Good Jobs And Bad Jobs In Taiwan

Ste-Marguerite street in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, taken in July 2006 with a Sony Cybershot 5.1 MP camera.

I got some information about other teaching jobs. Most teachers in Taiwan will at some point and time become part time or full time private teachers.

Why?

Well for one reason, the pay is so good. Teaching adult conversation classes on most weeknights is an easy gig to get. But most of the time, since you are working for another company, the pay isn’t that good. From my research and the comments I have gotten from others, the pay is quite low, around 600 -800 NTD per hour. Sounds good, but when you consider that my minium rate per hour for private teaching is 1000 NTD per hour, then it looks bad. Also, you won’t get anything more if you teach groups.

Sounds bad because meanwhile the company is charging 800-2000 NTD per hour per student andyou are getting 600 NTD. On top of that, if these companies are legit and declare all their income, you will have to pay income tax on that revenue, which is about 20% for the 1st six months in Taiwan. Then, it becomes 6% for that last six months of your first year. At then end of the year, you are making about 540 NTD per hour, but for the first six months you will be making only 480 NTD per hour.

Pretty shitty.

The only benefit is that you can work blocks of hours. But in my opinion these gigs are a waste of time. A few tutoring hours here and there will involve traveling to see students but the pay might be 2x or 3x as much.

Consider this.

I am going to start teaching an informal class of about 4 students for an hour an a half per week. I had already done my research and knew that for groups like these, you can charge about 400 to 600 NTD per hour per student without any problems. So for an hour and a half, I will be making 2400 NTD. Not bad. Naturally, I don’t mind doing this and there is no middleman. The goal of this class is to perfect their English.

I have learned slowly how it works in Taiwan. The first tutoring job I got was tutoring French. This was my first gig as a tutor in Hsinchu and Taiwan, so I asked for 700 NTD per hour. I know now that for the type of instruction I give, I could easily charge 1200 NTD per hour. But I am glad I didn’t because that job led to another one already.

Like I mentioned before, the way to go as a private teacher is to teach a few classes that you organize yourself. You can also teach the corporate market, however I have not yet been able to get into that market; you need to know people in those areas. It’s not like I tried though. Most of the work, I found quite easily.

I have said that I don’t mind teaching a lot during the week, but I keep the weekends to myself. And since I work with my wife during the day, we see a lot of each other, so if we both teach during the evenings, it’s not a problem.

It’s funny, because the students I am teaching in my class, I am not teaching them because they need help with their English, but because they need more challenges in English to perfect their English speaking and writing skills. To me, this actually sounds like fun. It also helps that I know the students already as well as their parents.

One good tip that I got is to make your students or parents pay in advance. That way it gives them an incentive not to cancel on their lesson.

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We are actually looking seriously into going back to school part time as well. My wife will most probably start work on her Phd sometime next year, and I hope to qualify for a Masters degree. I wouldn’t mind doing an MBA. I know for a fact for those types of Masters, you can get paid around 30000 NTD per month that you are studying (around 950 USD per month). Though I wouldn’t mind doing a Masters in Education or Information Theory about Memetics and how memetics are applied to children. Memetics is the study of how ideas and things are propagated from one mind to another. The whole viral issue. We will both now more about this in the next few weeks.

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This week, I want to take at least 2000 shots with my new camera. I want to empty the battery and fill up my memory card. I calculated that I would have around 2100 shots on my 8GB flash card. This week, I am actually also researching the RAW format and what the benefits of shooting in RAW would be. From what I have understood, RAW is like the negative of a film camera. the JPGs are like the photo print.

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Related posts (see the Teaching In Taiwan section in The Articles page)

1. The Best Way Of Teaching In Taiwan
2. Getting Stiffed In Taiwan or how checking Out The Details Of Your Paycheck Pays Off

 

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