Gogokid (stopped operating in August 2021). They are looking for Canadian and American teachers to teach Chinese kids (mostly aged 4 -12). Their classes are 1 to 1 and 25 minutes long. Teachers must have a bachelors degree and teaching experience is preferred. Peak teaching times are from 12am – 9am EST and 9pm – 11:30pm EST. You are only required to teach a minimum of one class per week. Gogokid pays $14 – $25 USD per hour based on qualifications, attendance and your performance. They offer bonuses for good results and they are currently offering a $300 bonus for new teachers who teach 3 classes in their first month. This is a new company so we need some reviews.
Please leave us your thoughts, comments and reviews of Gogokid.
View Comments
Hello,
I want to apply for online teaching. Can you please share the application with me?
Thanks
WARNING. Some parent reviews are becoming hostile. After only a few negative reviews, they may deactivate your account - with no notice - despite having taught thousands of classes over years. They will cancel all your bookings immediately. You will not be able to say goodbye to any of your students. If you choose to teach here, you need at least 2 backups. You cannot count on your next 2 weeks' bookings. Teachers with higher pay seem to be targeted.
There is a problematic/disturbing trend on gogokid now where parents are becoming more aggressive and bolder with negative feedback. This is happening to myself and my colleagues. We were shocked. We have a lot of classes and before it was a 3 star review once every 5 months, now it is every 2 weeks. A lot of the students are new now, while regulars are steady they still want to see other teachers since Gogokid like vipkid massively hires. Gogokid is encouraging the parents more than ever to say anything they want and the parents are taking it literally and using it as a cathartic dumping ground. There is also a down side to the playback video where parents may analyze it for hours and then nitpick. I got a negative review when the parents left their kid alone and she experienced technical problems. Tech support couldn't reach the parents. She blew out her microphone so there was an earsplitting echo. If I didn't speak quietly we would have lost our hearing. I explained tactfully in the feedback an explanation as to why I was whispering. I was careful to only mention the microphone. I didn't mention them. I didn't point fingers. Still negative feedback. So yes, I get all the negative feedback invalidated. But it is stressful and I was encouraged(high pressured) to have a skype meeting to figure out what "my" problem is. They couldn't find any problems, but suggested I could try a different background. I did. And I ordered new props. Is it working? No. I work for a couple of other companies but unfortunately Gogokid is the bulk of my income, and despite of negative-feedback- being invalidated I live in fear about my contract not being renewed. If anyone can recommend a company that they recommend that would be awesome.
Trump's Executive Order takes effect September 20, 2020. Bytedance and all its subsidiaries, including Gogokid, are affected. If your bank even allowed you to accept payment, you/they could be charged with a felony and fined $300,000.
I worked for Gogokid for over a year. Their incentive plan has changed over time and gotten worse. I did nothing differently, and overnight lost $2/hour. I kept a very high feedback rating throughout my time there, but kept getting warning e-mails. When I wrote back, asking who complained, where is the review? I was told to take their training classes. I asked if it was mandatory, they said no. My schedule was constantly booked to the max. Pay attention to this next part... super sneaky... suddenly, I had zero bookings for the next 2 weeks. I thought there was an IT issue. I looked on their FB page and saw some other teachers saying the same thing, absolutely no bookings. After my final class of the week, I was locked out of the system. Couldn't even get in to do my student assessments. I got multiple warnings that I would be penalized for not doing them. Then I got a generic email saying I had been terminated for basically "something or nothing, we don't know". So I haven't worked for them in nearly 3 months, but I am still getting warning emails about parent feedback. I have always replied, asking to specify. I never get a response, obviously. The point it, all of it is fake. There never were parent complaints. It's meant to scare teachers and then give the company a seemingly valid reason to get rid of you whenever they want, by trying to convince you that you're not a good teacher. Well... I had taught more than 800 classes and had 3 1-star ratings from the kind of parents we know are going to give them :-/ Since they're hiring now, I assume they just wanted to get rid of all the teachers with high salaries like mine and hire more for less. **Tech issues with platform, deductions, very little support and obviously no encouragement.
The reviews before August 2019 were mostly positive, then the tide turned to mostly negative. Many of the teachers say the same thing. It started out great and then went to Hell. I was so happy and inspired to teach back then, and then the tide turned and they went to work demoralizing me. They don't know how to treat American teachers, so they treat us like Chinese factory workers. They want us to work more and do better work, so they cut our pay and demoralized us. I guess that works for Chinese factory workers.
