Online ESL Teacher for Open English
Summary(Review): Open English has grown over the years to become the largest provider of teaching English to students in South America. Although the salary is not that great, this company is highly professional, and if you are a reliable teacher, you will end up with a full schedule. The pay rate is $8-13 and is based mainly on seniority. There is a minimum requirement of 25 hours per week.
Job Overview for Online ESL Teacher
Pay Rate per Hour:
Minimum: $13
Maximum: $15
Class Size:
1-10
Student Ages:
High School & College Prep (age 15-18)
Adult (age 18+)
Class Schedule:
Early Morning (6am-9am)
Morning (9am-12pm)
Afternoon (12pm-3pm)
Late Afternoon (3pm-6pm)
Evening (6pm-9pm)
Night (9pm-12am)
Late Night (12am-3am)
Job Details for Online ESL Teacher
Accent(s):
Native North American
Degree Required:
No
Certification:
Yes
Years Experience:
1
Min Hours Week:
10
Internet Speed(Mbps):
Min Uploading: 1 MB/s
Min Downloading: 1 MB/s
Online ESL Teacher Job Description
- Complete the Open English certification program and other required training when needed
- Deliver high quality, English language instruction in live group classes, through our learning environment platform (audio/video based). Employ the OE curriculum, online pedagogy and teaching methodology to provide a consistent student experience
- Provide individual feedback to students after each class
- Work collaboratively with academic staff to develop new content and contribute to curriculum projects as and when opportunities arise
- Maintain knowledge of the Open English learning platform, brand, Company policies and goals, internal communication systems, and our students
Online ESL Teacher Job Requirements
Requirements:
- Must have prior experience teaching English, preferably as a second language, online experience preferred
- Currently enrolled in or has completed a degree program at an accredited institution of higher education in Linguistics, Education, English, Modern Languages or Literatures, or related field; Bachelor’s degree or higher preferred
- Conversational Spanish and/or Portuguese as a second language is preferred
- TESOL, TEFL, CELTA or equivalent preferred
- General awareness of and ability to apply the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)
- Familiarity with ESL assessments, with the ability to evaluate and create assessments
- Must be able to communicate in English both clearly and professionally, both orally and in writing
- Native English speaker with clear pronunciation
- Must provide ten (10) hours minimum of availability each week (including (five (5) peak time hours)
- Must have a reliable, high-speed (at least 1MB) internet connection
- Proficiency with Microsoft Suite and an ability to quickly master various online communication and instruction tools especially learning platforms
- Comfortable in a dynamic work environment
We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.
Online ESL Teacher Salary and Compensation
$13-$15 per hour
How to Apply to Online ESL Teacher?
Company Information for Open English
Open English (“OE”) has been a leader in online English Language Learning in Latin America since 2007. We provide individuals and corporate clients in emerging markets worldwide with a unique, practical and fun learning experience that caters to their own schedule and pace. The OE platform offers programs in English Learning with both on-demand content and personalized, live classes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with teachers who are all native English speakers.
With the acquisition of Next U in 2015, OE is now positioned as a global education technology leader offering various online certificates in digital technology specializations. The Next U portfolio of certificates currently includes online certification programs in web development, digital marketing, and mobile app development, including Android and iOS.
To date, the company has offered its online classes to over 500,000 students across Latin America, Brazil, the United States, and now Turkey. The company has been featured on numerous media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, CNN en Español, and NBC. Open English has raised $120M USD in funding – the third highest in the U.S. Ed Tech industry and as of 2014 has been named by PitchBook as the fifth most valuable Ed Tech company in the world. Open English offices are located in Miami, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Caracas, and Sao Paulo.
Online ESL Teacher Reviews
Teacher Reviews
Read the post here.
My review of OpenEnglish
Hey guys, I was reminiscing about my time working for OpenEnglish and thought you deserved a review. I’m writing this on my phone so I’ll probably leave a lot of stuff out. Also, I worked for them over a year ago so I’ve forgotten a lot and their policies might have changed. Leave a comment if you have any questions or need any clarification, or if you’ve worked for them recently and need me to correct something!
Now, the biggest thing about OpenEnglish that would be of interest to us is: THE COMPANY PAYS YOU FOR ALL HOURS YOU’RE SCHEDULED!!!
Ok, so backtracking a bit:
ABOUT THE COMPANY
OpenEnglish caters to adults in South America. The majority of their lessons are group classes with up to 12 people I think, but I also had a couple 1 on 1 classes that were free talk rather than following a set lesson. Their peak hours are in the evening in EST. They made me fill out a w8-Ben as a Canadian so I believe they’re headquartered in the US but you’re an independent contractor. They make you work minimum 10 hours during peak times but limit you to a max of 24 hours/week.
