The ESL Live Stream: Ignite, Innovate, Inspire! Every Sundays 9pm CST

[Music] and now let's welcome Emily Bren rock and roll welcome Emily thank you so much for being in the live it's a great honor to have you with us today and we are your student you are the teacher and we can't wait to see you on the board thanks so much for having me it's lovely to be here and what a cool intro feel like yeah yeah that's you know rock and roll you gota be a little bit more entertaining sometimes we can yeah definitely speak about everything and you know have a good fun right teachers are just people like everyone like you know so yeah can you please introduce yourself uh to everyone so that we know you a little bit uh better uh uh I didn't make mistakes when I was saying uh that all your expertise that it's incredible for uh a teacher I'm very honored to have you here yep I've got thank you very much uh yeah you were bang on you were completely correct I have about I started teaching in 2001 at summer school in Poland and then when I finished University I went to South Korea and taught there for a year and then I went back to Scotland and I've been teaching uh people seeking refuge and Asylum for about well since about 2006 um and then last year and while I was doing that I've been writing lots of materials I wrote the voices I co-authored the voices series for for National Geographic learning I've also done the teaching through crisis series for National Geographic learning which is a series of teacher development videos for um anybody teaching in times of Crisis for example in a war zone or teaching people from Refugee backgrounds or who have experienced trauma that kind of [Music] thing yeah and yeah I've recently published a book with the hands up project actually that's just last week and these are all activities with drawing around your hands and it's titled hands up for peace and it all proceeds go to the children that um hands up project teaches in palestin so really really worthwhile cause and really fantastic clroom activities that are minimal preparation congratulations so it's called hands up uh project right yeah yeah and the title hands up for piece so the projects hands up project and they do a lot of remote theater um with uh kids in Gaza and actually while I was writing it obviously the war kicked off and the situation worsened and the hands up project have been sharing videos of people people's real lives in Palestine and some of them are really quite harrowing so while I was writing it I was thinking um is there any point in writing this but it felt also like not writing it was giving up hope and I think the hands- up project gives hope to the kids in Palestine because they're still getting those [Music] lessons so this is a story that somebody told me when I was a kid there was a man and he got chased by bees so he ran up a hill and then he kept running around the hill because there were still chasing him and he ran around and ran around and finally he came to some caves and he went inside the caves and the bees didn't chase him anymore what is it and so that's basically drawing using the alphabet and the dog I don't know if you noticed it was like a kind of Nike swish tick and then a number two and then a letter L and then triangle so with drawing drawing some people believe they can't draw but in reality everybody can draw um they just need to maybe some just need some practice and the drawing alphabet is basically a series of triangles lines squares and maybe letters as well [Music] integrate these Doodles and just practice doing them and stuff and get them into lots and lots of lessons because it's it's clear that there's so much you can do with it and I I made like a a video last week i' I've literally just uploaded it now and it was just about how the board is so important because it's Central it's big it's uh everyone can refer to it it's right dead in the middle and it's such a useful tool that probably isn't used as much as it could be right yeah like we write down task instructions on it or you know maybe explain some grammar or something like that and then we move away from it and then we start moving around the class but actually you can do much more yeah from the board yeah and I checked out I did have a quick look at sketch note it's really cheap as well like it's like it's not expensive at all you know and it's like and if if you're teaching all of the time it will make your life so much easier make cut down on planning time your students understand better you get better results uh you get better outcomes from your learners it's just it's a no-brainer yeah and I've I've actually I had the luxury in my classroom of having two whiteboards well one was like an entire wall and the other was like the side whiteboard that none of the other teachers used and that side whiteboard it was in the class where everybody was teaching literacy so that shared whiteboard became like a giant sketch note of Doodles and and different sounds and phonics it was pretty cool looking by the end of the year even if I do I think that's um so something I'm really into as well is like building community in the classroom so all your students feel as one and they all get to know each other really well so that hands activity where you're drawing around your hands and you're writing something about yourself you're sharing it you're cutting out the hands sticking on the all talking to one another you're you're breaking down the barriers and you're building trust among other students so they feel empowered to speak up maybe some of the Shyer students would normally be quite reticent to speak and because they feel they trust one another uh they're more likely to speak up and to get involved and you're also going to get less instances of poor Behavior as well it's just build this whole energetic Dynamic of of care and support among your students yeah and actually students don't need to draw some of my students didn't want to draw and that was absolutely fine like the first when I first got into graphic facilitation I maybe became a bit of an annoying teacher in a you should draw this try to copy this doodle and I knew that some students were just kind of h no I don't want to so the following year I thought I would do a bit of non-action research but so I didn't ask anybody to draw I didn't encourage them to draw but I drew myself and then naturally some students just started drawing and over their own accord because they saw my drawings and they saw that it was easy to copy them so they just started doing it themselves so I stopped asking them and just kind of led by example in the end instead you must have been quite happy to I bet you really like you like looking up and then you can see students drawing it must