SayABC: The Pros and Cons

by Catherine Wilkinson | Jun 10, 2019 | Teaching Online | 2 comments

SayABC is a fantastic online ESL company to teach with, particularly if you are new to teaching online. They are a highly popular company within the online teaching community, with a complaint being extremely rare when compared to their competitors.

There are so many pros to teaching with SayABC which I haven’t found as a full package elsewhere. But, like with all online ESL companies, SayABC doesn’t come without its downfalls.

As you may know from other posts within this blog, I highly recommend working alongside several online ESL companies at any given time. Though teaching online can be extremely rewarding in terms of career choice, flexibility and high hourly rate, it can also be challenging. Work can be inconsistent leading to an inconsistent pay packet, your job is never 100% secure even after signing a contract and companies have been known to disappear off the face of the Earth with no communication to teachers.

Some of the links used below I may be affiliated with. This just means that if you apply through one of the companies I teach with, I may earn a referral bonus if you are hired and successfully start teaching with that company.

Top Tip – Diversify your income if you are using teaching online as your main source of income.

I have worked for SayABC for 6+ months now and thoroughly enjoy teaching using their platform and lesson materials. Personally, SayABC is my chosen ‘backup’ company. If I gain a quiet period with my main teaching jobs, Whales English and UUabc, I will pick up hours with SayABC. I only open irregular slots, therefore just teach trial classes rather than their regular lessons known as ‘homerooms’.

For those looking to use SayABC as your main company, here are a few details to help get you started:

Require applicants to be native English speakers from the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Must hold a TEFL/TESOL certificate and Degree
Interactive lesson materials and platform provided
40 minute classes up to 4 students per class
Offer $15 per 40 minute class
Bonuses: teaching trial classes $8/student signup, Substitute classes $7 and a set of 9 homerooms $4 per class (paid in full after teaching last homeroom)
Quick hiring process: You can start teaching within 10-14 days of applying if successful
Short contracts are only 3 months long at a time, offering you even more flexibility

The Pros of Teaching with SayABC

1. Platform

SayABC’s platform is incredibly easy to navigate and use. It has clear headings of where to find your classes, section for your next class and a countdown, parent feedback, self-training modules, your calendar and schedule plus, my favourite feature, access to your pay. The pay tab is broken down clearly and updated regularly. There are sections for each class taught, plus broken down sections for student sign-ups, home-rooms and substitute classes.

For the online classroom itself, the platform offers a number of functions that can be incorporated to engage students further. SayABC offers a dice icon, which when clicked on, brings an interactive dice on the screen. Both the teacher and students have access to it once on the screen and can take turns to roll the dice. It is great for playing games and turn-taking to answer questions.

Another function I quite like is a countdown timer. You can set the time e.g. 10 seconds or 30 seconds, for students to complete an activity within a given time. For example, for more advanced students you may only offer 10 seconds to answer as many questions as possible but for a lower level student, you might provide 30 seconds.

2. Lesson Content

Some online ESL companies though provide all of your lesson materials for you, which is a win for planning time. A lot of the lesson content is so dull and boring to teach. When you’re bored, your students have no hope of finding the class fun and interesting.

This isn’t the case with SayABC! They, along with Uuabc, completely lead the field in terms of offering fun, engaging and interactive lessons for their students. Within SayABC’s classes, each lesson offers

elements of the slide which moves
songs and sounds are embedded and accessible from a click of a button
Opportunity to highlight students and drag their image onto the main screen
everyone can use the drawing function and each student is given their own colour so teachers can see who is interacting and who needs more guidance
interactive games with moving parts.

The lessons are top in the industry. They are constantly working on making them even better through updates and offering a range of fun learning activities. No matter what level of class you are teaching, all students have the opportunity to learn through colourful, interactive and exciting activities.

3. Flexibility

As mentioned above, what I love most about SayABC is that I can 100% control my own schedule. SayABC offers teachers an open calendar which they can select the slots they want to teach. You are able to open slots up to 14 weeks in advance, which is great to be able to plan your hours around other commitments.

