The 2 Tiers of Online Teaching
Hey there! It’s Allyson from OnlineTeacherAllyson.com where stay-at-home moms learn how to teach online so they can earn an income from home even if their kiddos are in tow. And today I really want to get into what exactly online teaching is because there’s kind of two tiers of it.
There’s the tier that we all know and probably loathe from 2020 where it was the classroom teacher and all the students would log on to a session to get their mandated minutes for math, and reading, and science, and social studies. They still have to get that mandated instruction. Then there’s the tier, which is where you and I fall in, which is kind of the extra. This has nothing to do with school, with your quote-unquote normal school, and it has everything to do with the extras. Whether it be fun extracurriculars, or something your child is interested in that the school system doesn’t cover, or homeschool. There’s a big market for homeschool parents too where they buy a semester worth of classes and they have their flexibility that way. And that’s the tier I’m talking to you about today.
(This blog post is based on a recent YouTube video. If you prefer to watch it, you can check it out below!)
The Tier for Stay at Home Moms
This tier does not require any sort of previous experience. It doesn’t require a certificate or a college degree. Now, some platforms may require those things, but that is not 100% you have to have it. So, what exactly is online teaching for me and you, what does that look like? Well, it looks like if you’re on a platform, one popular grouping of platforms you could call it would be the ESL marketplace – the English as a Second Language.
There are tons of those out there that’s where I got my start. I was teaching students in China how to speak English. That’s kind of defunct now. It’s not that it was proven that it’s not effective, it was! A law changed in China and they can’t take those classes anymore from us. But, there are platforms that cater to students outside of China. There’s some I know of in Korea, and the Middle East, and South America. So if this is something you’re interested in do not let the China laws kind of deter you, because there are still options out there. They’re just a little harder to find! So stick around until the end because I do have a link for you that will help match you with where you should get started.
Online Teaching Lessons Created For You
And it also looks like – if you’re on a platform like ESL, there’s other platforms that aren’t specific to ESL – but they probably have a lesson created for you. Where you follow the slides, you ask the questions, you go through the motions, and there’s nothing extra required from you. You log in before class, you peruse your slides, and you prepare. You prepare any props, you prepare any games, any rewards, any sort of extra.
Once you know those students you know, “Oh that’s kind of hard for them they’re going to have trouble.” Or, “Oh this is easy so let’s find a way we can make this like level it up for them to meet them at their level.” There’s also some platforms like Outschool which is very much centralized in the United States. They’re global but that’s where the majority of their students are is in the States.
Create Your Own Lessons
Outschool requires you to create your own lessons. Don’t let that scare you off because they have different ways to help you. They have some trainings and they have some guidelines. Then they approve the lesson. So once they like it you’ll be fine and you’ll get better at kind of writing the lesson so it gets approved quicker.
What to Teach
With Outschool you think of your expertise, and what you enjoy, and what you want to teach, and you create a lesson around that. It’s nothing crazy! It can be one lesson for 20 minutes or it can be three lessons Monday, Wednesday, Friday and you’re done. Or it can be something you meet every week you kind of set that for like a 20-week kind of schedule, for example, and then you reset. It’s really up to you! I would really encourage you to kind of peruse the website because that’ll help really make it a little more clear.
So when I’ve taught on Outschool I’ve done one-off classes and I’ve also done three classes a week. We met three days. Another class was poetry and we met Monday through Friday for a week. I’ve also done one ongoing class where we just met every Tuesday and Thursday. I don’t remember the exact days, but at 8 am – whatever it was. We just met, and we kept going, and we kept going, and it was the same topic but it made it easy. So while you do have to plan lessons once it’s planned it’s planned. You don’t have to spend any more time before every lesson getting things ready because you have your visuals, you have any printouts you want them to have, you have all of your stuff ready to go.
How Can I Make Money Online Teaching?
How can you make money doing this? Well, you get paid per class that you book. So I’m going to use the ESL marketplace as an example again. For ESL they had a set rate per class. Whatever class you successfully finished you earned your flat rate. Let’s say, I’m going to lowball it on purpose, it was $5. It’s higher than that but let’s just make that a low easy number to work with. So you earn $5 per class you finish.
