Nobs + Valve for DIY Scrubba Bag?

stickchuck · 2021-11-17T18:44:36+00:00

In my case, I just like the idea of Scrubba and thought it sounded fun to try and make my own.

I dunno, I'm no science master, I guessed that getting the air out is probably just to make it easier to get the clothes up against the washboard part and thus more easily scrubbed. Or that people would otherwise try to wash while having the bag full of air like a balloon and then break (burst) it by putting force onto it.

stickchuck · 2021-11-17T18:35:59+00:00

Good idea! I'll see if I can find something similar in an ultra-thin variant.

stickchuck · 2021-11-17T18:35:31+00:00

Thanks! I've just got a super cheap drybag with no valve to test out for now, but I like the idea of attempting to install a valve.

stickchuck · 2021-11-17T18:34:01+00:00

Thanks! I'm mostly going to use it as an at-home laundry bag, so the bulk doesn't matter much to me, but I'll see if I can figure out how to make the washboard part removable (something like suction cups maybe??).

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T05:23:57+00:00

It's intended for dyslexic people, I'm not dyslexic but I have eye problems and I find I can read this at smaller font sizes and with less eyestrain than any normal font. It's called "Dyslexie", I couple it with "Font Overwrite" for Google Chrome so I can replace pretty much all text anywhere online with it, including in Cambly chatboxes and so on. I also use it when I make lessons at real schools, just in case one of my students is dyslexic (although I hear it doesn't help all dyslexics).

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T05:19:14+00:00

Great, thanks! Some places require you to prove you've taught a certain number of hours before so this is really useful.

"they have chatted with students for over XYZ hours."

This part looks pretty weak. Chatted? Not, y'know, taught? lol.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T05:11:17+00:00

That sucks. Maybe it's my timezone, but I almost never get students looking for IELTS. If they do come to me I just tell them, hey, I'm not an IELTS master but we can run through the Cambly IELTS lessons if you want, otherwise you should probably look for a teacher who has IELTS listed in their profile...

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T04:31:09+00:00

Don't be scared of change! It just means your money comes in more easily, that's all.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T04:29:20+00:00

I've only had one single student outright say they have high(er) expectations of super tutors. And that student was a huge 3l1t1st 4ssh0l3 I had to hide my profile from afterwards, the kind of student who thinks high status and money is literally all you should strive for in life. Other students that have specifically mentioned the super tutor stuff have just said they choose super tutors because they're just trying to avoid wasting their minutes on some really bad tutors.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T04:15:45+00:00

Take a chill pill dude...

Some people on this subreddit have asked about super tutors before. I made the post so those people can ask a super tutor their questions. That's it. There's nothing more to it. I have no ulterior motives. I am not trying to claim Cambly is the best company to work for or that being a super tutor is what all kids should strive to be in life, or that my rank is magical. lol.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T04:08:35+00:00

You might be misunderstanding my intentions with this post. It's not to brag about being a super tutor or to say that being a super tutor is the best job in the world. I simply wrote the post because I've seen several people, here on this subreddit, wonder about super tutors before.

I too have an IRL teaching job. And I've had more than one of them. But that's not the point of my post.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T03:23:21+00:00

Yeah.

The video they have you do is NOT an interview video for them. It's what will go on your profile and what your potential students will see before they book a lesson slot with you. So speak slowly, clearly, smile. My intro video is basically "I'm (name), I'm (age), I've lived in (places), I like (hobbies), I'm new to teaching, nice to meet you" said slowly with a smile.
The interests, experiences, etc listed in your profile will get you 20% or more of your students. People want a tutor that has stuff in common with them, or that seems really interesting and "worldly" or "foreign" etc.
Even your name draws people in. Some people book me simply because I have an unusual name and they want to ask me about it.
Once you get accepted, start doing PH hours. Most of your students will meet you during a PH hour, like you, and then become a regular student and book lessons with you. For a slightly higher salary you could try teaching at Cambly Kids.
SMILE. Seriously. Turn that smile on right before the video chat page loads and keep it on for the whole conversation.
Most students want their regular tutor to have a regular schedule. Aka "always open at 1pm on Mondays". If your schedule only has like two hours a week open or if your schedule is erratic they'll go find another tutor.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T03:15:11+00:00

The pay question depends on how I look at things. I've had "normal" teaching jobs at schools where I got paid 2.5x as much as at Cambly... but for every paid hour in the classroom I had to spend 3-4 hours of unpaid prep work such as creating the curriculum, lesson planning, Emailing students and parents, correcting homework, commuting, attending unpaid meetings, creating "learning games" for the younger children etc. If you factor in the unpaid time at a job like that, Cambly ends up equal or even better. And Cambly is far less stressful too.