Happy and motivated teachers do better work and we spend our own money on props, puppets, and decorations, and we spend our own time dreaming up new reward systems for the students. Demoralized teachers do the bare minimum. We pretend to be happy and energetic because we are required to - but the students can see right through our fake smiles and false energy as we suppress our yawns and struggle to stay awake at 4AM.
In spite of the pay cut and the horribly demoralizing environment, my pay is still highly competitive and my bookings are good and the 25 minute classes with the 5 minute breaks are highly productive. I am rated as being among their best teachers but they treat me badly, so I'm sure that it's much worse for everyone else.
On Glassdoor everyone says they changed the pay structure. They are a shady company if you see all of the ratings on Glassdoor.com. I am gong to stay away from them!!
They gave a paycut at Xmas. They changed the credit score system (anyone at a high rate gets a paycut - my paycut is .80/hour). The credit score system is very scammy, and they reserve the right to adjust your score at any time for any reason (they wrote a credit score loophole in the contract). Your pay will vary day to day, and you will not be able to calculate it. Your pay is at the mercy of parent opinion.
They never support their teachers. They often complain about teachers in the newsletter. They send threatening emails. Quality assurance is condescending, offers the same copy-paste blanket advice to everyone, and essentially harasses teachers. Teachers claim that QA docked them when parents left 5 stars (and verbal conversations were had between parent and teacher - to confirm there was no issue). They request unpaid meetings on Skype (for teachers with less than .5% parent complaints - and thousands of classes taught). Teachers are treated like employees, not independent contractors, yet we receive no employee benefits (good luck when you get sick $$$).
The customer service is very bad - they do not understand or want to understand your issue. Whatever they say is set in stone, even if it makes no sense. If you write a ticket, they will "respond" by shifting the blame, closing the ticket and leaving the matter unresolved. Teachers have had their schedules frozen or contracts not renewed (for medical issues that were documented and approved by the company). They invalidate but do not remove feedback, even when it is inappropriate (parents wrote the teacher is ugly, old, etc.).
I cannot recommend this company. I have deleted my prior 5 star review. When I started (over a year ago), they were great. Now every change is increasingly worse. They must have new management, and their attitude toward teachers is SO disrespectful. Many teachers got into this gig because they were sick of being disrespected. Expect more of that at Gogokid.
The glitchy platform is worse than when I started. The app requests full admin privileges, and many teachers are concerned about spyware.
BEWARE THE PRIVACY POLICY. There's some shady stuff. Read it.
The courseware gives no thought to how students actually learn. They should take a TESOL themselves! It follows the audio-lingual method, which was established to "teach" English to soldiers in WW2. There's a big gap between K2 and each successive level (students at the upper levels often struggle). The interactivity varies, and it often interferes with actual teaching. There's a dearth of content in some lessons (teach "hi" to a toddler for 25 minutes). The students' levels are OFTEN inappropriate, and you will not get the level changed. If you don't complete the material, you will get a bad review and lose money. This leads many teachers to rush through the material that students don't understand. Teachers are afraid to say students are less than "excellent" for fear of a bad review/pay cut. This results in an increased gap between student/level. They need to work on curriculum in a BAD way. They need to level kids appropriately.
Wowza. Shaking. My. Head. Everyone loved this company when it started. Bait and switch. Teachers were poached from other companies, and then policies were changed (to be worse than the companies we came from). Everyone's complaining. Nobody in management cares. Happy teachers=happy teaching. I'm not happy with my experience. I am no longer full time, and I give all peak slots to someone else. I'm building up my clientele/student base elsewhere (which I sacrificed to come here).
I would NOT recommend them. I was with them 1.5 years ago and had 0 classes. So they promised a $300 bonus for teaching 3 classes in your 1st 30 days, but they didn't advertiser to students until like 2 months after we had all signed contracts. Then I had no classes for the following 5 months. I decided to let my contract expire and not renew. A few months ago I tried them again as my bookings with VIPKID had dropped a bit. I went through with a new email and as a new teacher. I had to do all the trainings. Then when I uploaded my info, they said I was a returning teacher. They reactivated my old profile and had apparently been keeping it active since my "credit score" was now 36 due to not teaching any classes. They refused to restore it to the starting point of a new teacher. I tried for 3 months to get a class, opening peak hours every day but nothing. I gave up again and am not trying anymore.
Loved GoGoKid at the beginning, then they changed everything, Payment, Incentives, Bonuses. They change the technology of the classrooms, before they have worked out the problems with the one they already have. It seems like they started out small, very teacher oriented, now that they have gotten bigger, they only care about the bottom line, not the teachers, or kids. I am looking for somewhere else to teach.