English 1

3.0

4 Aug 2021

Recommend

CEO approval

Business outlook

Pros

The platform provides very flexible working hours, so long as you can teach 10hrs+ a week, you can set your own timetable, and change it up to 24hr in advance without penalty (within the limits of cancelling no more than 10 lessons a month without notifying the central team to extenuating circumstances such as illness or emergency) Very little lesson prep is required as the curriculum is already laid out into well-explained tasks on a wide variety of topics, which you will become familiar with quickly, and that you can play around with a bit to fit your students' learning needs. This means that your evenings aren't spent prepping for the 10 classes you might be teaching the next day, which is refreshing! A variety of students of all ages for an interesting and enjoyable teaching day, with some regular students, and some new students, so it never feels like a dull work day! The children you teach are usually a real delight and the varied activities usually keep their attention, and the one-on-one nature of the classes means you really get to see the personality of each of your students. After having worked some stressful 9 to 5 (and beyond) jobs, the work/life balance at EF has been great and has done wonders for me personally, and despite the variety of issues I have with this company, I feel far happier in this job than I have done in a lot of others, and the flexibility and ability to work from home during a pandemic has been invaluable.

Cons

There is little to no ability to discipline in the classroom. Children can be poorly behaved, in a state of undress, eating and drinking, playing with toys, and there is very little you can do. Even reporting poor behaviour leads to very little if the parents aren't willing to supervise or even just reprimand their children. This means that the students have to be very intrinsically motivated a lot of the time, and that can be difficult for young children. There is no way to contact the in-class teachers, or vice versa, so if there are any issues they will more than likely simply carry over to and from these classes. It would be nice to know whether a poorly behaved student is any better in a classroom setting, for example, or whether there were any particular teaching methods, mnemonics, TPR etc. that the students were taught in class that could be revised and used to more effect during the online sessions. Children and parents are "clients" more than students, and lessons have to be taught regardless of the suitability of the teaching environment (i.e. I have taught children in noisy restaurants, on buses, in cars, in bed, at parties) and the central team believes that we should just "do the best we can" which can be incredibly frustrating for both teacher and student. There are strict rules for the environment in which the teacher has to teach, but no rules whatsoever for the student, which isn't, in my opinion, conducive to their learning. It feels sometimes that we, as online teachers, are treated more like the DuoLingo app than actual people. It feels more like "pleasing the client" than "teaching the children" sometimes. The pay feels very low for a teaching job. I feel that the more experienced and qualified teachers should be able to ask for or at least be considered eligible for something more than the baseline (barely more than minimum wage) but the bonuses are meagre, awkward to decipher and easily taken away for minor infractions (like a single Teacher No Show, seemingly regardless of reason). Related to the pay, this is not a job for paying your bills. You can only teach up to 5 hours per day due to the time difference with China, with more hours open on the weekend for night time and very early morning classes (UK time), and even then there are frequent fluctuations and cancellation and Student No Shows that reduce your earning capacity. This position is for people working multiple jobs, earning while studying, stay at home parents with another full time working partner, etc. Related to the "client" basis of students and parents, the rules for teacher conduct are very conservative. I have taught around the world, and this is amongst the most conservative company I've ever worked for. While I understand the necessity of having natural hair colours, and no visible piercings or tattoos, this is not a company I feel completely comfortable working for as a member of the LGBT+ community either. To keep in line with conservative parents, there is nothing at all progressive even so much as mentioned by the company in their newsletters or social media, which honestly feels pretty bad in the year 2021. As an education company, one that is supposedly educating students on both the language and culture of Anglophone countries, I think it's remiss of them to exclude aspects of the culture that are less palatable to the client base, especially to the detriment of those people working for them. It's a difficult position to be in for a company, but I simply wouldn't feel comfortable "out" with my colleagues or bosses, which is not a great feeling. Overall it feels very detached as a company, you really do feel like a very small cog in a very large corporate wheel, and it doesn't feel like anyone beyond the UK-based help team (who are wonderful and very helpful!) really care that much about you or your progression as a teacher.