APPLICATION PROCESS
When I applied for OpenEnglish, they weren’t hiring. They told me to apply for a contract instructor role and they’d contact me if they had an opening. It was like a regular job application. I had no ESL experience at the time so I put my experience with tutoring and TAing in college. *I also had to specify my hourly rate*. The website that told me about the company said they pay around $10/hour so that’s what I asked for. I’ve heard other people say they got $12 or $13 and I don’t know if, if I’d asked for more I would have gotten more or just been ignored when they had an opening. But if I were applying now I’d ask for $15/hour and let them counter offer if they really couldn’t go past 12 or 13. I don’t remember if they demand native speakers.
ONBOARDING
At least a couple months after applying, I got a notice that I was being offered a contract position for $10/hour. I’ve heard that they tend to hire in batches. The “admin” wage (for completing their training and stuff” was $9/hour and they only paid you for a certain # of training hours. However I found it easy to finish the training much faster than what they were paying for, I just skipped some of the YouTube videos and it was fine. I think the contract was for 6 months and I don’t know what the renewal process was like because I didn’t finish my first contract… (I know this looks like a bad trend but seriously guys, I just don’t like mandatory minimum hours).
SCHEDULING
As far as availability goes, you had to state how many hours you wanted (just 10, up to 15, up to 20, up to 24) and specify your availability. You could only change your schedule once or twice per contract, although a little bit after I started they asked for new availability because of daylight saving’s time. There was no guarantee of hours except the minimum 10. At first I said I only wanted 10 hours but I put down about 12 available hours, and what I found was that they scheduled me with breaks in my schedule! So if I put 7pm-midnight, they might have me from 7-9 and then 9:30-12. After reducing my available hours to 10, I realized having time to go to the bathroom was not necessarily a bad thing. But I would rather submit my own availability with holes in it than let them decide my breaks for me. I also don’t know what I would have gotten if I wanted more hours. They don’t guarantee hours so I suspect if I submitted 15 hours and they only gave me 12 then I would again have unplanned holes in my schedule. The class schedule was set every week. You could swap classes with other teachers but they used SalesForce and it was a very complicated system where you had to find another teacher, ask to swap classes, get their agreement, and submit the swap for approval. When I was leaving I heard people had started a Facebook group to make asking for swaps easier so I hope that’s still around.
THE CLASSES:
I think they were 25 minutes. All the lessons were basically the same format. I don’t remember too much. They weren’t super interesting and you had to prompt a lot of discussion. The thing that really irritated me was that they used Adobe Connect as their classroom software, and if a student’s internet connection dropped and they rejoined the classroom they’d be at the bottom of the list! With 10 students you’d have to rotate who you called on to answer different slides so everyone got a chance to speak. I wish I could have just set the list in alphabetical order because it was super hard remembering who had been called on and who hadn’t. Sometimes you’d have a slot without a class. Then you had to grade student assignments. They would submit sentences for correction or ask a grammatical question. You had to answer a certain number of questions per hour in order to be paid and there weren’t always enough so you had to keep refreshing the page to see if there were new questions. But once you got to your quota you were free for the rest of the hour.
I don’t remember much else. I left because the minimum 10 hours/week and the inflexible schedule were killing me, plus I didn’t like the group class format. Teacher support wasn’t great – in my training they told me you wouldn’t be assigned to to a true beginner class unless you spoke Spanish or Portuguese but then they assigned me one and it was brutal because no one had enough English to understand what I was saying. You had to leave feedback for every student after class which was ridiculous because how could you remember how 10 different students did? I just made up stuff a lot, but now I’m thinking I should have given them all the same generic feedback about things to practice. I don’t remember not having enough time to fill it all in though so at least I was paid for all my time. And they paid promptly every 2 weeks by PayPal and never played games with my pay. Unfortunately they hire in batches so it can take months to hear from them. And I don’t know if they regularly renew people’s contracts or if it’s based on some sort of criteria. So for a guaranteed 10 hours/week I world recommend them.
Former Teacher says
My review of OpenEnglish
Hey guys, I was reminiscing about my time working for OpenEnglish and thought you deserved a review. I’m writing this on my phone so I’ll probably leave a lot of stuff out. Also, I worked for them over a year ago so I’ve forgotten a lot and their policies might have changed. Leave a comment if you have any questions or need any clarification, or if you’ve worked for them recently and need me to correct something!
Now, the biggest thing about OpenEnglish that would be of interest to us is: THE COMPANY PAYS YOU FOR ALL HOURS YOU’RE SCHEDULED!!!