For teaching regular classes aka homerooms, it is best to select the same paired slots for 14 weeks. This way, you will be more likely to have all of those slots filled, compared with if you only opened the same paired slots for 2 weeks. Homerooms come in 9 lesson blocks with the same students, hence SayABC is looking for teachers who can teach all 9 lessons.

Homeroom paired days available are (times listed are in BJT):

- Monday and Thursday (6-910pm)
- Tuesday and Friday (6-910pm)
- Wednesday and Saturday (6-910pm)
- Saturday and Sunday (950-1120am / 6-910pm)

For trial classes, you can open and close these slots on a week by week basis very easily (this is what I personally choose to do). However, to increase your chances of trial class bookings, ensure you have opened your slots for the following week prior to the Saturday. This is when the booking team will find teachers for their trial classes.

I actually really love this about SayABC, perhaps even more so than their lesson materials. It can be challenging to find a reputable company which offers such flexibility. However, SayABC does just that. If you don’t have a class booked in your available time slot, you have the option to cancel the slot and you don’t have to wait at your computer. Or alternatively, you can select to be a substitute teacher. You are required to wait at your computer for this, but if you do receive a class, you gain an additional bonus of $7 just for subbing!

4. Earn Bonuses

SayABC is such a fair company in terms of its pay to teachers. All teachers are offered the exact same rate of pay and bonuses. The base rate for a 40 minute class with SayABC is $15. Then teachers can earn extra per class:

Trial classes: per student that signs up, you receive an additional $8. Since SayABC teachers 4 students per class, you have the potential to earn up to $47 for one 40 minute trial class (if all 4 students sign up).

Substitute classes: if you are a substitute teacher for last minute cancellation, you will earn an extra $7 for that class.

Homerooms/Regular classes: for these classes, teachers MUST complete all 9 lessons within the set. This is teaching the same students for the 9 class block without having any cancellations, technical difficulties, complaints etc. At the end, you are then given a completion bonus of $4 per class ($4*9 = $36). This works out on average, $19 per 40-minute class.

5. Communication

Every week, SayABC send out weekly ‘newsbites’ to teachers via email. These are great as they keep teachers in the loop of what’s going on, any policy updates, class material alterations and upcoming training. They also provide details related to additional bonuses and extra teaching opportunities throughout student’s holidays (in the Summer and Winter).

On top of this, every week they send a reminder of your schedule and a further email to remind you how classes are booked and when to open slots e.g. trial classes are booked for the following week every Saturday.

The company is great at keeping teachers in the know and updated on what they have planned. Not to mention, unlike other companies, their emails are very well written and make complete sense. Not every online ESL company takes the time and care to ensure their communication with teachers is clear and accurate.

The Cons of Teaching with SayABC

1. Lack of Support

Though SayABC is fantastic at communicating with teachers via their weekly ‘newsbites’, I cannot quite praise the level of in-class support as much. I have found whenever a student has encountered technical difficulties, such as no sound or video, I have had to ‘wing it’ and carry on rather than the issue be rectified.

There is IT support at SayABC, it’s just I haven’t found them to be very fast or responsive. By the time I have gained a response, I am already 30 minutes into the class and they haven’t been able to help anyway.

They do have systems in place, so hopefully, this won’t always be an issue and I am sure other teachers might have a different experience. But for me, I have just found them too slow and not very helpful.

I am experienced enough so that when I do enter a class and the student has technical issues, I can modify my teaching so that they are still involved in some manner. But for individuals new to teaching online, it can be very unsettling if you aren’t gaining a reply from the IT support team.

SayABC has been aware of this and has put in a new support tab within the platform itself. Previously you could ask for IT help in the class and contact would be made via Skype. The new system looks great and is similar to a messaging service. You send the relevant team, aka IT support, a message, and they are able to reply directly to you.

Hopefully, this should help speed up support for teachers in classes and help lessons to run more smoothly.

2. Trial System

Over the last couple of months, SayABC brought out a new way to give trial classes to teachers. It was so that fewer classes were left with just 1 or 2 students and offered students a more realistic trial class with SayABC, ensuring there were 4 students per class.

The way it works is that teachers are booked their time slots given and then have to virtually enter a queue 5 minutes prior to the start of class. Once the class is filled with 4 students, the class will begin. I have never had a class take longer than 2 minutes to begin entering the queue. If a teacher isn’t given a class, they will be paid for the class nevertheless as it was a ‘booked’ time slot.

