Americans teach English to Chinese kids, from home
Every morning at 5 a.m., Autmn Fletcher walks into her home office in Monmouth, Illinois, and switches on her laptop, just in time to teach English to Chinese children arriving home after school in Beijing.
“Elephant!” the child says through the computer screen, prompted by a hand puppet that Fletcher displays to a web camera.
“E-le-phan-t,” Fletcher responds, correcting the pronunciation. Sometimes, she uses a whiteboard and flashcards to make her point.
Fletcher, 31, a mother of three, has worked as an online English tutor for five months, teaching Chinese students who are mostly 5 to 11 years old. Using her laptop, headphones and web camera, she teaches basic English grammar, the idioms of daily conversation and songs. In March, she worked up to 30 hours a week, earning $2,100 in this small town in western Illinois.
Tens of thousands of Americans are teaching Eng
lish remotely, connecting to a massive Chinese population eager to learn the language, and aided by advances in global communication technology and huge investments in Chinese online education companies. Proponents say tutoring can offer meaningful work from home in rural communities far from major job markets. Many such towns have lost residents and jobs in recent years.
The trend also is adding an international flavor to a U.S. gig economy that has seen a growing number of Americans juggling freelance and contract jobs, often from home.
There are about 100 Chinese-based online education companies, estimates Quincy Smith, founder of ESL (English as Second Language) Authority, an online teaching job board. And the firms are always hiring English teachers, making online tutor among the most common U.S. jobs workers can perform remotely, according to FlexJobs, a job search site specializing remote, parttime, freelance and flexible positions.
VIPKid, which employs Fletcher, had just 10 teachers and a handful of students when it was founded in 2013. It’s now one of the largest China-based online English tutoring platforms, with around 70,000 teachers in the U.S. and Canada, up from 20,000 in 2017, and 600,000 students online, mostly in China, up from 200,000.
Teachers are required to be native English speakers, hold a bachelor’s degree and live in the U.S. Working experience with children is a plus. Average pay is $12 to $20 an hour, with most teachers starting at around $14 an hour, Smith says. Each tutoring session lasts 30 minutes.
Most of the online teachers are independent contractors, which usually means they don’t get health coverage or 401(k) plans.
“The online tutoring jobs are particularly well suited for college-educated Americans looking for jobs with lower barriers to entry,” says Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of FlexJobs. It also is “a really compelling option for people who live in rural areas, have long commutes or places with less economic opportunity,” Sutton adds.
The number of remote job postings in the education field in FlexJobs’ database jumped 37% between 2015 and 2018.
Before she started tutoring, Fletcher worked in sales and marketing and endured more than an hour-long commute. “I spent countless hours away from my family, and my son was constantly getting sick from being in day care.”
Then she was in a bad car accident nine months ago. As she lay in a hospital bed with 13 shattered bones, wondering if she’d ever walk again, Fletcher thought: What would she do for a living?
She noticed on Facebook that a friend was tutoring Chinese kids in English online, and it piqued her interest. She applied for the job and, aided by a walker, went to an interview and training session last December in Chicago.
Fletcher earns about $18 per hour and can choose to be paid monthly or bimonthly through PayPal or a bank transfer. The job helps reduce or eliminate expenses related to commuting, buying work clothes, child care and other costs. Fletcher works until 9 a.m., then plays with her kids.
“I am now able to put my family first and still have a rewarding career,” she says.
She says the job has helped her provide for her family and recover from the accident.
The online tutoring companies, meanwhile, are highly profitable. Chinese students pay what amounts to $49 to $80 an hour for the classes, significantly above the $12 to $20 tutor wages.
VIPKid is valued at more than $3 billion, according to a Forbes report in March, and has well-known investors including Kobe Bryant.
51Talk, another leading Chinese online education company, has 14,800 English teachers in North America and other English-speaking countries. Bling ABC, launched by New Oriental , a large private educational company in China, attracts over 1,000 American applicants a month for its online tutoring jobs.
Countries such as South Korea, Japan and Russia also have strong demand for online English tutoring, but “China remains the biggest market,” Smith says. His company, ESL Authority, lists 100 to 300 tutoring openings each month.
Several trends are driving China’s voracious demand for tutors. More than 17 million babies have been born in China each year since the government began allowing two children per household in 2016, up from one child. “Chinese parents remain enthusiastic about English language acquisition and the monotonous public education couldn’t satisfy their diverse demands,” says Jianglu Wang, a scholar of educational financing in Beijing.
At the same time, the Chinese government has invested $182 billion since 2015 to boost internet speeds. From 2015 to 2017, broadband subscriptions in China increased to 394.2 billion from 277 billion, according to the World Bank.
Online tutoring also has been boosted by a 2016 law allowing private investment in the education industry.