Pros
-You get to teach motivated adults students who are most often taking English lessons for personal fulfillment and some also study it for work or school. -You get some training to teach audio English lessons during on-boarding as well as good training for using the teaching platform. -Additional training workshops are insightful and helpful. -You have a flexible schedule and are paid on time and in full.
Cons
-Several comments have mentioned the slides have errors. These errors are usually spelling and grammar mistakes, but there are also errors that are culturally inappropriate content for Chinese students. There is a slide featuring the Bible as the ‘greatest book of all time.’ There is an awkward phone conversation dialog between a current and former girlfriend over getting a notebook with photos back from her ex. There is a role play with two boyfriends looking to buy a house together. I had to contact management over one lesson with a role play between a couple about movie preferences where the girlfriend is scripted to say that she enjoys watching adult films. It was written on both of the role play cards and would create a very awkward situation for the student and teacher irrespective of who was playing that role. I taught this lesson to a married male student and skipped over it. It was removed when I taught the same lesson later, so I don’t know why there are still so many mistakes if they can fix them. -These errors could cause students to be dissatisfied with the lesson and leave low ratings. -Hujiang now issues only two written warnings before termination. I received one after I slept through a class and was also docked for three classes. I am 13 hours behind in the US and accidentally set my alarm for AM instead of PM. The time difference wasn’t taken into consideration and my schedule was blocked for a day and a half. I asked for my hours for the following workday to be unblocked and was ignored. I also had to ask for leave for one hour for a meeting with Academic Supervision; but she needed to me to reschedule and asked, on my behalf, to have the initial hour unblocked and that request was also ignored. It’s important to be considerate when working online with international staff members. We don't see you or interact with you face-to-face. I received a second written warning when I got some student dissatisfaction reports that Academic Supervision deemed valid. I would like to discuss this validity issue a bit: -The scoring of your ‘bad’ class maybe inaccurate. I received a one for building student rapport in the first meeting over dissatisfied students in March. After that, I started learning my regular’s names and asking them about themselves. I changed the intro of all my classes to be more interactive, meaningful, and personalized. For the second batch of student dissatisfaction reports, I received a zero for building student rapport. The lesson that was assessed included the updated intro. Not only that, but here are the criteria for getting a zero: “Patterns of interaction are mostly negative, inappropriate.” My student rapport for that lesson fit with the criteria for at least a three, based on the attached scoring rubric. The score was inaccurate, not merely harsh. (Also, a score of five for this category is more achievable with a regular student who the teacher has gotten to know over time, not a new student and the lesson that was assessed was with a new student.) As I had received several student dissatisfaction reports, I received a second warning letter and technically should have been fired. I talked about the inaccurate scoring in the meeting. I was told that I could teach my remaining lessons for the week and if I demonstrated a lot of improvement then I could keep teaching. After all my remaining lessons had been taught I was told that I’d improved a lot and could stay—BUT she wanted to continue observing my progress for an entire month and I would not be allowed to teach over five hours of lessons per week. I’ve been teaching trial classes for two weeks before submitting my resignation letter.