have made you really happy yeah yeah yeah some of them were just incredibly creative and it was actually really quite empowering for the students who maybe lack a bit of confidence with their language but they can really excel at drawing in class as well and I remember actually when I was a student in my French class I I found myself drawing to concentrate and I think my French teacher just thought that I was not paying attention but my I think I'm quite a fidgety person so I think it was something for me to do and it helped me to pay attention and sketch noting helped me pay attention and I remember my French te teacher taking that book and throwing it in the bin in front of everybody it was quite embarrassing but at the same time I thought I was learning there but he just wasn't understanding [Music] and now let's welome L WIS oh what a brilliant welcome thank you so much I mean that was like the best introduction ever thank you Mike thank you Steve good very thank you very much for accepting the invitation uh St of course recommended and you very nicely said yeah no problem of course uh I didn't know you were watching as well sometimes the ESL live stream so I feel very touched very thanksful so we have a uh in front of us a a very professional podcaster because with st you know we also we are teachers you know so we have some uh stuff to do first and then podcasting is something you know try to help so we started really from nothing on the ESL live stream with a poor microphone with a poor headphones that work sometimes just when it's not when you can hear me is going to be two that can hear me it's it was incredible so start there's always a start there's always a beginning and it's always a pain but yeah thank you so much for uh really for being here today so maybe you can introduce a little bit yourself Laura to everyone so that they they can know you a bit better better absolutely so some folk who are joined this live and hello to everybody who's watching right now you may recognize my voice uh from TSA pop that's the mini podcast for busy teachers and we are currently celebrating our sixth birthday at TSA pop which is so fantastic and as Stu was saying um I did used to work in education full-time used to work for some of the largest Educators private Educators in the world uh but a year ago I decided to set up my own business communicating for impact where I help educat and Educators in business specifically start recording content where it's podcasts videos or even starting to get live streams going so they can really utilize media to engage their students and potentially grow their business as [Music] well how do I start topics and stuff how would you start yeah beginning is always difficult yeah um gosh well firstly I think it could be quite intimidating if we just try and kind of look for topics that are trending in mass media right that can be quite a scary uh space to navigate and think about what our value proposition is particularly on topics like ai ai is very much trending at the moment if we try and just tackle that on a on a large scale that could be quite a quite a large goal to set as a beginner what I encourage my um trainees to do on the podcast Pathfinder program I do that's that's a beginner course for podcasters um I get them to really identify who their target audience is so rather than setting large kind of their net large like casting a large net I should say a wide net um trying to really focus on who your ideal listener is and what they are interested in so let's say you're working with um let me take an example you you're working with Spanish speakers who have moved to the US recently and they are struggling with English because they are mature students and they need a way in and you know that they find the school environment really intimidating so maybe in that case your your podcast focuses on it's in Spanish and English it's it's mixed and it focuses on key things like key phrases and scenarios that your learners need in order to start building their language level to be successful that's just one example taken from um a podcaster I'm working with but that whole kind of really being really niche and being really intentional really asking yourself what does my ideal listener need what's going to serve them and then following that as a path rather than looking to the bigger kind of media trends um as your indicator because really if you try and please everyone you just end up pleasing no one so it's better just to be really intentional about who you're creating content for exactly it's pretty much like a teacher it's like a teacher in the classroom you get a know your students very well so that you can start to give a the right what they need exactly and saying that isn't there so much transfer transferable skills that teachers have that just slide over into media so easily podcasting is very much like very like doing a detailed uh learner needs analysis exactly what you do for your listeners like really talk to your listeners get to know what they want exactly what you do with the students and I think one thing as well like like for example AI it's a really trending topic but like it's going moving so fast and you know unless you're a really big AI you know expert or anything you know your your content probably won't match the content of other real experts with AI so maybe also go with what you're comfortable talking with as well let's say you you had you you planned out like the first six episodes of something you want to say maybe you can stick to topics that you're really comfortable talking about um maybe you know you have a big interest in reading strategies for for language learning or something like that so you might want to talk about that for example go with something at first that you're really comfortable with and then you're going to it's going to be much easier to make the podcast and what you have to say will I think will really resonate more of the listener because it's coming from a a position of authority and knowledge that you already have exactly and that's just just so much easier to to kind of plan isn't it and talk about it will come through in your passion and authenticity in talking about something that you have experience with and I think a lot of teachers hesitate in putting their voice out there because they feel like they're not experts in something but your experience as a teacher talking about your context is really powerful in creating space for other people who may be listening to be like oh that really resonates for me oh I do that too oh I hadn't thought of that and that's expertise and itself is opening the door to what is very usually a closed door profession we have inspectors in that do observations quite scary observations a