Qkids: How to Get Started

Teach English Online Working From Home

Ever think about earning some extra income? Would you enjoy making up to $20/hour from the comfort of your own home? Well, then Qkids might interest you! In today’s post, I’m talking about getting started as a teacher with Qkids- an online ESL program. Qkids is an online platform in which teachers from the US and Canada teach English to students in China.

If you’d like make extra money on Qkids, please use my referral link. I’d be happy to answer any questions if I don’t address them below.

My Story with Qkids

In Spring 2020, I came across a Qkids ad on Indeed. I watched quite a few YouTube videos to see if it was something I would want to do. As a former teacher with an education degree and a teaching certificate, I knew I was qualified. I applied and got accepted as a teacher after two mock classes. Since then, I have been teaching on Qkids on pretty much a weekly basis. I’m very grateful that I have been able to make this additional income without even leaving my house.

Requirements for Qkids

You may be wondering what the requirements are to teach for Qkids. Although many may think you need a background in teaching or an education degree, that’s actually not the case.

The teacher requirements from their website include:

• Legally eligible to work in the US or Canada
• Have a Bachelors Degree (does not matter the field)
• Teaching license or an English teaching certificate (such as TESOL, TEFL, CELTA, ESL)

If you don’t have a teaching license and do not want to obtain one, you can easily get an English teaching certificate by taking online courses and a test. I would suggest taking the course even if you have a teaching certificate. I ended up taking a TESOL course while I was teaching with Qkids. China started to have more strict regulations, so the company was suggesting it.

I took my 120 hour TESOL course through International Open Academy for about $20 because I purchased it through Groupon. It actually should not take you 120 hours to complete.

The technical requirements from their website include:

• A computer with a webcam
• A headset with a build in microphone
• A stable internet connection (they prefer ethernet/cable connection, but it’s not necessarily required)
• Minimum upload speed of 2Mbps
• Minimum download speed of 4Mbps

Setting Your Schedule on Qkids

Once you are an independent contractor with Qkids, you then set your schedule through their software app. This is the ongoing schedule you would be open to working. You can contact Qkids at any point to adjust your schedule.

Keep in mind that you are only teaching students in China, so there is a major time difference. I am in the Eastern time zone (EST), so I’m exactly 12 hours different from my students. If I’m teaching in the morning, it is the evening time there.

The slots vary depending on daylight savings time, holidays, and school vacations. As of right now (Winter 2021) for teachers in EST, the time slots range from 4:50am-8am for Monday through Sunday. Then on Friday and Saturday evenings, the slots range from 7:30pm-11:20pm. These are 30 minute classes with a 10 minute break between each class.

Your schedule for the upcoming week is said to be released on the Sunday before the week starts. However, I have noticed that it’s usually released by the middle of the current week. There is also a mobile app, so you can easily check your time slots there.

Sometimes you will get invitations for time slots that you did not initially open on your schedule or that were not booked earlier in the week. It is up to you if you want to accept or deny those invitations. However, it does not harm you to deny.

I initially only started with 16 available time slots. I now have 39 available time slots as I wanted to earn more money. As I mentioned before, you can adjust your schedule with Qkids pretty easily.

How Does Qkids Work?

After your schedule is made, you are likely to receive bookings. The first few weeks you may not get a full load or even have empty weeks. It really just depends on the time of the year too. I know for me, it started off a bit slow. I also went for two weeks without a single class, but it picked back up quickly. Now, I almost always have a completely booked schedule even when I changed to the 39 slots.

The virtual classrooms already have lessons, guides, and activities in them. At the beginning you may want to review the software and the lessons just so you’re familiar with the activity functionally, the Qkids characters, and the various tools. After about a week of teaching, I did not need to review the lessons. Plus, you often receive repeat lessons.

I love the set up of the Qkids software. It’s super interactive and engaging, even for the kids. There is a reward system and a lot of helpful tools. I have taught on VipKid before too and I did not like their format at all. It was basically a Power Point slideshow that did not have as much functionality.

Each classroom can have anywhere from 1-4 students that range from ages 4-12 years old. Classes and material are assigned to the students by level, not necessarily by age.

You need to login to each class about 3 minutes before the actual start time. Use this time to introduce yourself and have the students introduce themselves. Then at the 28 minute mark, you can enter the final slide to give virtual stickers and say goodbyes. Then you evaluate the students based on their performance and participation.

If you are teaching back to back classes, then you have about 7 minutes to go to the bathroom, get a drink or snack, or just hang out like I do.

They do have some other things you should know about once you start teaching such as standby classes, no show classes, dealing with issues within the classroom, etc. However, it’s extremely easy to figure out and handle anything I have come across.

Ready to Teach for Qkids?

Overall, it’s a pretty great company. I do have a list of pros and cons in another post if you’re interested. There’s actually a lot more pros than there are cons for me.

Curious about how much you can make teaching on Qkids? I have a post dedicated just to that!

If you want to learn more about Qkids, here is a FAQ page. Interested in joining Qkids? Click here to get started!

Interested in making side hustle income by petsitting cats and dogs? Check out my post about petsitting on Rover.

Disclaimer: This post contains referral links. If you click the link and sign up, I receive a small referral fee at no cost to you. All opinions are my opinion. Read full disclosures here.