THE STRANGE EPISODE OF THE DISAPPEARING STUDENTS

When Sammy, Dario and their ilk decided that they wanted to become billionaires at everyone else’s expense, I felt that TEFL was my trump card, which is something I hadn’t really expected, given my past skepticism as to its usefulness in my meandering professional trajectory. 

“I can always go back to teaching English, if it all goes tits skywards,” I reassured myself.

A recent visit to my accountant’s office to disclose the true horror of my finances unexpectedly proved to be a masterstroke - being an incredible human being, he asked me what the plan was to try to get some money in. A fair question, I had to concede.

“If I had somewhere to teach in the evenings, I could try to get some group classes going,” I explained, ”That can be quite lucrative if you can get enough students.”

“You can do that here,” he announced, without missing a beat. He subsequently affixed a whiteboard to the wall, and even arranged for me to have a desk in the corner and offered the use of his multimedia projector, if necessary. A few days later he sent me a small sum of money to help me out financially. Unbelievable.

I swiftly got onto making an ad to post on the dreaded social media. I paid Meta to boost my post in the region for 5 days, and was assured that most people receive an average of 30 to 40 responses at the price band I was paying. I sat back, spreadsheet at the ready, waiting for the throngs of eager students to contact me, one of only 2 native teachers in the area, as far as I am aware. 

I was informed that my post had over 6,000 views. I sat expectantly at my keyboard, further details at the ready. 

Of the 6,000 eyeballs (12,000, if you want to be pedantic), a grand total of 2 people contacted me - or 0.03%. One was a young woman who politely asked me for further details, while the other was a tattooed technician who sent a blunt “how does it work”, freely dispensing with capitalisation or the relevant punctuation. I duly sent my upbeat, emoji-laden response, including my price, which was designed to slightly undercut local language schools. 

The young woman came back to me saying she could understand English, but froze when it came time to speak.

“Then this is the course for you!” I shrieked back, trying to disguise my growing hysteria, “How about a free test class next week?”

An eerie silence fell over the land. I fear blunt chap didn’t have the attention span to read my answer, as he too disappeared into the ether without so much as an “i’ll think about it”, much less a “tank you”.

Online, things are much the same. An engineer contacted me through a teaching website I signed up and paid a subscription for - the first to contact me in months. A Brazilian who lives and works in England, as it turns out. We arranged a free, hour-long class for him to get to know me and my highly efficient method. Exactly 36 minutes in, he interrupted me.

“I understand now,” he said, “I was just curious to know your method.  I’ll be in touch,” he lied. End of class, end of brief relationship. I felt it was going well, but apparently, first impressions can be deceiving.

The alternative to going it alone, online teaching platforms, can also be money-grabbing circuses. Instead of paying you based on your knowledge, background and experience, some pay you according to where you live. As I live in a relatively poor region globally-speaking, they seem to think I’ll accept any crumbs they throw into the sty, and I’ll be thankful for the small mercy. 

Sometimes I long to go back to the pre-Internet days, when we all just interacted in person.