Teaching English: How Much Money Can I Make Teaching English In Brazil?

Hey There!

What's Up?

  If you are reading this because you think about living and teaching in Brazil or you are just curious, there is one thing you've got to know right away, "THE PAYMENT ISN'T THAT GOOD", in fact you can't barely afford to pay the bills if you work for one place only but there are things you could do to earn more money and live comfortably and I'll talk about that. A lot of friends ask me about teaching in Brazil. I've had some conversations with people who were very interested about teaching and living here for a couple of months and I also have welcomed and helped (as much as I could) people to adapt themselves in this country so everything I'm about to tell you come from personal and professional experience, I hope you enjoy.

  

  The first thing you have to be prepared for is to go job hunting, like in any major city it's not an easy task moreover the country is in its deepest and cruelest recession. Companies are firing employees, small business are closing their doors and at times you may feel that you will never get a job, at least not a good one. But we can talk about this in another post. My point is that eventually you will come across with a very good opportunity but it won't just come up, you gotta get out there. Send resumés online, directly to the company's e-mail. Make business cards and spread them around the place you live, put an add in the local newspaper. These are just some tips that I've followed and it work for me.

  Now you got a job at this great school very well known tell me, how much you think you're gonna make? To begin with, you will receive your salary monthly but per hour worked and how's that supposed to work? Well, they will offer you groups and you will have a full schedule of classes to teach weekly. But it won't be enough to make a good monthly income and you will know why. If you are a foreigner, good for you, they will offer you more money to teach English because in this country people give more credit to foreigners than to their own citizens, yeah sad but true.

As a local/foreigner you will make:

• From R$ 10* to R$15* if you don't have any experience. 
• From R$16* to R$20* if you have at least some years teaching and 
• From R$ 25* to R$35*  Classes In-Company.

If you have any experience at giving private classes I'd fiercely recommend you to do it 'cause you can make a lot more money than working for companies. around R$ 50* an hour and if you are a foreigner you can charge a little more. You can also offer classes via Skype because commuting is something that you should strongly take into consideration when choosing a place to work.  

* Per Hour

  

  Fortunately and hopefully if you work for a company they'll give you some benefits and just to be clear, they aren't mandatory hence you will have to search a lot for a company who will give you more or any benefits at all. What are these benefits, anyway? Well, in this country the worker should have a health insurance provided by the company as well as transportation, paid vacation an food.  But for an obvious reason most companies don't offer that. But just so you know, when you get these benefits, they will for sure have a cost for you too, the company will discount an amount out of your payment for "giving" you the benefit along with the government taxes, which by the way will decrease significantly your profits in the end of the month.

  I won't lie to you, I want to give you the real scenario of being an English teacher in Brazil, if I could I'd recommend you to get a job in a school to have some benefits but focus your efforts on finding private students or classes In-Company because you'll learn so much more and you won't spend most of your time worrying about your income not being half as enough to get by. Another option is to find a agency to bring you to Brazil, they'll find you an affordable place to live, a good job and assistance in anything you might need and this won't forbid you to get any job or private student you want. I'll make a series of posts explaining everything about teaching here, today we talked about money and in the next post we'll talk about certifications/degrees required to teach in Brazil.

Thanks for reading!

Hugs,

Douglas Migliassi