A few months ago I wrote about ESL teachers struggling to make a living. The struggle is real and I really hope this will be useful to somebody someday.
More experienced colleagues usually say things like “it gets better”, “you just have to wait for a few months” etc. That’s partially true but I guess you need a lot of luck and really (really really) strong nerves to handle all the pressure, rude students, tech support and flexible working hours that are really not so flexible.
Let’s start from students for example:
I must say that I met a lot of nice people, heard about a lot of new places, artists, mountains, dishes and customs. I even learned about architecture. It’s always nice having enthusiastic interlocutors but it’s not always like that. In my company you must use your computer (so tablets and smartphones are out of question, you can’t even log in to check your schedule via smartphone), LAN cable is preferable, quiet environment (you can’t even have your air conditioner turned on) and some nice or neutral background. Students however are allowed to call you from any possible device and/or place.
E.g. 1: a lesson with a business person at the railway station via smartphone.
E.g. 2: a conversation with a girl on the top of the building, in the dark + via smartphone.
There’s a plethora of people calling from coffee shops (mostly hipsters), but my absolute favorite (so far) is a girl who called me from her classroom via smartphone + public Wi-Fi + her classmates shouting in the background. I struggled a lot to conduct my class; it was very hard to hear her voice not to mention how the video kept freezing all the time. In the end she left me bad comment and low rating points because I didn’t smile enough during our lesson. I ended up being scolded by teacher support but wasn’t penalized because I did everything by the book. I would also like to mention one child giving me “the finger” while ending our class.
You can always contact teacher/tech support but that can also be tricky sometimes. It all depends on who’s on the other side of the screen. Some staff will always give you useful links, instructions, recognize the problem and genuinely help you solve it while others only tell you to refresh this and that and blame you for everything.
Flexible working hours are possibly the greatest fraud of the 21st century. In my company, you can work whenever you like and open as many lesson slots as you like but there are certain core times when allegedly a lot of students book their classes, so if you want to get booked at all you need to work during “core time”. Chances to get booked out of those core times are 0-5%.
Not to mention how some people with conventional jobs think that you earn money doing nothing (I would certainly like to see them walking in my shoes for a while)
Regardless of all this, I’m still an optimist. People come and go, my skills are improving and I’m more and more experienced each and every day. I guess persistence is the key.
Thanks for reading,
Kindest Regards!