Open English

I’ve been an ESL teacher for 4 years. I’ve been with 4 platforms with some at the same time. This company I was asked to work with adults. I normally work with children. It was a nice change for me. From the beginning I had a lot of miscommunication and mis information with them about how to fill out forms or how to get my Slack set up or how to get my schedule. They use Salesforce and that is a confusing program in itself. For a month I was getting my schedule wrong and getting in trouble. You don’t get a “place ticket problem here” form on the Teacher hub. You have to search for all the forms. I would get my reviews and I was getting excellent marks but getting feedback that my background was to “busy” I asked for permission on Day 1 if I can keep my background because I teach other platforms! They apologize then next review I get the same bad feedback! My last review I had %100 new student rate when overall average was %95. My personal %98 when overall %96. I was doing Awesome! I got a dollar raise too after 6 months.  They would send me many many new beginner ESL students who were on level 0 or 1 and I would get amazing student feedbacks of me being their favorite teacher. Then I got fired 15 mins to my last shift of the day. It was for missing to many classes or being tardy. I normally screenshot everything but guess I missed some?!  It was confusing.  I couldn’t prove to them discrepancies that I had months before that they told months after! 
Word of advice: Great company for experience. I love the students. I love the curriculum but screenshot everything! Be very on guard  My firing felt unfair! Upside I got to end with my favorite student! That made me so happy! 

If you are looking for the equivalent fast-food job in the teaching world.  This is it!  The job is not at all demanding, but it also does not pay very well.  It is a gig economy job, but if you are willing to simply ignore the demands the company tries to place on you, you'll do great.

Pros: Flexible hours. If you are a good, experienced teacher, job security won't be an issue.  Most students are decent, educated and interested in bettering themselves.

Cons: Company uses too many platforms for communication, if you happen to miss the communication on one platform, you'll soon get an email explaining the consequences of not completing training on time, or filling out a form on time.
Students are KING!.  The company has decent language management procedures, but they are never enforced.  E.g. If training says to do XYZ, but the students wants ABC, then management will tell you the student complained and now you should do ABC.
They belittle teachers by offering teacher competitions every so often.  If you want more motivated teachers, increase their pay, rather than having them compete against each other.
They send out performance reports each month. If you are below average, they will try to sign you up for personal feedback. But 50% of teachers will ALWAYS fall below the average, which is magically always like 92%.
I am not sure about other teachers, but my requests for unpaid leave have always been rejected.
Classroom sizes have gotten larger.  It is not uncommon to have 10-12 students in a 45 minutes session.

I enjoy working for Open English, but only as a side gig, and only after I accepted it what for what it truly is: a mega-corporate, assembly-line English platform. The students come in, they leave, and you never see them again. I imagine teachers feel a similar way as they come and they go. I will say that I've met a lot of students, had some great classes, and learned a lot about online teaching. There are challenges to face and you can learn a lot about teaching. Beginner classes can be challenging but also a lot of fun. Advanced classes are very relaxed and you can have some very interesting conversations. Private classes are a breeze and very enjoyable. Overall, the job is easy once you get the hang of it. The materials are already made so there is zero prep. You can gain valuable experience, but the pay is low so don't expect to build your career through this company. 

A typical day at work would be turning on the computer in the morning, read the list of income e-mails and start answering them right away in order to have a prompt response. Check on a list of students that are to be called and follow up with their performance and progress. Reach out to them throughout the day, until all of them in the list, is being spoken and contacted. I learned every day a new experience in dealing and handling different kind of situation and issues. My co-workers are very reliable and always willing to cooperate and help any time I need them. The hardest part of the job is when the system is out and I can't reach the students, so the flow of work has to be interrupted  while the problem is been solved. The most enjoyable part of the job, is that I am able to communicate in English, Portuguese and Spanish all over the world and also able to help solve the student doubts and problems, and receiving a great feedback from them with gratitude.

Probably one of the best start-up companies to work for in South Florida.
Very creative, dynamic, hard-working, results-driven, yet casual and family-like culture. Great, modern, open-concept office and multitude of monthly social events, stimulating team-building, family environment and a sense of belonging.
With new leadership and HR management the company is working to be best-in-class employer with great benefits and perks - flexible hours, excellent BCBS health insurance plans almost completely covered by the employer, Unlimited Paid Time Off (!), matched 401K, complimentary snacks and beverages (incl. wine and beer), regular catered events onsite and offsite.
Management is very open, approachable and down-to-earth. Encourages professional growth and promoting/hiring from within. Going above-and-beyond doesn't go unnoticed.

I really enjoyed working with OpenEnglish. At one time, the compensation was great, the schedule was very flexible, the students were amazing, and the attention given to teachers was wonderful. It was also a very friendly online workplace. Teachers often collaborated with each other, offering tips, tricks, and practical solutions to our unique online teaching problems.
The company offered a lot of free training and very practical feedback.

Unfortunately, once they switched over to a new platform, this caused many issues with both the students and the teachers. This eventually caused OpenEnglish to be a very difficult company to work with. 

I sincerely hope they are able to work through these issues so that they can once again be the company they once were.

Part of the fun of teaching is getting to build a relationship with your students and coworkers. You will get neither of these things at this job. Teachers are given 3 different lessons to be taught each day. During your shift, you log into the school's website and are assigned 1-5 students at random about 3 minutes before each lesson begins. You don't know who or which of the three lessons you will teach until that moment. Also, your pay is SO LOW! When I worked there the maximum you could make per hour was $13, and they don't tell you when you sign your contract that you aren't paid for the full shift you are online. They pay you for each 25-minute lesson you teach, so if you work for an hour, they only pay you for 50 minutes!

There is a Slack group for the teachers and everyone is pretty supportive of one another, but it's not close to the sort of community I've had at other schools.

The management team tends to make decisions based entirely on gut feeling rather than any sort of data. This results in a lot of wasted time/effort as direction changes with the wind. They also do NOT care about how effective their program is - they have no on-staff expertise in language learning, or learning in general, and they dont care. They do not seem to value their employees as human beings, making hiring and firing decisions on a whim. The company suffers from extremely high turn-over at all levels in the organization - this could be a perk - if you are a survivor, rapid promotion is possible. The company's use of contractors as employees is probably illegal (but Im not an expert in employment law).

Normally worked 4 to 6 hours per day. All work was performed on-line so there was no commuting involved. 

Very little interaction between teachers and managers. You were pretty much on your own. 

The hardest part of the job would be working with students who had little English knowledge and not knowing how to use the platform. Unfortunately there was no mandatory training on how to use the platform and much class time was wasted trying to help these students. 

The most enjoyable part was talking with students who had been in my classes prior and hearing how their English had improved since our last communication.

When I first started the company, I enjoyed it because of the flexibility. After about a month, I saw all the weaknesses and mistakes. Their platform is ancient has many mistakes. It shows you as offline when you're really online and teaching. The company then sends you a warning then takes it back. The pay is horrible. It is actually the lowest in the industry. They also charge students the highest. From what I see, most teachers are not qualified and the students can tell. They leave multiple complaints because teachers just go off the PDFs than actually teaching. Management doesn't exist here. There's no coaching, no meetings. Nothing. This is a horrible company to work for.

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