Ok, so backtracking a bit:
ABOUT THE COMPANY
OpenEnglish caters to adults in South America. The majority of their lessons are group classes with up to 12 people I think, but I also had a couple 1 on 1 classes that were free talk rather than following a set lesson. Their peak hours are in the evening in EST. They made me fill out a w8-Ben as a Canadian so I believe they’re headquartered in the US but you’re an independent contractor. They make you work minimum 10 hours during peak times but limit you to a max of 24 hours/week.
APPLICATION PROCESS
When I applied for OpenEnglish, they weren’t hiring. They told me to apply for a contract instructor role and they’d contact me if they had an opening. It was like a regular job application. I had no ESL experience at the time so I put my experience with tutoring and TAing in college. *I also had to specify my hourly rate*. The website that told me about the company said they pay around $10/hour so that’s what I asked for. I’ve heard other people say they got $12 or $13 and I don’t know if, if I’d asked for more I would have gotten more or just been ignored when they had an opening. But if I were applying now I’d ask for $15/hour and let them counter offer if they really couldn’t go past 12 or 13. I don’t remember if they demand native speakers.
ONBOARDING
At least a couple months after applying, I got a notice that I was being offered a contract position for $10/hour. I’ve heard that they tend to hire in batches. The “admin” wage (for completing their training and stuff” was $9/hour and they only paid you for a certain # of training hours. However I found it easy to finish the training much faster than what they were paying for, I just skipped some of the YouTube videos and it was fine. I think the contract was for 6 months and I don’t know what the renewal process was like because I didn’t finish my first contract… (I know this looks like a bad trend but seriously guys, I just don’t like mandatory minimum hours).
SCHEDULING
As far as availability goes, you had to state how many hours you wanted (just 10, up to 15, up to 20, up to 24) and specify your availability. You could only change your schedule once or twice per contract, although a little bit after I started they asked for new availability because of daylight saving’s time. There was no guarantee of hours except the minimum 10. At first I said I only wanted 10 hours but I put down about 12 available hours, and what I found was that they scheduled me with breaks in my schedule! So if I put 7pm-midnight, they might have me from 7-9 and then 9:30-12. After reducing my available hours to 10, I realized having time to go to the bathroom was not necessarily a bad thing. But I would rather submit my own availability with holes in it than let them decide my breaks for me. I also don’t know what I would have gotten if I wanted more hours. They don’t guarantee hours so I suspect if I submitted 15 hours and they only gave me 12 then I would again have unplanned holes in my schedule. The class schedule was set every week. You could swap classes with other teachers but they used SalesForce and it was a very complicated system where you had to find another teacher, ask to swap classes, get their agreement, and submit the swap for approval. When I was leaving I heard people had started a Facebook group to make asking for swaps easier so I hope that’s still around.
THE CLASSES:
I think they were 25 minutes. All the lessons were basically the same format. I don’t remember too much. They weren’t super interesting and you had to prompt a lot of discussion. The thing that really irritated me was that they used Adobe Connect as their classroom software, and if a student’s internet connection dropped and they rejoined the classroom they’d be at the bottom of the list! With 10 students you’d have to rotate who you called on to answer different slides so everyone got a chance to speak. I wish I could have just set the list in alphabetical order because it was super hard remembering who had been called on and who hadn’t. Sometimes you’d have a slot without a class. Then you had to grade student assignments. They would submit sentences for correction or ask a grammatical question. You had to answer a certain number of questions per hour in order to be paid and there weren’t always enough so you had to keep refreshing the page to see if there were new questions. But once you got to your quota you were free for the rest of the hour.
I don’t remember much else. I left because the minimum 10 hours/week and the inflexible schedule were killing me, plus I didn’t like the group class format. Teacher support wasn’t great – in my training they told me you wouldn’t be assigned to to a true beginner class unless you spoke Spanish or Portuguese but then they assigned me one and it was brutal because no one had enough English to understand what I was saying. You had to leave feedback for every student after class which was ridiculous because how could you remember how 10 different students did? I just made up stuff a lot, but now I’m thinking I should have given them all the same generic feedback about things to practice. I don’t remember not having enough time to fill it all in though so at least I was paid for all my time. And they paid promptly every 2 weeks by PayPal and never played games with my pay. Unfortunately they hire in batches so it can take months to hear from them. And I don’t know if they regularly renew people’s contracts or if it’s based on some sort of criteria. So for a guaranteed 10 hours/week I world recommend them.
Frida says
Thanks for sharing. This is pretty useful info. If you remember anything else, please come and share it!