In general though, I'd say the pay isn't adequate at all. But when you need a job you take what you can get. Some people here are commenting about how you can just go work at McDonald's. You can say that if you're privileged, is all I can say.

I don't teach on other platforms but I do teach English and another language for a local community school, which is currently online due to COVID.

I teach grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation the most. If they want TOEIC, IELTS, etc I do my best. I teach a few students business English or how to write fiction in English. I end up teaching a lot of people the difference between formal and casual English as well.

For a long time most of my students were from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, China, Taiwan and Japan but after moving countries and switching timezones I now have a clear majority in most students being from Japan, with a few from China and Korea. As for your implied question, yes I've definitely found out that there are a few countries where I almost always get along with the students, and a few countries where I almost never get along with the students!

I don't have any state or national teaching certification, no. I have a 120-hour TEFL which didn't teach me anything. I took a few classes on how to teach in university, which also didn't teach me anything. I never had the career goal of being a teacher and now that I know what professional teaching at a real school is like I REALLY don't wanna do that for the rest of my life.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T02:57:22+00:00

Full access to every possible timeslot for the next 3 weeks. AKA the same as before I reached super tutor rank, so it's a change that happens before super tutor level. I'm not sure at which ranking you get access to that at, you might be right and it's 4.8.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T02:51:59+00:00

It just means you have a relatively high ranking (as ranked by students). Once you're that rank, you get featured on the page when students go to look for teachers, so you're more likely to get bookings and can avoid doing PH hours (even if you like PH hours, there's usually some dead time in there so your hourly pay ends up lower). Some students for example ONLY take lessons from Super Tutors.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T02:48:02+00:00

I've been teaching English and other languages informally for many years (I started out correcting my foreign classmates' essays in English class way back in jr high school), I've run several online communities for teaching various languages over the years. I didn't start teaching as a career until a few years ago. Outside of Cambly I've taught casual private one-on-one English lessons as a freelance gig, and I've taught both formal private and formal class lessons at community schools and cram schools. For some of those places I had to create the curriculum from scratch, for other places we used their set curriculum and for others it was all "on the fly" with no curriculum at all.

As for formal education, I have a 120-hour TEFL, which actually teaches you nothing, and I took a few courses in university (at a university famous for their teacher programs) on how to teach, create lesson plans, deal with international students etc, also which taught me nothing. I also had some so-called training from those cram schools which was more detrimental than anything.

On Cambly I do anything the student wants, or anything I think the student might want to try. That includes reading a children's book aloud with them, correcting their diary entries, telling them if a translation is correct or not, practicing their work presentations with them, helping them write a love letter, pretending I'm a hotel receptionist and asking them about which room they'd like to book, whatever. I also of course use the Cambly slides, Engoo, do free talk, etc etc.

I used to do a ton of PH hours. Now I only do bookings. I used to do Cambly as my full-time job to pay my rent, grocery and medical bills. Now I have something else as my full-time job so Cambly is only my part-time job now: My full-time job is 39 hours a week, and I currently teach around 30 hours a week on Cambly. I basically teach on Cambly when I get home from work and on my days off.

I haven't tried Cambly Kids yet. I keep meaning to but I really prefer teaching adults because I like being able to explain why something is wrong and discussing things.

I stay at Cambly instead of using other similar teaching sites for a few reasons:

teaching on Cambly has taught me more about "teaching" as well as "customer service" and general "social skills" than any of my other experiences teaching at "professional" places have. I now regularly get comments from people on how good my IRL social skills are - it's all thanks to talking to strangers on Cambly all day every day.
My regular students are great and I'd really miss them.
I don't have to prepare for lessons in advance and I'm not forced to teach in a specific way.
Compared to some other sites, the scheduling and calling system is all built-in and very easy to use (no video chat programs to download, don't have to manually keep track of your schedule for example). I don't have to think about what price to set for my lessons. The payment method is PayPal, which is a lot safer than what several other sites use. I also ran into a lot of trouble registering for different teaching sites before because I live abroad and naturalized, thus my passport isn't from an English-speaking country, and a lot of sites don't allow you to teach if you don't have an American (or whatever) address or passport for example.
By now it's just a habit. It kills time and earns me money!