English 1 Response

Firstly thanks for reaching out to tell us about your experience and for being so thorough in your review. Let’s first talk about the positive points that you mentioned. We’re happy to hear that you found the scheduling to be flexible. We understand that things happen, so having the ability to change your schedule 24 hours in advance of a lesson is important. On that note, we understand that lesson prep can be a challenge to fit into our busy contractor’s schedules, which is why we provide content and lesson notes for teachers, to ease the burden. Of course you’re able to personalize content to learners, but with the majority of prep done for you, we hope to make the job that much easier. We agree, our wide range of students do make for an exciting and diverse workday. It’s great to be able to teach students of various ages and in our one-on-one environment, you really get to know your student and their needs and help them progress. We’re also happy to hear that you’ve been able to find a good work/life balance while working with us. We’ve heard from many instructors that they’ve really appreciated having an opportunity to teach from the safety of their homes throughout the pandemic. Now, onto the points that you raised regarding less than positive experiences. When students are misbehaving in the classroom, please do file a case. We report those to the Online Specialists who report them to parents. If the issue persists, we again ask that you file a case so that we can hold the parent accountable to attend lessons with their child and ensure that they’re well- behaved. We agree that it would be great to connect online teachers to offline teachers. This is something that we’ve spoken about at length and are looking for opportunities to implement. Unfortunately, this has not been made a priority as we’ve needed to relaunch websites, built the Resource Hub, etc. but it’s still on our list of things to design, build and implement. Regarding the student’s learning environment, we’re sorry to hear that you’ve had to teach some learners outside of their study space in their home. Students are told that they can study anywhere, anytime, but perhaps at times this is taken too far. If reported in a case, and the student is taking a class from a restaurant or a party, etc. we would contact the parents and reset expectations about appropriate study environments. Regarding pay, we understand that we’re not the highest paying in the industry, but we do try to offer opportunities to earn bonuses (as you mentioned) and regular class bookings. For classes where the student doesn’t show, we see it fair to pay for the time that we’ve asked a teacher to wait. Times when lessons are available are based on bookings from the students, and as you mention, during the weekdays the times when they can study are limited as they’re in school full-time. This is offered as an after-school study experience from Monday to Friday, so hours are naturally limited. With that said, we understand that instructors may need to work other jobs to be able to pay the bills but that is the reality with a lot of part-time roles. Regarding coming to work and being comfortable being who you are, we’re very sorry that you’ve not felt this so far. In June we featured Pride in our Newsletter, we shared the definition, a brief history, and events happening in different spaces around the world to raise awareness and highlight the importance of recognizing our community. We are trying to do better with including features that focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. As a member of the LGBT+ community myself, I can only share that when I’ve come out at work, I’ve only had positive experiences, but I know that it’s not enough for just one person to feel this way. We can certainly look for more opportunities to improve in this area, to make this an environment where everyone feels comfortable to bring their authentic selves at work. And finally, to address your point about feeling detached, I want to share what we’ve done to create community. The UK Centre Facebook Group is living and thriving. It’s great to see the support that’s offered to instructors in that space, both from Centre Management and other instructors. More recently we’ve launched the Skills Centre (recently renamed the Resource Hub) to create a space where instructors can sign in and observe best practices from their peers, request observations and feedback, read useful articles and so much more. And finally, the centre offers monthly webinars that instructors are invited to join. They could be talking about anything from After Class Reports to Tech Support, etc. This is a space that’s organized by the centre, for instructors. In addition to the spaces that are created to support teachers, we also send a satisfaction survey to all instructors twice a year. We do this to gather feedback and understand how we’re performing for our customers, our instructors. Because these surveys don’t allow for us to interact, we also invite teachers to join satisfaction calls twice a year. These are led by management and the aim is to better understand the instructor experience, specifically, what we’re doing well and what we can improve. We really value hearing from you and other instructors and make a point of offering spaces to share feedback. While we’re happy to hear that you are happier working with us than other companies, it’s clear that there are some things for us to improve. Where possible, we will work to do better and create an even more positive place for instructors to work. Thanks again for your feedback.

A different kind of teaching experience, good and bad, but not great for paying the bills. - Online ESL Teacher English 1 Employee Review

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