couple of times of year but having that space to kind of open up the door is is um credible in itself in talking about your experience from things that have happened yeah we got a question in the live basa was asking uh I want to start my channel English for kids any advice oh this is really exciting thank you so going back to the idea of like who your ideal audience is I think if you can talk to parents and do a little bit um have a few conversations now to kind of get some ideas this is how you kind of start building fans early on is before you even start recording the content you start talking to people who would be your ideal target audience so you can talk to them about ideas for topics uh maybe giving um walking through do you think this would be fun would you like this type of thing what sort of would like me to play games on my Channel That's thing what's your favorite game like asking those sort of questions are really reassuring and then when you're ready to go live you can say hey I created this what do you think and get their feedback so going back to the ideal listener talk to them now do do talk to a few different people five or six different sets of parents to get your ideas and that will really help to inspire you brilliant question great so I I got a I get a question uh especially for you for podcasting it it would be like what can you tell us a little bit about the steps that involved planning or Pro producing educational podcast episode how should should we start how to plan everything how to do it the right way uh I I don't know if there's a such a thing as a right way but I can tell you a way that really works well that saves time maybe um the first step would be to think about your vision and I know this sounds a bit like oh are we not starting with the TCH but I think many people overlook this like what are you hoping a podcast is going to do for you do you want to use it to grow your business are you using it as a way to kind of grow your personal brand um is it a complement to the teaching that you're doing is it kind of like a flip classroom approach what what's the vision how does it fit that's the first thing um and I I encourage people to really visualize that and how it fits into what they're currently doing um the second part is I would say to plan six episodes you learn so much from six if I'm ever planning any type of media six is a good number you tend see repetition and patterns in terms of oh this is a bit of a challenge or oh this is working really well when you commit to six and it can also Stand Alone um so if you choose at the end well I'm not going to continue with this it's still a nice packaged project that you can utilize turn into blogs turn into other things recycle clip up uh that will serve you so would be um the first two steps and I can see Stuart's Keen to is biting the bit to add to add a bit more what were you gonna say steu no no no it's just what no what I was going to say um was uh when we were talking I we we talked about um some things that are bottlenecks for um teachers to get going things that they worry about and obviously you know that Tech is is one but you know we talked about how you don't need a lot of tech to to start um another one is that you know perhaps teachers might not know what to say um we've covered that as well but one thing we also talked about I was that some teachers can be quite um worried that they're kind of they're going to look silly in front of their friends um hey look at me look at my new channel and everything they kind of really worried about that is there any kind of advice you might want to give to those kind of teachers yeah it could be really tricky can't it particular if you start thinking about everybody who can have access to it if you're putting something out in the public sphere I mean not all podcasts are public some do them privately within um a learning management system or they're behind paid subscription walls but if it is in the public sphere like you are at the the mercy of everybody listening to it but coming back to that point of who your ideal listener is you're not for everyone and so if somebody listens to it and doesn't follow that's not your problem you're you're designing content for a very specific person and I think if you really get intentional about imagining who you're speaking to and who you're creating content for so it feels like you can literally visualize them sat across the table from you when you're recording it becomes so much easier because you you're creating stuff for them and these are most likely people real people um that teachers who are creating content know um and when you kind of visualize those people it becomes a Le a lot less intimidating I find all the rest it doesn't really matter what they think it's not for them it's for this particular person yeah that's [Music] it and maybe for you that would mean releasing once every other every two weeks uh or once a month while you work on finishing the following three but go back to what you can sustain and what's consistent I when I when when I was um podcasting a few years ago I wanted to scale my portfolio podcast Tel pop and I wanted to go from being uh once every two weeks to once every week because I just thought oh it's just the thing I I want to do I want to try and grow but I wasn't in a position where I had the resources or time to do so so I I I went to once a week and can you guess what happened like after I went to once a week when I wasn't ready yeah can you guess you you didn't have time to you probably made time but like you sacrificed other stuff and you probably pulled a ton of your own hair out exactly and I began to really not enjoy podcasting as a result I almost gave it up because it just wasn't fun um and I'm glad I just kind of took a moment to ask myself what why am I put myself under this pressure like why am I doing this to myself um and I went back to to every two weeks and then I began to enjoy it again um we're now a weekly podcast um because I have the resources so I I love from making that mistake that really you have to go with what's sustainable what and what you can remain consistent with and also what will bring you Joy um if you find yourself in a position not enjoying the creative process it I find personally it does come through I can tell that I'm not enjoying it and it becomes a bit of a strain so that yeah try and avoid that I hope that's helped Maria thanks for your question and we get another question from English uh for all over asking do you set targets for followers yes I do um maybe less so followers but more so downloads um so I guess there's a few metrics that you can look at and for me I've been looking at the number of download rates um that means like how many people