If you are interested in supporting us or find something valuable from this article and are interested in signing up with VIPKID, feel free to contact me with further questions.
You can also help support us by using this REFERRAL CODE to sign up and get started with VIPKID!
What I have Learned for VIPKID
My one take away from the past 9 months on teaching with VIPKID is that this is a seriously legitimate way of earning a livable income without disruption of your world travel plans. If you are traveling, starting a blog or a Youtube channel that has not yet been monetized, then this is a great option for making ends meet. If you live in another country where the US dollar is stronger it can also give you a major financial boost to honestly thrive and be able to live a life that would take twice as much money in the States. Which would equate to working many more hours and having fewer hours to focus on your passion projects and traveling the world.
Since I started teaching with VIPKID nine months ago I have traveled around Asia. I have taken a 6,600-mile road trip from Portland, Oregon all the way to Merida, Yucatan, our new home base. I’ve been able to teach in a complete power blackout in a hostel in Bangkok. I’ve taught out of an Intensive Care Unit inside a Bali Hospital when Cassie got dengue fever. I’ve also taught in a jungle treehouse hostel at the beach in Tulum with spotty wifi while everyone was asleep and it was still dark outside.
Along all of these paths and experiences I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of teaching English.
Monthly Income
Right now, I teach seven days a week from 4:00 – 7:00 AM. I also teach two nights a week on Friday and Saturdays, typically 6:30 PM – 11:30 PM. I have been able to generate around $2300-2500 per month teaching approximately 240 classes per month. This is an extreme and aggressive form of scheduling and I would not recommend it unless you are willing to wake up at 4:00 AM and give away most of your weekend time. However, for the past 9 months, I have been able to make it work for my lifestyle, and I have learned to be social on very little sleep. I also let people know that I would love to hang out Sunday-Thursday.
Frequent Students
As the VIPKID platform grows it has continued to enhance the tools for their teachers. One of my favorite new tools is the frequent student tab on the mobile app which shows you how many frequent students you have along with potential students. With my open schedule and newly developed skill to dig deep for energy during the early morning classes, I have been able to collect 50 frequent students as well as 47 potential students. You can message and send greeting cards to the kids when they do a good job and you can also invite them to book a time for a lesson if you have a blank spot in your schedule. Having my wonderful students as frequent attendees makes it so I never have to worry about filling my schedule if I need to make a little extra income in a particular week.
Teaching with VIPKID for just 9 months so far, I have seen a lot of students come and go. It is the students that have stayed that I have been able to grow a wonderful bond with along with their parents. Having a great time laughing and goofing around along with seeing a small glimpse of life for a child in China. Life as a child in China from what I can tell is a schedule of nonstop learning and doing homework when they are not in school. Some of the kids play instruments, play sports, and have lego competitions (that seem to be a regular event in China). Sometimes they get to travel to different cities, but it always seems to be for a competition of some sorts.
Make Your Own Schedule
One of the additional main perks to VIPKID is the ability to make your own schedule, which is a huge advantage that you don’t ordinarily find in normal 9-5 jobs. This is a game-changer for people who want to travel and create the lifestyle they want.
Here’s how it works. You start off with a blank monthly calendar with all of the time slots closed. You get to open whatever you feel works with your schedule. I typically book about 2 weeks out opening and filling a morning shift and an evening shift working around the sleeping hours of the kids in Bejing. One trick I have found is when I open all the time slots I want on Sunday, they fill up quickly.
Although VIPKID has made it so I can open time slots whenever I’d like and depending on our schedule for that week – there is the one catch. If you open a slot and it gets booked, and the student doesn’t cancel, you cannot cancel that class without penalty or a very official note. You are only allowed 6 cancellations or no-shows within a six month period. By the 7th one, you will be put on probation and could be fired.
Kids teaching environment
In the nine months of teaching with VIPKID, I have taught kids who were in a car, in what looks like a call center of VIPKID students, in hotel rooms and also one student who had the VIPKID teacher experience of taking a class in his own hospital bed. Some of the best classes I have had are where the whole family is involved and the intro song is sung by mom, dad, 3 brothers and grandma. That was amazing for me to see and really fun to experience as a teacher because I am usually all by myself in the corner of our living room. I have grown accustomed to adapting to new experiences and quickly learning how to adjust to their learning environment. If I can get the core information to the student in between reception service and the distractions of the outside world that is a win for me. And that in itself is a success.
