I got one parent from my school who responded to my ad, but I can’t tutor her son (who goes to TAS now) because her younger son will be coming back to my school starting this week and therefore is in breach of my contract. Figures the one offer I get, I can’t take. :fume:
[quote=“LagerLout”]G’day again, Ryan of myu.com
What exactly is “a lot”? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?
The thing is, I’ve been watching the listings on your site for the past week and have noticed something interesting.
The number of registered teachers has increased by about 10. However, of these newbies (and the teachers who were already registered prior to this time last week, and who keep refreshing their profiles to stay at the front of the queue) I can’t recall one who has altered their “time available” to indicate they’re picking up work.
Care to comment?
Cheers[/quote]
Hi, sorry for the delayed reply, but, well…excuses, excuses.
Anyway, to address your point about teachers’ schedules not changing to indicate that they’re picking up work:
-
The availability slots are each about 5-6 hours wide. So if a teacher picks up a couple hours a day from our site, there’s no real reason why they’d have to change any of their listed available times. Six hours, you may be tempted to think, is too wide, however, it’s a narrower scheduling chart than what other sites provide (which is to say no such chart) and it gives a general idea while still allowing for flexibility. We always encourage teachers to list specific times in their comment block.
-
We encourage our teachers to come back and update their availability, but this does not always happen. People are busy, and all that. We understand that and have what we believe to be a fair policy about refunding students should a teacher say they are available when they’re not.
As for how many is “a lot,” I can say that right now we need teachers more than we need students. We have many students that cannot find a teacher that matches their preferences.
So…sign up and try it out! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist a self-plug.)
Ack! It’s happened again. Unfortunately, it seems that quite a few parents from my school are looking for tutors and they seem to keep finding me. Maybe I should put a warning on my profile that those who have kids in my school cannot hire me as a private tutor for those kids or their siblings.
If I may give a suggestion, myury, how about instead of the only qualifications being either TESL/TEFL and Education Major, you could add CELTA, DELTA, and IELTS. And when you say TOEFL, do you mean the teacher has passed it or that they know how to teach it? I have never heard of any qualification or training specifically for teaching the TOEFL, but I could be wrong.
Isn’t this kind of work technically ilegal?
Teaching privates is illegal for most of us (ARC holders) but some foreigners can legally teach privates (e.g. those married to locals and with APRC’s).
Having said that, if you are going to teach illegally then you are probably far better off teaching privates than taking on a second illegal job. There aren’t too many reports of the police raiding coffee shops in the search for foreigners teaching illegally. Not yet anyway 
Thank you ImaniOU for the ideas. What we mean by TOEFL is that the teacher has experience prepping students for the test.
I’ll look into adding more/better qualifications. Thanks again.
Thank you ImaniOU for the ideas. What we mean by TOEFL is that the teacher has experience prepping students for the test.
I’ll look into adding more/better qualifications. Thanks again.[/quote]
In that case, perhaps making a separate field or including IELTS and TOEFL, TOEIC in the “able to teach” section. Thanks for the attention!
Maybe it would help to be certified as a tutor. The National Tutoring Association, headquartered in Florida, USA, requires some documentation and then certifies tutors. Their website: www.ntatutor.org
Is that recognized internationally?
The NTA has about 4,000 members and is the largest such organization. But, institutions in Taiwan have never heard of it. Nonetheless, it does accept applicants outside the USA, and a certificate may put one ahead of other tutors in the eyes of tutees or their parents.