Pros
I have been a licensed English/ESL teacher for several years including teaching online. I love teaching my courteous adult students at Native Camp. I look forward to seeing my regular students in the morning and continuing our pleasant conversations.
Native Camp’s platform and lessons are excellent and easy to follow. The pay is on time or even earlier than promised. No worries about that. Seeing that Native Camp has been around for a few years, shorter than other online English companies, it’s very impressive that it has a solid student base. Meaning, pretty much whenever you go online there will be students waiting to take your class. They’re especially eager to take classes with qualified native English teachers.
Native Camp administration is also friendly and always responds to your queries/comments in a timely manner.
My sincere advice to Native Camp would be to increase the teacher’s pay particularly for sudden classes for native English teachers, especially if it wants to attract more qualified native English teachers to join the company. Attracting more native English teachers would definitely be beneficial for Native Camp as I’ve mentioned the students are very keen to take lessons with native speakers. The current market rate for online native English teachers is at least $7-8 USD per 25 minute session, although it is even higher with some of the more reputable companies. Since sudden classes are the bulk of our classes, Native Camp should increase the sudden class rates to make it easier for native English teachers to dedicate their full-time schedule to teaching with NC and make a decent living.
Another thing to improve on is creating a raise and better bonus system. As with other online companies, after a teacher finishes a certain number of classes, e.g. 500-1,000, and keeps a good rating, e.g. above 4.80, the teacher should be given at least a 5-10% raise on his sudden class and booked class base rates.
All in all, Native Camp has many good points such as a strong student base and I hope it listens to its teachers’ feedback so we can grow together with the company! I thank NC for being such a laid-back and fun company to work for with a very flexible scheduling system. I wish Native Camp all the best!
Cons
- Low pay for sudden classes which is below market rate, even for qualified native English teachers
- Non-office staff, in other words, qualified home-based tutors cannot do Callan classes. Home-based tutors should also be trained and allowed to do Callan classes in the future.