My time working  for DaDa ABC

I have been working for DaDaABC since 2018, and I’ve worked about six hours a week for them since I started.

It can be quite difficult to work more than three hours in a single day as all of their students are school-age children. Sometimes a student will request classes outside of that three-hour window, but this is rare and has not happened to me personally.

The company treats its teachers well. Onboarding is a constant struggle for them, as they are constantly hiring new teachers. Because of this, they tend to prioritize new teachers. If you have worked there for a while, you will find that you don’t get the same amount of attention and your empty time slots fill more slowly.

The website and teaching platform are very intuitive. Teaching on their custom platform is one of the easiest parts of the job because they pre-load each class with the teaching materials. You just need to prepare the lesson and you will find it to be very simple.

All classes in DaDa are one-on-one. My students have ranged in age from about 3 years  up to early teens. DaDa teaches children up to the age of 16. Many of the younger students either know no English or next to no English, so learning a small amount of Mandarin is helpful. Simple commands like “repeat after me,” “where is the (object),” or “what is this” make lessons with less advanced students significantly easier. Dada provides video lessons on helpful Chinese phrases to new teachers, and I still found what I learned in these lessons useful.

The Pay

Pay has been a strange issue. I have only been working there for two and a half years, and I believe my rate of pay has changed four times. At first, I was paid in RMB, so the rate would fluctuate depending on the exchange rate between that and my native currency, sometimes being as much as $18 per hour ($9 for a half-hour class). They then instituted a “step-up” program, which increased the pay if you worked more hours in a month. That has since been scrapped in favour of a flat $15 an hour rate. This was all communicated in a confusing way, but eventually, it was understood well.

The pay deductions occur if you are late to too many classes in a month, or if you miss any classes at all. This seems fair – you were unable to perform your duties. There are exceptions, like if you get a note from your doctor. They are very understanding about these one-off interruptions. I once missed an entire day because I became suddenly ill and I had no problem emailing the office and getting my penalty removed. However, I think I did lose a regular student because I left them hanging.

The most I ever earned in a month was $550. This was back when we were paid in RMB and the exchange was very favourable. If I had worked a full schedule that month, I could have earned about $1700.

The schedule

Now, I highly doubt it is possible to work a full schedule. There are so many people working extra hours on DaDa as their other sources of income have dried up, consequently, there are fewer students for everyone. However, if you were to work every day and somehow get all the likely slots filled, you could probably earn $1200-1300.

It is rare to get unsolicited feedback. You may get an email or a message warning you if you have violated any conduct rules, otherwise, you are unlikely to hear back unless you reach out with a question. If you do email support with a question, you will usually hear back quickly and the answer will usually be thorough. This is the one area of frustration with DaDaABC – you don’t get very much communication. While they have tried to improve (such as having a monthly newsletter), you often just don’t get the sense that you are very important to the company. And since they have thousands of teachers all over the world, that is not surprising.

 

DadaABC only hires native speakers. If you are considering working for DaDa, be aware that right now is a difficult time to start. You will probably not get that many classes due to the lockdowns in many places forcing people to work more online.

However, this is a very good company overall to gain experience with and learn how to help new speakers. Their training is excellent and their requirements are reasonable.

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