are actually getting the podcast on their um on their devices and then I look at the listen rate so what's the listen through rate um and that's been really good to kind of see how well promotions are working for podcasts that this is one thing that um perhaps people won't ask me which I'd like to share and that is if you're going to create something please tell people about it please don't just build it and expect people to arrive please be open and out there and saying hey I have a podcast I think this is going to be helpful would you mind having listen hey I have a podcast it's about this I think this could be helpful like tell people about it go to spaces where your listeners hang out and then look at the analytics in terms of the download rate yes followers is very useful to look at but downloads listens the amount of time people are spending listening to an episode These are really helpful to kind of help you make um strategic decisions about content and how you stretch your episodes brilliant yes all good yeah uh I was reading uh Paul who's writing that was the question I wanted to I wanted to ask as well as uh how can teachers promote their podcast you know to reach a wider audience and including students you know parents and colleagues maybe well how can they promote their the their um podcast yeah so I see the comment there about ads um I I would advise for going organic first rather than paying for adverts um when you're starting I mean paid adverts can can work later on if if you want to obviously invest in that but I think the best plac is to start is to ask yourself is where are your ideal listeners hanging out and I don't mean like physical spaces although it can be physical spaces like Stu and I were at iel uh this week which is um an International Convention for uh tefl and t-a teachers so of course I was there with Tesa pop banners telling people about t-a pop giving out card say and chocolate to bride people to to to listen to the podcast and that work pretty well um but I also Post in uh groups online social media groups like LinkedIn has like an elt professionals group where I tell people about the latest episodes I do it on Facebook I write blogs and articles for journals where my listeners are reading stuff so really go to places where your listeners are hanging out and tell them about it remember you're providing value for them so you should tell people and so they can make up their own decision if they want to go and listen or not yeah I think um that that's I think if people can identify uh what's working and then just kind of Follow that I think lots of people do like a kind of like a scatter gun kind of strategy a little bit of Twitter a little bit of LinkedIn and kind of look at the analytics right and kind of you know smell what's working kind of thing and uh yeah like you say um ads um paid ads can be expensive um often they don't kind of work that well and especially if you're starting out it's like you say grow grow things organically you talked about like writing articles tool and things how if you wanted to use that as a strategy for let getting your podcast or your new website or whatever it is that you're doing what kind of ways would you use to identify who to what to write and who to write for yeah so I think it's kind of going through the different journals and spaces so for example I write for etas which is the English Teachers Association Switzerland um and they share a very similar audience to the tel pop audience not everybody in etas audience will be exactly my listener but there's a good proportion who are so again coming back to kind of writing stuff and looking at the not pressing your agenda necessarily onto those journals you have to really also look at what Their audience needs and how you can maybe bring for example my case media and um I do like a resource review where I res review books courses um gadgets and other platforms for teachers so that's a good space to kind of get my name out there and I'm not necessarily talking about the podcast all the time I'm talking about things within my realm of expertise and my bi bios there and it says where where they can find out more so I think that's a good strategy to kind of see like are they a similar um crossover to your target audience and can you provide value uh to that particular space as well did I answer your questions to I feel like yeah very very well [Music] but I also Post in uh groups online social media groups like LinkedIn has like an elt professionals group where I tell people about the latest episodes I do it on Facebook I write blogs and articles for journals where my listeners are reading stuff so really go to places where your listeners are hanging out and tell them about it remember you're providing value for them so you should tell people and so they can make up their own decision if want to go and listen or not yeah I think um that that's I think if people can identify uh what's working and they just kind of Follow that I think lots of people do like a kind of like a scatter gun kind of strategy a little bit of Twitter a little bit of LinkedIn and kind of look at the analytics right and of you know smell what's working kind of thing and uh yeah like you say um ads um paid ads can be expensive um often they don't kind of work that well and especially if you're starting out it's like you say grow grow things organically you talked about like writing articles and things how if you wanted to use that as a strategy for let getting your podcast or your new website or whatever it is that you're doing what kind of ways would you use to identify who to what to write and who to write for yeah so I think it's kind of going through the different journals and spaces so for example I write for etas which is the English Teachers Association Switzerland um and they share a very similar audience to the tel pop audience not everybody in the EAS audience will be exactly my listener but there's a good proportion who are so again coming back to kind of writing stuff and looking at the not pressing your agenda necessarily onto those journals you have to really also look at what Their audience needs and how you can maybe bring for example my case media and um I do like a resource review where I res review books courses um gadgets and other platforms for teachers so that's a good space to kind of get my name out there and I'm not necessarily talking about the podcast all the time I'm talking about things within my realm of expertise and my bi bio is there and it says where where they can find out more so I think that's a good strategy to kind of see like are they a similar um crossover to your target audience and can you provide value uh to that particular space as well did I answer your questions to I