If your student didn’t show up, depending on the platform, you earn full pay. Or you earn partial pay, depending on the platform and the class. For example: trials. If they didn’t show up I didn’t have to stay there the whole time, so I only got paid for the part I had to stay there. Multiply that so $5 a class, let’s say you finished 100 classes that month, that’s $500 easy. You will get paid more than $5.
You Set Your Rate
Let’s talk about Outschool. So Outschool you set your price, which is where the draw really is. You would set it: if you’re just doing a one-off class that’s how much it is 12 for a 20-minute class. If you’re doing the three-day week camp that I did, I think I said I wanted $20 for all three classes. They don’t have to pay $20 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. It was just a $20 lump sum. For my five day a week poetry class – that was a lot more in-depth. I had printouts, slides, I just had a lot more with it. It created a lot more planning time, so I actually charged $50 for that week. We met for 30 minutes to an hour for five days of instruction. We’ll call it 45 minutes meet in the middle. It was $50 for every kid that wanted to enroll.
If I wanted to make it higher I could have made it higher. If I wanted to go lower I could have done that, too. This is where you pay attention to the time it takes you to create resources and market yourself, and how much time outside of the lesson you spend. Whether you’re grading, or you do have something that requires more pre,p or it’s something that you have to go and kind of keep buying more supplies to replenish yourself. You keep those in mind when you price it because you want to pay for all that, right? You want to pay for your materials, you want to pay for your time, you want to pay for your prep work. So you keep that in mind and you use it that way.
Keep Your Pricing Flexible and Competitive
It’s a sliding scale, especially depending on when the bookings are high and low. When the bookings are high and they’re coming in, you’re in demand, and your class is filling up, up that price! But, when you’re in a lull, you might want to lower the price. It’s a strategy to try to get some more kiddos in there. So it is up to you to keep the price the same or not. I’m not here to tell you what to charge. I am just here to tell you here’s what you can make.
So with my poetry class if I have five kids in there at $50 each that was $250 just before anything. I felt like that was pretty good! So keep that in mind as you’re planning lessons and deciding where you want to teach. Platforms have a set rate per class. Where places like Outschool, or if you’re teaching independently from anything like Outschool an ESL platform, you’re in charge of your pay a little more flexibly.
Online Teaching Job Opportunities for Stay at Home Moms
So where can you look for jobs? Well that all depends on where you want to teach! If you want a platform you’re going to look at different platforms. One platform I’ve been pretty successful on since the China laws have changed has been Cambly. I’ve had a lot more students in the Middle East there so Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia. You can teach students and adults on that platform, so depending on what you want. I did have to do an extra video just to say hey I can teach students and you know show that. If you don’t want to do it you don’t have to you’re automatically for adults. If you want some more options, make sure you check the free resource I have for you!
Free Resource to Help You Find the Online Teaching Job That’s Right For You
So if you head on over to OnlineTeacherAllyson.com/platform it’s going to give you a one-page PDF download – completely free! It’s one of those like yes or no flowcharts. It asks questions like, “Do you want to teach kids?” yes or no. “Do you want a lesson plan?” or “Do you want lessons created for you?” “What hours do you want to teach?” That’ll kind of guide you to a couple of options to help you find the best match.
So for me that best match was the ESL marketplace because I didn’t want to put a ton of extra time in. I had a one-year-old when I got started and he was still not sleeping through the night and I just did not have anything extra in me. So if you head on over, again, to OnlineTeacherAllyson.com/platform that will get you your free download and it will help you decide where you want to start. As you keep looking into it, that’ll help you decide on your pay too. So if the ESL marketplace isn’t going to pay you what you want then maybe you look towards Outschool or being completely independent.
Remember, Most Platforms Don’t Require Any Experience
Okay so I hope that was helpful and I hope that’s kind of cleared it up where when I say online teaching I don’t say online teaching as in 2020. We’re not talking about the classroom. For a lot of these platforms you don’t need any experience. Some ESL platforms do require a Bachelor’s degree. It does not have to be an education. It can be in anything! Others don’t require any sort of like advanced education degrees like a college degree so think about that as well as you’re looking at where you want to teach. I will see you next week! Please let me know if you have any questions, as always. Chat soon!
PS – If you prefer to listen, check out the Simple Tools for the Online Teacher Podcast!