Classtalk Education (website is down) is based in Shenzhen, China and they are looking for native speaking teachers to teach large group (40-60 students) online classes at public schools around China. Classes are from 7:30am to 5:30pm China time. Teachers must have a bachelor’s degree or higher, and previous experience teaching both offline and online is preferred. Classtalk pays $25 to $40 per 40 minute class, depending on qualifications, teaching performance and tenure. They also offer courseware design opportunities and referral bonuses for our most qualified teachers.
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It's an honest company and the per-hour pay isn't bad but it's not a company that you can rely on for consistent hours. You won't get more than 10-15 hours per week, there are frequent cancellations and you have two 6-8 week breaks throughout the year. Some weeks that you're working, 5-10 of your classes might be cancelled.
You are at the whim of the schools that you work with (as you teach classes of 50-60 students in public schools in China).
Classtalk will invite you in with promises of "lots of classes" but in reality you get about 10 classes a week max. Now you might be thinking, 40 classes a month is still ok! Well sorry but they have mass cancellations too. Literally every second week there will be 5 of your 10 classes cancelled due to a range of cirucmstances, such as a public holiday, a school holiday, mid-terms, classes changed to the weekend to facilitate a national holiday, the list is endless. Now one very important thing James and Dawson fail to tell you is that between each semester there is a 6 week break of all classes in which they expect you to wait for 6 weeks without pay and be eager and ready for the next semester. Six weeks without any pay! But get this, they also lie about the duration of these breaks. In reality the break starts 2-3 weeks before as schools are doing exams and cancel their remaining online classes entirely and do not restart the online classes 2-3 weeks later. So your 6 week break has not become a 10-12 week break. Now if that isn't bad enough the material they provide is very very poor, shockingly poor, like did the kids do daddy's homework poor. It is worth signing up tho just to see James to very seriously and comically instruct you to pull out your phone of a photo you took of the fill in blanks slide so that you will know what words go into the blanks...um...me not so smart, me never think can write answer on powerpoint next slide....it's a bit like Simple Jack from Tropic Thunder trying to use technology. James the beauty will also demand you use manycam to type out your sentences instead of simply well um again having them prepared with a one click pop up on a powerpoint. So the dude is literally typing what he is thinking with typos and grammar errors all over the place unaware that while he is typing the classroom he is supposed to be "teaching" is in absolute silence. The level of buffonery is frustratingly hard to deal with. God forbid you suggest, um, dude maybe we can prepare the full sentence before class and just like click one button and the full sentence pops up instantly for the students and we can focus on having them speak...that will result in a bruised ego for Simple Jack and your 5 classes being reduced to 4 lol petty and dumb. Seriously stay away from this company. In a nutshell they want to pay a teacher for just the minutes they have class and sneakily skip pay for preparation, visas, accommodation, holidays and benefits. It is a disgrace. Let the Chinese treat their own people like shit but westerners should stand up for their rights and expect the standard of workers rights we have evolved to in the 21st century not pre unionisation UK during the industrial revolution.
yet another waste of time data collection service that never gets back to you. worthless in every way! they like pretending you're hired and then never answer you about anything! I have news for ALL of you regarding ALL Asian schools that claim they pay the rates they advertise....if you think this school (or ANY of them) pays the kind of money they advertise (classtalk: $25-$40 an hour...how stupid do you have to be?), I have some land in Florida I like to sell you...really cheap. as always, and once again, don't give your info to places like this without FIRST asking questions. When they don't answer your inquiries (and believe me, they won't) then you will know in advance what a waste of YOUR time they really are.
Thanks for the helpful warning, I never know which schools can be trusted! Do you mind me asking if you did an interview or demo with them?
I also applied but never heard back, my application seems to go into a vortex, I followed up but no response either.
Please note they only accept teachers from US or Canada as per their website.
Contact Michael at eslfluent@gmail.com for quicker response.