if you are a poor student just earning beer money. But if you're not, that's not great money.

$25 USD per hour is $31,000 annual income. You'd earn more money working at McDonalds in some parts of the USA.

25 ESL classroom hours is the equivalent of working 40 hours in most jobs. It's far different than being an elementary school teacher, where there are a lot of lulls where students are working at their desks and you don't have to be "on." In most high schools, 4 hours of classroom time a day is considered fulltime, and even some of that will involve letting students work on assignments.

Part-time teaching gigs at a McDonalds don't come with sick pay or vacation pay, so you'll only work 50 weeks a year, assuming that there are no cancellations. If there are cancellations (a 25% rate is normal if you include holidays, of which there at a lot of in China), you're actually only earning $24K per year. At that point, you'd be far better off living in your parent's basement and working your way up to assistant manager at McDonalds in your home state.

Never mind the fact that a 25 hour work week at a part-time rate is only possible if you work illegally on a tourist visa (which will require frequent visa runs out of the country and the ever present possibility of having everything fucked up if you got caught and for whatever reason aren't allowed to re-enter the country at some point).

To have the stability of a work visa, you'll need to work at least 15 hours a week at a legitimate job (and usually more), which will pay less. Good luck having the energy to do a significant amount of private work on top of the day-job.

$25 an hour is actually considered rather low for private work in China. The going rate in Beijing and Shanghai is $40+, even for complete beginners as long as they are willing to teach children.

Post: #925

(04-12-2018 10:24 PM)Suits Wrote:  25 ESL classroom hours is the equivalent of working 40 hours in most jobs.

Very true. Why?

1. Travel time
2. Prep time
3. Sales / marketing
4. Administrative (scheduling)
5. Intensity

This last point is the most important. For the kind of teaching I personally do, I'm 100% focused on the session 100% of the time. I'm concentrating intensely on questions/issues like:
- What the student said vs. what they meant
- Is there something I need to point out (or something I should not point out)?
- Is the student is following? If not, why not?
- What is their mood? What kind of person is this? How does that affect what I do?
- Am I giving them what they need/want/are ready for right now?
- Is what I'm doing working for this kind of person?

I've had traditional corporate jobs and this kind of teaching is not similar. There's no water cooler chat, mini mental breaks, goofing off, personal business, etc. After a solid 5-hour shift of classes, I am mentally fried.