China's training course market flapped its wings, and Sarah Keane in the United States lost her job.
Keane is a mother of two and lives in Oakville, Connecticut. In October 2018, she began working part-time at VIPKid, the head of online children's English education, and almost all of her students live in China.
When talking about her work, she said her biggest surprise was that many students invited her into her life, and she saw a wider world. Once, her students were taking a class at a restaurant in Beijing, and when they pushed the camera outside, Keane saw a row of tall buildings and flashing neon lights. "It's amazing," Keane said.
Being able to work from home is another benefit for Keane. Keane holds a master's degree in psychology and has been a teacher for more than 15 years, and after getting the job at VIPKid, she quit her full-time job in kindergarten to focus on online tutoring.
A variety of online educational institutions for foreign teachers. Image source: Network
She works from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., fridays and Saturdays from 8:30 p.m. to midnight, with a monthly salary no lower than her original full-time job, while allowing her to stay at home and take care of her children. She said she thought she had found the "job of her dreams."
On August 8, Keane finished his 4-hour class as usual, and when he opened his phone, he found that he had fried the fryer in the VIPKid Facebook group he frequented. Many people are discussing a piece of news: VIPKid issued an official statement saying that the company supports the "double reduction" policy, no longer hires foreign teachers outside China, and will no longer sell new course packages involving foreign teachers from now on; from August 9, it will no longer open courses for foreign teachers to old users. Two days ago, GoGoKid, another English-language education platform, had informed foreign teachers that all classes in the program had been canceled and that the program was coming to an end.
Quincy Smith, founder of ESL Authority, an American online teaching recruitment site, estimates that there are about 100 online education companies in China that recruit English teachers in North America. According to FlexJobs, a remote part-time job search site, online tutoring is now the most common remote work in the United States. According to incomplete statistics, VIPKid employs 70,000 foreign teachers in North America, and Dada English and Whale Foreign Teacher Peiyou have 10,000 foreign teachers mainly in Europe and the United States. GoGoKid has about 4,000 co-teachers in the United States, and there are thousands of North American foreign teachers in Ping An Studious and Magic Ear.
If you count, it's close to 100,000 people.
Now, all the big education platforms have said that they will no longer hire overseas personnel to carry out training activities. Affected by this, Keane and other North American teachers are on the verge of unemployment.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > once: gained time and financial freedom</h1>
Every morning at 5 a.m., Autmn Fletcher walks into her study in Monmouth, Illinois, opens her laptop, and just in time to teach English to Chinese children coming home from school.
Fletcher, a mother of three, has been an online English tutor for almost three years, teaching mostly Chinese students between the ages of 5 and 11. She built a basic teaching platform with her home laptop, headphones and webcam, supplemented by various teaching aids such as whiteboards and flashcards, to teach basic English grammar, daily conversation, English idioms and songs.
When Fletcher's VIPKid was founded in 2013, it had only 10 teachers and a handful of students. It is now one of the largest online English tutoring platforms in China, with 800,000 online students in 63 countries and territories, but most of them are still in China.
VIPKid。 Image source: Network
According to VIPKid, its teachers must be native English speakers, hold a bachelor's degree, and can work legally in the United States and Canada. Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of job search site FlexJobs, said: "Online tutoring jobs are especially for college-educated Americans who want to find low-threshold jobs. It is also a very attractive option for people living in rural areas, areas with long commutes or few economic opportunities. ”
Before starting tutoring, Fletcher worked in sales and marketing, and because there were very few jobs in her town, she had to drive more than an hour to work in a neighboring city. "I have to come out early and return late every day, and my son is often sick in the nursery."
In 2018, Fletcher had a serious car accident in which 13 bones were shattered throughout his body. As she lay in a hospital bed, wondering if she could still walk, she wondered: What do you want to make a living?
By chance, Fletcher noticed that a friend on Facebook was teaching Chinese children English through the Internet, which piqued her interest. She applied for the job, and in December 2018, Fletcher traveled to Chicago on crutches for an interview and training.
Online course page. Image source: Thomas Rowe
Fletcher said the job gave the family a huge cushion, so that she did not have to worry about the family income when she slowly recovered from the car accident, and she could play with the children after work at 9 a.m. every day. At the same time, work also gives her confidence, "Although I am at home, I am not unemployed, and the children know that there is a time every day that they cannot disturb me, 'because my mother is at work'." ”
In the United States, Chinese online English tutoring platforms have allowed many stay-at-home moms to earn valuable extra income like Fletcher and Keane, and many public school teachers are accustomed to tutoring their families with online classes on various holidays. In addition, it also allows some people to explore the lifestyle they want.
GoGoKid advertising. Image source: Technode
You can backpack for just $50 a day, a figure rocky Trifari calculated. Triffari graduated from a prestigious school in the United States, since high school he has wanted to travel the world, after a successful interview in 2017, he finally got a job as a teacher at VIPKid, his dream immediately came true, he began to travel to various countries without saving a penny, the first stop was in China, he also gave himself a Chinese name, called Taishan.
After all, the job doesn't require a regular location, as long as there is an internet connection. He works 7 days a week and earns $125-200 a day, and this economic and time freedom allows him to travel to 15 countries around the world outside of work, while also learning to speak Chinese and Spanish.
