This may seem like easy money but far too many new teachers dive straight into this work, only to learn hard lessons about unmotivated students, last-minute cancellations and lost income.
Haste makes waste, so here are a few suggestions for pro-actively avoiding headaches, hassle and incarceration—yes, incarceration.
Rapport is critical
In a one-to-one setting, the teacher must establish good rapport. Without it, students don’t look forward to class, end up cancelling and eventually never return.
The best thing to do is to offer one free lesson to see if good rapport can be established. If not, don’t take on the work. This is particularly important if the teacher doesn’t have a well-established reputation as a good teacher. Students talk, so if a teacher gets a bad rep, good luck finding more work.
Conduct a needs analysis
Teaching private lessons calls for a student-centered approach. The best way to begin this approach is through a needs analysis – examples of which are readily available online.
Through this easy step, teachers can identify a student’s motivation, reasons for learning, as well as desired areas of focus. Aside from bad rapport, failing to teach lessons that are relevant to the student’s needs is the quickest way to lose work. Identify needs, teach it to them and you’ll keep the students.
Cancel out cancellations
You haven’t taught in Thailand until a private student phones you up five minutes into the lesson and tells you they want to ‘can-sun’ class. If the teacher is lucky, they haven’t wasted time and money on transportation.
Avoid frustration by setting guidelines for cancellations whereby both the student and the teacher are held accountable. If either party cannot follow policy, penalties ensue – students lose classroom hours and teachers make them up free-of-charge. Just be understanding or you risk losing the student forever.
Get advanced payments
Establish a payment plan everyone is comfortable with and build trust before offering credit. To start, collect for only a few hours of lessons before asking for advanced payments of around 10 hours. For the reason mentioned above, most teachers don’t have any recourse in the event of non-payment so advanced payments are an absolute necessity.
A teacher trainer at TEFL Campus and Phuket resident since 2004, Eric welcomes all questions regarding teaching English in Phuket at: info@teflcampus.com