In theory, this is great. It means fewer teachers are left with no classes and students are given a better idea of what classes will be like with SayABC in the 4-1 format.

However, I never know what trial class I am going to receive until I am IN the class. For a planner like myself, this honestly drives me insane. Previously, I would be able to look at my schedule in advance, check what class I had, whether there were any slide updates and prepare my props accordingly.

Now, I have no clue whether there are any updates until I am teaching the lesson and I don’t know what lesson I am teaching until I am greeting my students. My desk ends up looking like an earthquake has hit with the number of props thrown left right and centre to ensure I have covered every potential class that I might be teaching.

3. Equipment Specifications

Due to SayABC’s professional platform and highly interactive teaching materials, they do require a lot higher specifications than other companies. Not such a plus if you have a very old computer, like I did – though I didn’t mind an excuse to purchase a well overdue update.

If you do not meet their specifications for the internet and computer, you will not be able to teach with the company. Within the interview, they carry out a technical check of your system and will tell you then and there if you pass or fail. Luckily, they are very friendly and will offer you the next stage if you can provide them with proof you can meet their requirements. As an example, my computer did not meet their specifications and I had to send them a screenshot of my husband’s computer specs in order to pass the interview and move on to the mock lesson.

Here are the specifications SayABC requires from their online teachers:

2 Comments

Claire on August 13, 2019 at 2:05 pm

Hi Catherine. Thanks for your information in this blog.
I agree Sayabc have a richly illustrated, interactive and easy to use online platform which uses a variety of phonic and learning approaches to help teachers and enable learners.

My experience with them so far has been ‘mixed’. I’ m a Primary School Teacher of over 20 years based in the UK and I thought I would sign up with Sayabc over the Summer Holidays, as I work on a contractor basis as I don’t get paid for the Summer months.

I currently enjoy teaching both ‘home rooms’ and trial classes, the children are eager to learn and well behaved – a delight to teach! I admire the way the company uses different learning approaches and the content overall seems to be good quality and enjoyable to both teach and learn from.

However, the ‘onboarding’ process/journey and the support (lack of) received was very rough/frustrating for me and I write this in case other teachers wonder, ” Is it me?!” “Is it communication?”

Eager to start Summer work as soon as possible, I first registered with Sayabc on 8th July 2019, whilst still in UK term time and they asked me to arrange an interview immediately, but as I was teaching ‘in real life!’ I didn’t book my interview until after schools broke up and also I was unable to select their option of recording an interview, it had to be a live interview for some reason? I booked an interview for 22nd July and completed it on 23rd. I booked an evaluation class for 26th. You are told the resources for the trial class will be online ‘within two days’ of the evaluation, so you rush around getting background and props ready and then it updates again, so you rush around again and get new resources, then in the day of the actual evaluation in updates yet again, within 2 HOURS of the evaluation starting. (Good job I’m on ‘holiday’ really and can run to the library to print things off?!)

Then you have the evaluation class and no one turns up! So you message IT support and support (as you have mentioned) is a bit slow in coming. They eventually say “You can wait in the classroom” (uhm I am doing!) – so you just wait for 40 mins like a lemon thinking “What am I doing?!”

I must add I DID get paid for the class, despite no children turning up and me just sitting there wondering what was happening!

Another was booked, but because you are NOT told that ‘the test evaluator’ is not an actual person, ( am I dim to think I was waiting for an actual interviewer/evaluator person?!) I was waiting for them to turn up to the lesson, thinking they were late attending and chatting to the pupil, who did turn up this time, saying “We will just wait 5 more mins” This time support were quicker in their response, but again it was IT support, not general academic support, who despite saying “You can always contact us on Skype, have never responded to me on Skype, despite keeping my own profile active on there?! I even sent them screen shots to show this and their response again was to ignore my ‘evidence of lack of support and say, ” You can always contact us on Skype!” (ever decreasing circles!)