Triffari calculated that he has taught more than 1,000 Chinese students over the years, writing on his blog, "Parents will tell us how much their children are looking forward to after-school English lessons." My students are so lovely and hardworking. I admire their focus on learning. ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="119" > cute and tired students</h1>
In social media groups on platforms like VIPKid and GoGoKid, many teachers talk passionately about their students. They clearly like their Chinese students, and like Trifari, many teachers say that Chinese children are smart, hardworking, and respectful of their teachers, and many are advanced in English and even speak a second foreign language.
This is not only an opportunity for Chinese children to learn foreign languages, but also a channel for ordinary people in North America to know and understand young Chinese groups.
Many people have also developed friendships with the parents of the children, and a woman named Elizabeth M. D's teacher said that she became good friends with many parents, and some students would meet with her when they came to the United States during the holidays, so that they could understand each other culturally.
But the teachers also said that they did understand China's "double subtraction" policy, and almost every teacher said that they saw that the children were very tired, and sometimes they could see that the students were not willing to take English classes, so there was always a parent sitting next to them.
Image source: studyabroad
Kristie Hunter, who has worked at GoGoKid for three years, says teachers know that Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival, and May Day and Golden Week are recognized as the off-season for teaching, when bookings will decrease.
But it's not absolute, "There are kids in my class when a large family sits around a round table to celebrate." Hunter said he also found it difficult for some students to concentrate in class, "They told me that they had taken several extracurricular classes, had a lot of homework to do, and didn't know how much they would do." ”
But some teachers argue that they are not the culprit, Hunter said, "In fact, my students say that going to my class is the most relaxing time for them." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="121" > the last lesson</h1>
Recently, many foreign teachers have been even busier than usual.
Institutions such as VIPKid and Magic Ear have said that courses that students have already purchased will not be canceled, and parents have basically said that they would prefer their children to attend classes rather than get a refund. Fletcher said she has opened all of her booking slots to the remaining students, some with 30 lessons left and some with hundreds of lessons left — which could take a year or two to complete.
Once the existing booked courses are all completed, the teachers' mission on these platforms will also end, which may mean that they need to find new jobs as soon as possible. Smith of ESL Authority, an online teaching recruitment site in the United States, said countries such as South Korea, Japan and Russia also have strong demand for online English tutoring, and his company has 100 to 300 tutoring vacancies every month, but "the biggest market is still China."
ESL AUTHORITY official website. Image source: ESL AUTHORITY HP
Some teachers said that although their online classes were monitored, parents managed to connect with them on social media, some parents and children just wanted to say goodbye to the teachers, and others had begun to discuss asking teachers to continue to teach their children or themselves English.
This change will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the finances of many teachers, but they have been prepared for the transition work for several years, and the previous part-time English tutoring work has indeed laid the foundation for their career development.
Since 2019, China has issued a series of policies to deal with the problem of unqualified foreign teachers raging in the market. In 2020, China requires That English tutoring platforms not be content with just being able to speak English, but instead require teachers to provide credible credentials and undergo stricter background checks. This has squeezed a subset of teachers out of the market.
The Ministry of Education held a press conference to introduce the "double reduction" policy. Image source: Today's headlines
At the same time, the pandemic has brought a lot of changes to the occupation field in the United States, and today, "remote" employment in a large company or perennial work from home is no longer as rare as it was a few years ago, and teachers have surprisingly found that the services they have provided to Chinese companies in recent years have also taught them valuable skills.
Fletcher said her passion for English education has fuelled her passion for English education, and since 2019 she has been working as an English teacher for a local education advocacy organization. It was also because of the buffer provided her with this time, she said, that she also started a job as an asset manager.
Image source: Network
Christie Hunt said several years of distance learning urged her to develop new teaching methods that think more about how to spark student interest and engagement, and unlike in the physical classroom before, she drastically reduced her use of collateral language and increased use of props and other visual aids. This experience and skills have led her to become a teacher counselor, teaching teachers how to adapt to the online teaching model.
This may be something that China's education giants did not expect beforehand — they have also brought new changes to the American job market. However, this effect cannot be sustained any longer.
Foreign teachers currently living in China are not affected, but English-language training industry professionals say the market is flooded with unregulated players and unqualified teachers.
According to a report by the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, before the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, more than 400,000 foreigners were engaged in foreign teacher work in China, only one-third of whom were qualified, and many of them did not speak English in their native language, with an uncertified teacher certificate and a foreigner's face.
"Internet celebrity" Tim Gascoin in the online foreign teacher community. Image source: Tim Gascoigne
International schools, public schools in first-tier cities, and large companies often rigorously review foreign teacher qualifications and conduct thorough background checks to ensure that teachers have no criminal history, especially sexual offences. But small private institutions don't care about this — unqualified teachers and non-native speakers are paid much less than qualified people.
Hunt said one student reconnected with her through social media, who lives in a rural area where English is poorly taught. "I really sympathize with this student." She said, "Her parents almost cried when they told me about it this morning, but I think that with such a high passion for learning English, she will always succeed." ”
Text | Zhan Juan