ESL Teacherpreneur Stories – Teryn and Dan

Welcome to the 7th installment of our ESL Teacherpreneur series!

This is where we highlight teachers from the Off2Class community who have branched away from classroom teaching.

This week we’d like to highlight Teryn Brafford and Dan Conerd – each an ESL Teacherpreneur in Thailand via New Zeland. They’ve started an exciting teacher collective called My English Teachers. Get in touch with them by leaving a comment below. Take it away Teryn and Dan!
‘Our English teaching journeys started when I was working as a swim teacher in Wanaka, New Zealand. I kept meeting travelers that had just come from teaching English in Southeast Asia. Dan and I knew that we wanted to explore that part of the world next! We signed up for a TEFL/TESOL Master Course while we were still in New Zealand and did an English teaching practicum in Phuket, Thailand. Shortly after, we were working in the classroom !
We were looking for an opportunity to continue teaching English without renewing our government school contracts. We decided that setting up our own website and taking on students would not only make teaching enjoyable but, allow us to earn income on our own terms.

My English Teachers begins…

Usually, we teach one-to-one lessons online using Zoom. We are exploring the idea of group lessons, but haven’t started them yet. If our students are local and prefer lessons in-person, we accommodate them.
Our learners are primarily university students and young professionals. We teach IELTS and TOEFL exam preparation, business English, English conversation, and functional English for travel. Thanks to Off2Class, we can offer a wide variety of lessons to our students to keep them engaged.

What do you and your students like about Off2Class?

I love knowing I no longer have to spend hours lesson planning in order to provide my students high-quality lesson content and homework. The student management system is so simple! I’m no longer stuck on an Excel spreadsheets to keep track of my student’s learning! We enjoy grading homework and providing feedback right inside student dashboards. Not to mention, the Enterprise system is going to make hiring other teachers a breeze, which is something we are looking to do very soon.
Students love the idea of having their own individual learning plans. They usually like to work through all of the lessons it provides. I believe they feel like they are really getting somewhere and their achievements are measurable when they follow that system. They have also told me how much they like being able to log into their dashboards, do their homework, review lessons, and have everything all in one place. It really feels like their learning experience is something tangible when they take lessons using the Off2Class.

Plans for the future?

Short term, we are mostly focused on building up our ESL blog, creating content for our social media platforms and building lessons that we will be sending out weekly to our subscribers. We really want to try to use social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram to make learning English more enjoyable.
In 2017 we aim to grow My English Teachers into an ESL teacher collective. Our goal is to give other teachers the opportunity to build their own student base and teach online through our platform. We want to build a little corner of the internet where great ESL teachers can have their own space to advertise their lessons. Students will be able to search for high-quality ESL teachers, knowing that all of their choices will be experienced and certified.’

If anyone has experience in building an ESL Teacherpreneur collective, I’m sure Teryn and Dan would like to hear from you below! We’d all love to hear about your own ventures, lessons learned and advice!