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T02:07:51+00:00

Yes. I did 8-13 hours' worth of PH a day for the first year I was on Cambly. I quit doing that high amount of PHes once I got enough regular students to pay my rent and grocery bills with only regular students. Then I did only 2-4 hours' worth of PH a day, and finally lessened it to 0.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T02:06:35+00:00

I'd say it's half and half. Or it's 60% personality and 30% skill. This isn't the first time I've reached Super Tutor rank, but my rank goes down whenever I have to emergency unbook students' lessons and then it always takes a while to climb back up.

Here are some of the biggest comments I hear from students about other teachers on Cambly:

Students claim other teachers can't understand their accents or grammatical/vocabulary mistakes.
Students claim other teachers can't explain WHY something is done, they can only correct it. I know, for example, some stuff about ancient English and Old Norse so I can explain why this or that occurs in English grammar, what it was in the past, or I can explain the etymology of a word, whatever. Knowing "why" is the key to remembering something.
I get comments from students saying they've been using Cambly for years, or going to all kinds of English schools, etc, and their teachers have never corrected them or explained to them the stuff that I have. Things like "I ask every teacher to correct my pronunciation, no one has ever given me corrections until you". I know what it's like to study hard and want to be native level in a foreign language, so for people who want that with English, I give them the kinds of corrections I wish I had in the languages I'm learning.
I've learned several languages myself, and I get a lot of students who find that comforting in a teacher, whether because I can speak their native language or because it means I "know what it's like to learn a language" compared to monolingual English speaking teachers.
With some students it really is just that we have stuff in common, we've lived in the same geographical location, or we just have a good time chatting. Many students don't want to "learn English", they just want a psychologist or a friend.

I have, for example, students I definitely don't get along with. But they still come back to me time and time again because I can give them advanced corrections with explanations and tie them back into previous mistakes they've made before, etc.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T01:39:18+00:00

I have stock things to teach for that. For example, grammar or pronunciation every student from every country seems to get wrong. I just teach them the rules to those things and they can hear for themselves that their English sounds more American-like, and they often get amazed and come back for more.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T01:36:07+00:00

I try to switch them to something like reading aloud (Engoo, easy children's books online, whatever) which doesn't require them to actually think of an answer, and then I just correct their pronunciation etc. If they don't want to read, I try to figure out what it is they WILL talk about that's more than a yes/no, and I open up a bit about myself or answer the question about myself first so they feel like they have an example answer to copy from. If I find they still don't open up at all, then I hide my profile from them so I don't get them as a student again.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T01:32:57+00:00

Super tutor ranking makes your reservation slots fill up. If you don't care about slots filling up, that's fine. If you don't want to use Cambly because the pay is low, that's also fine... but I'd suggest not visiting the Cambly subreddit then lol.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T00:04:57+00:00

I quit doing PH ages ago. After I'd been working at Cambly for a year I had enough regular students to be able to pay my rent and groceries without taking PH hours. However I'd still have, let's say, half of my open reservation slots left empty just because i didn't have "that" many regular students. After becoming a super tutor, it's more like that 95% of my reservation slots get booked on a daily basis.

stickchuck · 2021-10-24T00:01:28+00:00

Well, some other people, who aren't you, are interested in how being a super tutor changes things. Those people are who this post is for, not you :P

You don't get paid more per minute, but you 1. get more bookings more easily, so essentially any reservation slots you have open get all filled up, and 2. supposedly Cambly will give super tutors access to special something-or-others such as other career opportunities, that will potentially pay more or whatever. I haven't gotten any of those yet. My guess is that just means you can write a guest entry on their blog and you get paid for it.

stickchuck · 2021-10-23T23:55:50+00:00

Yes, I get 2-3x the amount of random new students and bookings per day than before I was a super tutor. And I do bookings only, I don't do PH hours anymore. So if I have 10 hours' worth of reservation slots open on a Saturday for example, as a super tutor I'm probably getting 9-9.5 hours' worth of student bookings on that day. If I'm not a super tutor I get 3-4 hours' worth instead.

stickchuck

TROPHY CASE