feel like yes you did yeah very well very well because it can be quite kind of like not intimidating but you kind of just you don't know where to start that's the thing and you sit down you're like right I want to do this but I don't know how yeah you mean with like the podcasting itself or the promotion or both everything you know you sit down you're like well I other people do this I think I can do this as well I've got something good to say but I don't know how to begin yeah I think maybe a good space would uh for those that maybe feeling that way is like oh I don't know where to start is why not just try it out I mean we we're doing a guest interview today there's lots of creators like Mike uh like yourselves do who would welcome having guests on their shows so maybe experimenting that way and working with other collaborators bringing value to their spaces um can be a great way to inspire yourself to think oh yeah actually I think this will work for me and to also start finding your voice as somebody who wants to use your voice to to create media where it's podcast videos or live streams yeah do you know um today you've PR seen on the on the TV today's a London Marathon right yeah yeah I hav you know thousands of record number Runners and they were talking to a marathon runner and they said you know what's the biggest piece of advice you can for someone who would one day like to run a marathon said that the hardest thing to do is to go out through the front door yeah to to to do your first one to open the door and step out into the road and I guess it's the same same with podcasting right just uh sit down a pen and paper and I just begin just try it and we can be our own worst critics as well can't we in when we listen back to things I think that's also an area of discomfort when you're working with media that you're going to edit and have and if you're editing it yourself that can be quite um a difficult thing to face it's not comfortable is it really when you're having to listen back to your voice and see yourself it's not intuitive like you mentioned audacity um which I use as well um and it's free and everything but BL me when you open it up you're like what what do I click like so it kind of takes you a while to get your head around it yeah and that's but it once you do and you find like your shortcuts like with any editing software they usually find your your shortcuts that work for you and you also are able to kind of control the recording environment more um we always say when we're creating content is that post- Productions fixed in fixed in pre-production so like really setting up your microphone doing the test making sure you're in a good quiet small space to capture the best audio quality um and maybe having talking points planned on what you're going to say that's going to reduce your editing time significantly and as you get to know what sort of edits you do do like the dropping of the music like for example Mike you had your intro music you've got those already stacked right that's part of your routine exactly yeah yeah you find it gets easier right I imagine like this is you've been doing this for [Music] years and now let's welcome Katy Prescott from a Bridge Academy welcome KY thank you so much for being Mike thanks so much for having me and I'm loving all the music and sound effects on this it's awesome yeah just put it a little bit of Rhythm you know it's Sunday night people tomorrow's got to go to work well even if it's Sunday morning you still have the whole day but you know uh got to be like a bit of active being active and thank you so much it's a great pleasure uh to have you uh with us and Ste might be on be back to welcome Katie welcome how no problem yeah it's gonna be you know that you know there are buttons that you can touch before life can't touch this can't touch this all right okay that was the little fun all right let's start be serious uh thank you stu uh Stu uh you kindly went to KY uh to say hey we got the live stream and you know how did you guys met each other well yeah it was kind of all fell into place didn't it Katie so yeah like two weeks ago we had Laura on and we were talking about how to you know develop your online presence as a teacher to develop your own business and then last week we had Bianca on who was talking about how to sell up your own Academy and then Katie followed my tefl lemon page I I think okay and H yeah and then so we we just started chatting and apparently Katie used to follow te lemon when you lived in China right yeah yeah I've been following te L te te L lon l I can speak English is failing me today we following te lemon on WeChat for several years now I yeah yeah and then connect from the similar kind of place in the world from the south of England as well so like I I reached out to Katie Katie immediately said yeah I'm I'm free and here we are so thank you so much coming along Katie we can't wait to hear about this and lots of uh lots of the people that follow the ESL live stream they've been saying you know we really want to hear from you because yeah having trouble with uh getting students so hopefully you can help yeah well thanks so much for inviting me and I'm super excited to share some insights into that whole going independent finding your own students um teaching online kind of stuff so yeah great uh KY thank you so much for being in the in the live today we've been chatting through we chat quite long yesterday that was really nice really appreciate uh we have lot in common for sure uh especially you've been teaching in China I had to say a little bit of Chinese but I guess two can say something too right wow all right so let's switch on switch on English because they're going to think that yeah they're going to think that who's the foreigners they speak Chinese I don't understand what is that live stream all right so can you please introduce yourself uh briefly for everyone to get to know you a little bit better k please thank you sure so my name is Katie um I'm from a academy uh which SS teaching materials and resources for online teachers and also helps teachers who are going independent um things like finding your own students top tips and support with things like that um and as a bit of background I've been teaching online for about 10 years now actually quite a while um initially it was just like a little bit of part-time bonus income here and there you know as as you need do when you need a little extra money to pay the bills and things like that um and I did my teacher training in the UK qualified as a teacher in the UK I'd also taught a bit in China before um in Beijing Shong Wong Joo um and yeah and a little bit in Shanghai it's a short program in Shanghai so I taught a little bit in China before I'd studied