Best moments
Getting to know the student has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this job. Watching as students who can barely say one word in English from the start, go on to reading and having fluent conversations in English after a short period of time is awesome. From the outside, the VIPKID lessons seem like they are all over the place. I might be teaching about the time of the day then suddenly teaching obscure words like ‘wardrobe’ (which I think I have only used a couple of times in my entire life). But it works. It might be due to the constant dedication of the student combined with their intense school schedules, but in only 9 months I have seen massive transformations.
Hardest moments
I had one of my frequent students lose a tooth mid-class last week and I got to see my face in the webcam turn from tan to white to a pale shade of green. It just caught me at the wrong time and through shared panic, we ended up laughing throughout the half-hour lesson with the occasional plead of brave glimpses where I encouraged him to just close his eyes and pull. We made it through that lesson but it was like pulling teeth, pun intended.
Another hard moment was when I had the stomach flu in the morning and had to get up frequently to throw up – once by our pool and once in our sink because I could not get to the bathroom in time. VIPKID is great, but one thing I have found over time is that you have to roll the dice if you are going to get an excused absence. Oftentimes you just teach, hold your breath and keep pushing through using the 5-minute breaks in between classes to lay down, get a cold cloth and keep going. After that incident the support of my students was overwhelming. After class I had 5 messages on the app, all hoping for my quick recovery, reassuring me that they had my back and were still happy to have our class together.
I have been sick a couple of times during the nine months with fevers, colds and other small things and thankfully, I was able to teach without much issue. The worst medical scare was not my own, it was my wife. I ended up teaching in an ICU in Bali for 5 days where my wife was being treated for Dengue Fever. On one occasion I taught through her getting an IV exchanged. It was painful for me to sit and pretend like everything was ok when in my head and in the hospital room it was clearly not.
Tips For Traveling VIPKID Teachers
Have a go-bag
I have a small, zippable go bag from a Square Space event that has been my travel companion in order to safely transport my props and tools from hotel room to hotel room, country to country.
Reward Games
I have a series of animal games that has been growing in diversity as I get to know more and more students’ favorite animals. When I first started out I would sandwich the paper characters between two boards for safety as I traveled. But later, Cassie’s mom laminated each one to make it so I can throw them in my bag with 100% certainty that they will be safe on the other end.
Light
The next item in my go bag is a small, very bright desk lamp that I can plug into my laptop just in case the power goes out while I am traveling. This helped me tremendously when I was caught in a two-hour blackout in Bangkok. I was able to use my sim card, hotspot and that trusty little light to get me through.
My Background
I have a minimal background when I travel and as far as I know, they are not required by VIPKID outside of the intro class. However, I believe they create an atmosphere that is a lot more inviting for the student which only helps with the retention of that student. My background – which consists of my name, a couple of letters and numbers with some funny faces – has not changed as much as my games have. I have laminated everything for the same reason mentioned before in my reward games.
Webcam
I have used my small HD webcam by Logitech for the past 9 months. Without fail, it has built-in autofocus so it can track me while I move around. It also replaces the very dim camera on my 2012 MacBook.
Headphones
I got the cheapest headphones possible with a mic and noise reduction on them. If you are traveling and tossing everything into a bag while traveling on buses, airplanes and a couple of old speed boats (in our case), then I recommend buying as cheap as you can. In the first flight to Thailand, the cheap plastic on the headphones snapped and was quickly repaired with black gaffers tape from our film kit. My one cheap pair of headphones has lasted me for the past nine months with repairing them every once and awhile.
Laptop
My new-to-me 2012 laptop is the last and most important item in my go-bag for teaching on the road. It is good enough for my purposes. And because the resale value of MacBooks is pretty low, I picked it up for only $400 USD off the Facebook Marketplace in Portland. I know there are cheaper options for laptops but I have been with Apple for too long to change my ways.
Simcard with a hotspot
This has saved me multiple times when the internet goes down in our home base of Merida, Yucatan. It has seamlessly turned potential missed or canceled classes into classes my students and VIPKID are unaware of the panic happening minutes before the class. Moments where I was sweating, running up and down the stairs to grab my cellphone and making sure everything was connected properly for the class through my hotspot. Having this backup plan is a must, fail-proof method for your teaching career.
I would love to hear about your experience with teaching English on VIPKID or other platforms.
And if you got something valuable from this article, and are interested in signing up with VIPKID, feel free to contact me with further questions.
You can also help support us by using this REFERRAL CODE to sign up and get started with VIPKID!
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