It isn’t often, dear reader, that I get a random student from out of nowhere. Most of my students usually come from VIPKid, like Katya, or they are connected via family members that I have met in other places. Such is the case with Karolina, whose stepmother in the US is a friend of a friend. I don’t actually remember meeting her stepmother either. It’s always possible that she heard about me from one of my mother’s friends or even my sister’s large network of acquaintances. Or there’s the case of Félix who literally walked up to my writers’ table at the bookstore and asked if we were English teachers at the table. And of course being the enterprising person that I am I piped up that I was and that everybody else was not. And so began a wonderful relationship that continues to today
Speaking of Félix, we are working our way through trying to get him a new job within his company which does the primary staffing at Nike. This new role will be more managerial and less customer service. I think he has a good chance of getting it because he has already been doing the day-to-day tasks with this particular job which is called an assistant coach. And what he does is he coaches the new hires at Nike in the day-to-day operations of the business, particularly the sales team. So this week’s focus is job interview questions. Previous week was resume and cover letter hail help. Over at the English Center my bookings have dwindled down to almost nothing. The Pre-intermediate class has turned into 12 hours of private lessons with the person who paid. She is a fairly low level but is motivated to learn and can do all the homework. As she demonstrated this week when she gave it to me 24 hours after I gave it to her. And it was a lot. Six worksheets and a writing assignment. We will see how we go with the tenses as that’s the biggest focus for her. It’s what she confuses the most. As in, “now I sit in my classroom” instead of “I am sitting in the classroom now”.
Earlier this week, I got a WeChat message from someone who contacted me about lessons. I have no idea how she got my number. She’s on the East Coast and has a seven-year-old daughter who needs reading and vocabulary help. We had a trial lesson on Saturday afternoon at 4 pm my time and it went swimmingly. Scarlett is a wonderful little girl who is super bright and ask for lots of really interesting questions. As we will be working on reading and vocabulary, there isn’t an awful lot of prep that needs to happen except for me to have some thing for her to read. Luckily there are a ton of materials online that we can access. She also seems to be a very loquacious and fast paced little girl and can keep up with me when I speak quickly. Which I think is nothing but great. I think it’s gonna take some adjustment with the time difference but they want twice a week Monday and Wednesday at 3 PM my time which suits me just fine. Which took 10 minutes for them to agree to.
The VIPKid world continues to remain the same. 2 1/2 hours of bookings each day even though I open open every slot from 4 PM to 9 PM Beijing time. But with all the extra work that I have, which doesn’t really amount to a lot of money but does fill up the hours it seems to be for the best. By far the most surprising and easy work that I’m currently doing is with Cambly. There is no prep. I frequently don’t see the people that I’m talking to you as they are using their cell phones and don’t turn on the cameras. I think that happens to be because they are from Saudi Arabia, it’s mostly women, and they don’t want to be seen. Which is fair enough. I don’t think it’s fair that my camera has to stay on all of the time but there’s no point in complaining that which I cannot control. This extra work that I have, which doesn’t really amount to a lot of money, but fills up the hours that Jasper isn’t here or when I have nothing else to so.
That’s all she wrote for this Inkreadable installment. But stay tuned. As always, there is more to come.
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