there previously as a student as well um so I'd studied Chinese before um and then I little bit did my teacher training in the UK taught in the UK for a bit um and then covid happen the whole world shut down um I was actually due to move out to China um I had teaching job lined up there and I was also looking to expand my business of things internationally um all kinds of things lined up but obviously Co chaos happened everything went online um I ended up setting up and in collaboration with a Chinese co-partner an online teaching AGC based in China um and that started in 2020 and as I said I was meant to be moving out to China but because of Co none of that happened I ended up sort of sitting at home being like ah what do I do how do I pay my bills because i' left my UK teaching job you know to to go move out to China and it all fell through um so yeah so IED teaching independently and setting up this tutoring agency um I also had a job Lin up in Japan which then got delayed by like forever because of Co I ended up going there for a bit brought in Japan for a year and a half uh teaching ESL in Japan um and now I'm full-time working on a Academy doing teaching materials and support for online teachers so sorry that was a very long rambling backstory but I've done quite a bit of sort of teaching related things over the last few years super excited to be here and share some of that with [Music] us what would be the best start for uh creating his own online uh classes without any bus in the middle of the road you know that can that can be really bothering sometimes you're not that free how to start that's a big question I feel like we GNA we're have a lot talk about on this topic in this session because true I understand yeah I think when it comes to getting started the most important thing I think before you do anything is to come up with a plan the not saying it's a mistake as such but the thing I see a lot of teachers doing they jump straight in to like I've done my tefl course um because some great tefl training and things out there but you they gone they've gone straight from doing their tefl training and gone okay I'm gonna teach independently find my own students is everyone's saying that's the thing to do right now um you learn a lot more teaching independently a lot more flexibility um you know so much more freedom in what you do um but you need a plan because there's so many people out there now um I think going into it without a plan you'll end up earning $5 an hour doing conversation classes and you know you'll be better off teaching with a company in that case um so I always think first thing to do is to sit back and like evaluate what are you what do you want to achieve with your independent teaching what is your goal you just want to have a few students like maybe you're a classroom teacher right and you want a few extra students to earn a bit of money on the side a bit like when I first started way back um which because you have a very different kind of plan to someone who's looking to sort of upscale their business longer term and set up a whole agency or something right and I've done that too so it's sort of different kind of business plan needed so I think first when I say business plan the loses sense it doesn't have to be a complicated written out you know 100 page document you're going to send to investors or something but come up with a plan of what are your goals in your business um what do you enjoy teaching and what expertise do you already have and try and figure out a bit about what exactly you want to focus in on for example I've worked with teachers before who have that used to be an examiner for like Cambridge or like I exams or all those sort of big online English online sorry big iners like English exams but a lot people looking for online classes for in which Cas makes a lot of sense to then focus on exam prep right because they've got existing expertise um well my my case I was a classroom teacher before um I focused primarily on um in the UK I trained as a secondary school teacher um and I had a lot of experience of teaching Primary School to Middle School kind of Ages um when I was in China and in Japan so that made sense to me to focus on like students who want to come study aboard who are around Middle School kind of Ages my of prer age range um and helping them with learning the sort of academic sort of vocabulary and stuff that they need in order to move to an English medium school or to move a board entirely um so like figure out what you enjoy teaching where your expertise is um and what you might want to offer um so that would be the first thing and then try and do a bit of market research like having got an idea of roughly what you want to do try and connect with your target audience whether that's on social media or it's through platforms you talk with before or it's on like form sites or however you could connect with that audience and try and get to know a bit more about them or what actually they want but then you can design what you're offering around exactly what your target audience wants um and then that way you're avoiding just being a generic oh I'm an online teacher I teach English and you can start to find a little bit more expertise and build a bit more rapport with potential students a bit rambling but hopefully that gives you a little bit an idea of where to start with and try and put together a bit of a plan before you start [Music] how would you find your own students how how do you go about beginning let's say you're on Facebook or whatever and you join online teaching groups how do you touch those you know get the parents to how do you do it I think the first thing to do is not bother joining the online teaching groups if you want to find students in the group because the online teaching groups are full of teachers right so first think about where your audience is um and it doesn't have to be on social media I think this is the the biggest thing that teachers jump to is straight away I want to teach online for my own students what social media app do they use um and that's one approach but it does take a lot of time to build an audience and connect with people on social media because you're still kind of competing with everyone else on that social media platform so actually I personally would recommend first start out by looking at your own contacts like if I think about my own experience and getting started teaching independently uh 10 years back when I found my very first independent student and it was actually for teaching maths it wasn't even for teaching English because I was still a student myself actually at the time I was still at University um and it was through a previous teacher who I had volunteered in her class and then she