A popular method of earning money while living outside of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada or Australia is teaching English.
Anyone who knows the language well enough can teach it, but being a native speaker makes you the most desirable candidate for work.
The website I use regularly to find teaching work is NativeSpeaker.com.pl. It covers all of Poland and allows you to create a free “Standard” profile through which prospective students and employers can find and contact you.
Benefits of Upgraded Membership
The “Premium”, 120zł ($32)/year and “Express” 50zł ($13)/2 months membership options give your profile high visibility on the regional and front pages of the site. They also allow you to list your email, phone and other contact options as opposed to the contact form-only option on the free profile. Here are the details of the upgraded memberships.
I paid for the “Premium” option because it’s very cheap and pays for itself once you’ve worked several hours for a new student/customer. I suggest that once you get your feet wet with a free profile, it’s a no-brainer to upgrade since you’ll probably earn multiple times what you would have otherwise.
How Much to Charge
What you can charge for teaching is whatever people will be willing to pay for your service. If you have language certificates and teaching experience it’ll justify a higher rate, but basically if you satisfy the student/customer, regardless of prerequisites, they’ll keep working with you.
The starting prices for a one hour lesson on NativeSpeaker.com.pl vary from 50zł-100zł, with some outliers lowballing their rate. A good rule of thumb from my friend who also teaches is to charge 1zł per minute of instruction. At today’s exchange rates that works out to $16/hour. Given Poland’s low cost of living, working at this rate for about 20 hours a week should cover all of your living expenses. The nature of teaching English this way (short of having a full-time job) means work will be highly variable at times.
How Easy is Work to Find
If you have a good command of the English language, are patient and good with students, you’ll probably find work within a week or two. Of course it’ll be a lot more likely if you live in one of the large cities in Poland (Warsaw, Kraków, Łódź, etc.) and it’s sometime during the academic year (the summer and winter breaks are slower periods).
You’ll likely receive offers from language schools. I haven’t taught at a language school because I value flexibility in choosing lesson times and locations, but will consider it if the conditions are appealling. The downside of language schools is that they often offer lessons for one hour early in the morning at sometimes distant locations. It’s up to your judgement if you don’t mind getting up early to teach somewhere that isn’t near you. Even an hour roundtrip on top of an hour teaching means that the 50-60zł you earn works out to about $7.75/hour or U.S. minimum wage.
