We all know the hard work that teachers put into educating our children. If we didn’t know how difficult the job was before, many have now observed these lessons directly in our own homes or seen in the media. The pandemic has made an impact on education and learning. Teachers have made terrific strides in moving their lessons online.
Each of those classes we observe or read about is the end result of hours of work. Research, preparation, lesson planning, and resource building. And that’s all before they’ve even stepped into the classroom (virtual or bricks and mortar). Or give out the assignments that they will then need to then mark and assess.
Sounds like hard work, but not just hard work. It sounds like a LOT of work. Are teachers marking in front of the TV at night? Or after they’ve put their children to bed? Are they researching the next topic on their phone while quickly eating dinner? Probably.
Unless, that is, they have decided to get some help. Enter the Virtual Teaching Assistant.
Teachers have been using the services of other teachers for years in the form of sharing resources, buying lesson plans, and scouring the internet for suitable assignments, quizzes, and interactive worksheets to support their curriculum delivery.
But over the last decade, the demands on teachers have increased – more paperwork, more reporting, more marking….not to mention this year’s need to rethink EVERY SINGLE LESSON and how it can be delivered online.
With this increased workload, comes the increased need for the services of a Virtual Teaching Assistant.
But what do they actually do, you ask?
Virtual Teaching Assistants or VTAs as they are also known, take on tasks outsourced by the teachers to help them keep organized and on track with their delivery through creating lesson plans, marking assignments, creating online resources, tests, quizzes, researching topics, writing memos and reports…the list goes on.
Virtual Teaching Assistants are effective PAs for teachers. So, whatever they need support and assistance with outside the classroom they can handover to a VTA. For example, an English teacher might think it’s a nice idea to deliver a Christmas lesson focusing on poetry, but they don’t have time to do it. So they would give you a brief and you would research the topic, create the lesson plan, the instructional presentation, and the accompanying resources.
Quite often, a teacher would give a single lesson, or a basic resource creation task as the first piece of work. That way they can test the water to see what your work is like, how it is taken by the students, and the ease and success of the delivery.
Alternatively, it could be an essay, assignment, and test marking that they are looking for help with….they might just want their evenings back for a while or need to outsource something so they can keep their heads above water.
Sounds great, you say…but where does the work come from?
There are a few different ways that this can work. Some are getting an odd piece of work here and there from different teachers. Others are working as dedicated support for a few teachers where you become more of a dedicated PA or VTA for them.
But let’s start where people normally start.
Teacherspayteachers.com
If you have existing resources that you think are going to be of interest to other people, then you can get them up onto sites like teacherspayteachers.com. Teachers can search by subject, grade, curriculum area for resources that meet their needs. You can create a basic seller profile pretty easily for free. Then, you can upload single resources or multiple as ‘bundles’ as they call them. Teacherspayteachers.com then pay out your earnings, minus their commission through PayPal every month. In terms of commission, they take a hefty 45% if you are on the free basic package. If you are starting to make sales, you can easily jump to the next package which costs $60 per year with a reduced commission of 20%. This is well worth it if you are starting to get regular business.
Freelancer Sites
Or you could go straight into offering your services as a virtual teaching assistant through freelancer sites such as Fiverr or Upwork. On these sites, again it costs nothing to set up, just time and a bit of creativity to build a profile that showcases your skills and attracts the buyers.
Let’s take Fiverr for example, you would set up your profile telling people what your credentials are, so they know that if they commission you to do some work they will get a high-quality product (you can also upload some previous work if you like so they can see the standard of work you provide). Next, you decide the services that you would like to offer. Think about both hourly rate options and full package options. What do I mean by that? You may offer an hour’s time at $x. They provide you with a list of tasks, duties, marking, research that needs to be done. Alternatively, you can set a set rate for specific work. Building resources, creating lesson plans, or perhaps a full package of resources, presentations, lesson plans. Now, if you do this, it’s best to have a set fee rather than an hourly rate.
These sites like Fiverr deal with all the payments so you don’t need to worry about anything on that side. When someone buys your services, they pay Fiverr directly. Once you’ve delivered the work and the buyer says, “Yep, that’s great!” then the payment is released to you. It appears in your Fiverr account 14 days later, minus a 20% commission which Fiverr keeps.
Over time, your customers will give you reviews, fabulous ones hopefully, and that helps draw in more and more customers. You may find that you have the same people coming back to you regularly and that is when you can perhaps look at setting up retainers, so for example you are paid on a regular basis for 20 hours or five lesson plans per month. You will see over time what services are popular and what people need the most help with. Who knows? You may even become a homework marking expert! It’s much easier now that work is submitted online and teachers aren’t having to cart about heavy book bags everywhere!
The Many Benefits of Being a VTA
So there you go, a little whistle-stop tour of life as a Virtual Teaching Assistant. Whether you are looking for a little side hustle or something more substantial, the demands on teachers are growing and with that, the demand for assistance. There has never been a better time than now to look for new and exciting ways to make a living, and many do, many make a very, very good living from being a full-time Virtual Teaching Assistant (shh…don’t tell anyone, but some even do it lying by the beach).