happened to move to the same city as me that i' had gone for University um to teach in a a secondary school six form actually like high school um sorry British terms six for is like high school for anyone who's not British um and she and one of her students needed some tutoring so she sent me a message being like hey Katie do you you offer some tutoring like this could kid could be someone you could help um so that just came through a personal connection and then nor much more recently some people might be aware there were a lot of changes in the Chinese market in summer 2021 the government brought out new regulations and that basically knocked out a bunch of the online ESL companies that were based in China um and at that point my Chinese teacher reach out to me and I've been taking a Chinese classes this is actually in preparation for supposedly moving to China again um which then didn't happen um but I've been taking online classes with a Chinese University I just of brushing up on my Chinese and all that kind of thing and my teacher reached out to me and said oh I've got a coule couple of friends who all their English classes have been cancelled because the company classes we' got shut down um do offer English classes and I was like oh yeah I do actually I had even mentioned it to my Chinese teacher um and she reached out to me anyway and was like do you offer classes and of course I was already teaching at this point um so it made a lot of sense so first start with those personal connections it could be people you know who' worked abroad or if you take language classes yourself like your your language teacher for Spanish or whatever probably knows other people who are Spanish speakers who want to learn English you know reach out to these people in an authentic way don't just randomly spam message people you know but you know if they're friends with you or their people you've worked with just drop a message saying hey I'm offering English classes do you have any friends who might be interested or maybe they got kids but their kids be interested um even in your local community as well like depending on where you live in some parts of the of the country there are quite a high percentage of people immigrating to the area who speak English as a second language and they probably themselves have a good English level but because they've probably come with work or something but maybe their kids are also moving with them and they're moving to like an English medium school and they're not going to have like the academic English for example they'll need to settle into an English medium school if they come from a different country where English is not the first language um so i' start with your contacts first and then from there you can grow even just through referrals from your contacts um and slowly build up things on social media like post valuable content share some interesting ideas share some insights into what you're teaching build up a bit of an audience but that takes time um so I think these these two things are yeah two strategies that can kind of help yeah so kind of like growing your growing your like your potential student list organically so rather than just like spamming people say you know like you know hi Jennifer how's it going you blah blah blah you know just talk about things and then slowly reach out from there um and Al potentially that that parent or that teacher May have anything right now but you're you're back on the radar and then once they hear something you're going to be the person that they contact exactly and it could just be people you know who you don't even think of as being a useful contact who will reach out to you um like I don't know your local librarian let's say you went to the library and you chatted to the librarian you mentioned because you know you're getting the word out a bit you mentioned you're offering English classes just as a side you they ask you what you do you what's your job um and then next time you pop in the library they'll say oh we had this family come in who were looking for English textbooks and they were struggling a bit and actually they wanted a teacher and you never know that connections come through the most bizarre contacts you've not really necessarily thought of um but it's authentic and I think that's the key thing yeah we've got someone in the in the in the chat in the on the chat said read with teacher KY um uh you only need one good student referals of the cherry on the top I saw that one yeah yeah what what um Katie what how about referrals what would you say about that I think referrals are really really powerful like people trust what their friends recommend to them if you're just searching online for imagine you yourself are looking for Spanish teacher right you just search online for Spanish teachers there'll be thousands of teachers out there that pop up there'll be big companies and you think okay big legit company that's more trustworthy maybe there'll be individuals on platforms like you mentioned preply already um so what's going to make you pick an independent teacher it's going to be a little bit difficult even to find them just through search whereas a referral is someone saying I already take class with this teacher they are a fantastic teacher I really love them I think you should take classes too and that is so much more powerful because you've got a personal like person recommending you and they got that trust with their friend who's going to recommend them a good teacher um and also I would say in general people tend to know people who are similar to them so for example if you're targeting I don't know University students they're going to know other University students who also want help with academic English for assignments or if you're teaching um phonics classes for really young kids their parents will know other parents like through mom's and dad's chat groups or you know their local connections so referrals are really really powerful um and there's things you can do to try and promote encourage referrals but genuinely the most important thing is just being a good teacher like if you're a great teacher people will recommend you um and they just need the occasional reminder perhaps to prompt them when you have a bit more time schedule you want to fill up who like Brad was saying it's all about sending yourself and keeping your contacts on WeChat well of course if you've been in China for sure uh but it's um um yes so and then teachers in China don't know generally how to connect with Chinese parents like that's what I was saying the past live last week is just sending moments uh WeChat you get that option moments you can even share what what you're doing uh you know taking just let your your uh just use your phone