The IT system overall works well for me, but parents are VERY critical. I am always on time, always professional, I use a lot of TPR, colourful resources, secondary reward systems such as sticker, puppets, toys, props etc and I am FULL if energy ( despite having taught for 20+ years hey/! lol)

If their son/daughter is having tech problems, it’s your fault, if they’re feeling a little lazy – it’s your fault. Just the other day I’d taught a trial class and as the trial class was assigned a good 12-14minutesinto the allotted class time I went through the slides at pace as they want you to cover all of the material despite starting the class later through no fault of your own. I received a parent complaint saying I had ended the class early, because we covered the material well and reach the ‘goodbye’ page at a certain time. As a teacher, I realised this and so extended the learning through questioning individuals, reviewing HFWs ( high frequency words) talking with students, giving stickers, discussing learning etc. However the parent used the screen shot as a ‘weapon’ to say ‘look she ended the class early’. Which, if the company actually watch the video footage to check this ( as I have asked them) they would see this was untrue. Some parents do this to get away with not paying for lessons, as it (I’m now told) would be counted as a TNS ( teacher no show) despite actually writing the extra minutes down on a whiteboard and teaching the extra time?!

Some feedback I receive (which perhaps comes from Sayabc representatives I the UK or the US seems to be encouraging and supportive while other ‘feedback’ from the same company but possible Bejing branch appears to be unfair, with communicative errors, incorrect, vying on the side of the parents (whether they are actually right or wrong) and just sometimes down right injust! It leaves me incredulous at times and then I just have to tell myself to “suck it up buttercup” and keep on teaching, but you do seemed to be blamed for things outside of your control? A few times, I’ve thought myself a fool for taking this job, despite the convenience of teaching at home, where I could just be working a regular 9-5 temp job over the Summer?

The hours are just from about 11am to 2pm UK (GMT) time which kind of blocks out the middle of the day if you want to work another job over the Summer, but it is enjoyable to work from home and not pay for petrol or your work commute.

Recently I also had an interview with another company: ” Dada abc” who pay a little more for qualified teachers and seem a little ‘more’ human, I don’t know? I will wait and see what happens with them!
Reply
- Catherine Wilkinson on August 14, 2019 at 6:38 am
  
  Hi Claire
  Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to share your personal experience with SayABC. I only wish to provide value to my audience here and it is great to hear other teacher’s experiences with online ESL companies.
  
  It sounds like you have had a mix of positives and negatives. I am really sorry for your initial application experience. The application is quite lengthy with SayABC and drawn out I feel, with the initial interview/demo and then a real evaluation class with students. It should have been explained better with whether staff would be attending and what to do if there were no students.
  
  You are completely right, the IT support is highly lacking. Nearly every lesson I have taught, even with contacting IT, I have just had to ‘crack on’ and make the best of a situation with students cameras not working/sound not working etc. But, on the flip side, the lessons were super interactive and I actually had a lot of fun teaching them to the students.
  
  I honestly haven’t taught with SayABC for a good few months now, due to taking on a secondary position with my main company I just do not have the time to teach elsewhere presently. I understand they have made a few changes to course materials and I received updated about possible 1v6 class format too instead of the 1v4 format.
  
  Regarding the teaching hours, it is a pickle for us based in the UK as it impacts on the middle of our day so makes it highly difficult to have days out, other commitments. But, it is a lot better than those on PST time, who have to get up at 3am in the mornings to teach! You will find with most ESL companies with Chinese students, the hours are all between 11-2pm UK time, as that is the peak teaching hours in BJT (6-9pm). However, if you are looking for more hours, you can consider companies such as Itutor who offer 24/7 scheduling (though 10 hours need to be during peak hours and across the weekend too).
  
  I started my ESL career with Dadaabc. They have undergone a lot of changes and management since I first taught there. I know they have strict policies and can have fines in place for taking time off. But, they book for you rather than parents choosing the teachers, so, if you are a good teacher, you will probably find yourself fully booked very quickly. They pay lower than some other companies, probably working out as average pay for the industry. IT was very responsive when I taught with them along with the platform. Every company has there pros and cons, I think it just takes time, trial and error to find the right company for ourselves.
  
  Good luck with Dadaabc, fingers crossed for your application!
  Thank you once again for such a detailed insight into your experience with SayABC.
  
  Catherine.
  Reply