and well of course you get to hide your your students face but you can just let them see what is the result right what the kids are doing during the class what how they're speaking what their oral English level after a month you know you got to keep on posting posting posting that's pretty much like social media it's quite close to to that am I wrong or that would be a best way to do it yeah absolutely I think if you already got apps like WeChat and you've used them already I think who was it mention they already had contacts from their company they t with previously for example absolutely make the most of those connections um there's so many different social media apps out there if you've already got a presence on one of them and you already got good connections through one app then start with that one definitely um and we chat in particular if you're targeting Chinese students then you kind of have to have WeChat I don't know how anyone could survive without WeChat in China like it's I probably when I lived in China I probably spent two or three hours a day just on WeChat I swear I mean some of that was just procrastinating looking at people random videos and stuff but like you need it for messaging you need it for paying for stuff you need it for literally everything yeah it's a great app I I just wish people around the world knew about WeChat is probably the best the biggest secret you know out outside of China no one knows about WeChat it's like amazing it's like leaves WhatsApp in the dust big time um yeah it's an amazing app too yeah it's like yeah it's so cool it's like kind of Instagram Facebook and WhatsApp all mixed up into one awesome app what about if you're a teacher and this is going to be quite difficult to answer I fear um let's say you're you're a teacher and you've never been to China and you don't have uh we chat and you don't know you don't know where to start and you you kind of start out with no contacts and there will be tons of people watching this now and now think yeah that's me so what would you suggest I would say first think of who your target market is um I'm not don't want to put people off the Chinese market I think there's a lot of potential teaching Chinese students I've had some fantastic experiences teaching in China and online um so Chinese kids and and adults Chinese students in general um there's a lot of potential there but but i' would always think first like is it definitely the right market for you before you jump into something and the reason I say that is because all other social media platforms are different in China because they basically blocked all of the foreign ones like you can't get Facebook you can't get um I'm pretty sure whatsapp's blocked I don't know I've never used it when I was in China um Instagram Pi all of the ones we're familiar with don't work in China so if you want to connect with Chinese students you're going to have to learn new apps and it's not too complicated most of them have got the same basic options as you have on like foreign social media apps but it just requires setting up and getting familiar with a different system so firstly plan is China the market for you is my always my first recommendation if you do want to go ahead and focus on the Chinese market um then have a look at apps that are more like public so the thing with WeChat I would say the easiest comparison to WeChat is WhatsApp because it's a private messaging app primarily it's got other features too and there is like WeChat channels and these sort of things but um primarily it's a private messaging app and if you don't have any contacts you've got no one to message so you're kind of stuck um because you need to know their number or their WEA ID or their QR code to connect right um so instead there are other apps like probably the one of the most popular ones that I really recommend is shahon and shaona is it's called Little Red Book in English um it's kind of like Instagram is um with a few Pinterest features and it's also got this random people can sell stuff to it kind of stuff but it's kind of like Instagram and the idea is you can post content and even you've got zero connections whatsoever people can find it because it's based on an algorithm that's recommending the content to other people so I would start out by going on an app like Shong posting valuable content that's relevant to your target audience that's useful like interesting stuff don't post about your classes actually that's not even allowed on sh sh you can't directly promote your classes anyway but you know don't post Clips in your classes but instead post something like these are my top five tips for um improving your vocabulary or something that algorithm is going to reach the right people and gradually audience will go great uh we got a very good question right here uh from Cheesecake on the M uh here's the question uh as a teacher with experience in the classroom how do you balance teaching online along with teaching daily classes what was your teaching schedule at first I think this is a big Challenge and interesting people in the chat want to let us know if your classroom teachers because um myself as a classroom teacher depending on I've taught in various different environments in the UK in particular classroom teaching is pretty intense um so I was working like 70 or 80 hours a week like there'll be obviously actual classes but also the planning and the marketing world so right so find the time it's firstly one thing um and I would say in that case just look at your schedule right obviously you'll be in school from probably 8 until 5 maybe that you have your school day um but outside of time think you know do you want to get up really early I know some teachers do that I'm not a morning person absolutely not a morning person let me tell you but I know some teachers who are based in like the us because of the time zone difference um if they're teaching kids who are based in Asian countries like China they're getting up at sort of 300 4 in the morning teaching a few hours before work then they go to school and teach all day and then they sleep I guess in the afternoon um so like think about your schedule where the gaps are that line up with where your TW audience is based and that might actually you affect which audience you focus on because you might decide that you know 5:00 a.m. classes and not for you so if you're in the US don't teach Chinese kids teach ones in South America perhaps who you can teach after school hours instead um but yeah think about your schedule where you have gaps obviously weekends and things like that too but it's it's a challenge cheers guys see you next week [Music] [Music] check check check on one two [Music] [Music] and we are live onl welcome to all of you