I’m seeing a worrying amount of teachers asking about how they can earn extra money to afford to pay their mortgage, bills and general day-to-day living.
Considering how much work is involved in being a teacher, it’s unreasonable to think that teachers need to take up a “side gig” in order to make some extra money.
Here I’ve decided to list some ways to help you to earn some extra money to:
- Decrease financial stress.
- Maximise our work/life balance.
- Help fellow teachers OUT.
*This post contains some affiliate links to Amazon. See my full disclosure policy for more information.
1. Become a home tutor to earn extra money
This type of work is NOT for everyone, so skip on down the list if that’s you! I know after a long day in school, tutoring can seem like the last thing you’d want to do. It can also lead to teacher burn out, which is NOT what anyone wants.
I always aim to take on 2 hours a week to start to make sure I can fit it into my workload/headspace. Once I’ve adapted to it, it all seems worth it.
Home tutoring can be a way to earn some extra cash without having to take up extra work in a completely different field of work.
How do I find home tutoring?
School days offer a space to advertise for home tutors but also for families LOOKING for a home tutor. Take a look at the tutoring page to see what the advertisements look like.
It costs 50 euro to advertise on there for the year. Once your ad is up, you can hope to expect some calls from potential students.
How do I know what to charge?
This is entirely your call. However, there’s a fine line between wanting to be kind to a family and putting yourself in strain time wise and money wise. For instance, if it’s taking you 45 mins each way to travel to the house where you tutor, it’s not going to be worth your while for €25. (Petrol, time etc).
To find the right balance, I would aim to tutor (if possible) children close to where you live to minimise travel/time costs and charge what you see fit. I would think 30/35 euro is a decent price per hour if I’m being honest.
How do I know what to do with the child?
I hear ya! After teaching all day, it can seem like a monstrous amount of energy to plan for tutoring! However, what I do is I always start the first session getting to know the child. Do a few lighthearted baseline assessments to see where the child needs support. As well as that, talk to the parents to see what areas they think their child needs support.
Once that’s complete, keep the activities simple. Bring a whiteboard and a marker with you and treat it like a lesson. Have a teach, model activity section in whatever you’re doing and throw in a game as a starter and plenary to ensure the child has understood the concept. My bag ends up being like a Mary Poppin’s bag, with oodles of concrete resources at hand to use whenever I need.
2. Create and sell your teaching resources
Again, this isn’t for everyone either. Some people strongly disagree with teachers who do this, as they believe we should be sharing everything for free.
With that said, I’m not confident in teaching all subjects, particularly Music and Irish. As a result, I gladly purchase amazing resources off teachers who KNOW how to teach these subjects successfully and in an engaging way for the children. These resources can sometimes cost as little as a cup of coffee. There is never any pressure to buy resources but for some, this is a LIFE SAVER!
I know so many teachers that make the most fantastic resources for their own classroom. If this is you, have you considered uploading them for others to use? You could earn some extra money and save another teacher some time. Furthermore, if you’ve already made it ANYWAY, it’ll take you no extra time to upload it on a resources website like TpT or Mash.
See my post here on why I sell my resources.
Can teachers earn that much extra money?
The truth is it’s an unpredictable, unreliable income. You will earn different amounts on a month to month basis. My biggest advice to you is, pick a subject you feel passionate about, that you know you teach well and stick to it!
For instance, I am massively passionate about Reading. I create resources around Whole Class Guided Reading and talk about it a LOT on my Instagram account. This way, you’re offering support and advice for free in a methodology for teaching this approach, but showing how you use YOUR resources to do so. You build up a trust with your followers and if they like what they see, they may purchase some of your resources.
If I know I’m teaching a Music topic I know nothing about, I’ll pop onto the account of the teacher I trust in this area and see what he/she has to offer. I’ve recently invested in the Dabbledoo Music program and it’s been invaluable to my Music teaching.
It is a good bit of work to earn some money from this. It’s taken me years to get to this point, but I honestly feel my Reading resources are a huge benefit to my class as well as other classes around the world. This may be a small amount to some teacher sellers, but to me, it’s a nice extra income.
If this is something you are interested in, I have put together an eBook: the Ultimate Guide To Earning Extra as a Teacher to walk you through everything you need to know from figuring out your niche area to creating and promoting your resources online.
3. Teach classes outside of school
Many teachers got into contact with me via Instagram about this. It was really interesting to see the range of classes that people were teaching outside school- see below.
@asdcreationstation informed me that:
Parents email local school principals looking for qualified teachers, who are interested in home-based tuition for children who have not secured a place in a school yet. Ask your principal if they have received such emails and also check out your local ASD parent support pages, parents often pop up ads there on Facebook. Same goes for July Provision in the Summer.
This teacher wished to be left anonymous, however she shared the following information with me:
“I’m a qualified yoga teacher but don’t think you would need to be as there are so many resources available now to facilitate yoga lessons. Teachers in our school have free access to the sports hall for classes after school. We use the open area in our sensory area space where our ASD classes are. It’s 20 euro for 4 weeks per child. Text were sent to the guardians of 1st and 2nd class as that’s who it was aimed at.”
Guitar Lessons: It’s an after school club and I charge 35 euro for 6 weeks per child. This teacher sends out notes in school so that the children attending the lessons are from the school only.
Swimming lessons:
I give lessons in the public pool in town, I’ve all my courses done. I advertised on Facebook and took it down for fear of the tax man. I charge 25 euro a lesson but I do take children with ASD as most other instructors aren’t teachers and I found that parents prefer a teacher in this case. I do them for an hour on a Friday and for two hours on a Saturday. I did grinds, but I found they were a lot of extra work. With this, there’s no prep or extra work which you just don’t have the time for with teaching as it is.
4. Deliver CPD for Droichead/NIPT
This is an option I had never thought of. It was great to have feedback from teachers about how they go about delivering CPD to other teachers. If there’s an area of teaching that you excel in and are passionate about, then maybe this could be an option for you to earn extra money as a teacher.
I deliver Aistear CPD during the term time and as a summer course. Contact your local education center and/or NIPT.
5. Part-time lecturing
Part-time lecturing is something I’d LOVE to engage with. I know of two teachers who lecture in Marino College of Education in the evening time. One lectures Primary Teacher trainees in Geography, while the other lectures trainees in Mathematics. As we teach day-to-day, there are methods and strategies you could share with a trainee that would assist them in their teacher training.
Like home tuition, I’ve no doubts that this could be tiring and lead to teacher burn out too. However if it is something that you feel you would like, it could be an interesting, purposeful way to earn extra money.
This follower requested to remain anonymous, but when asked for more information about that reply, they said:
Hibernia College regularly advertise positions on their website for tutors. You can also contact publishers with samples of writing/ school resources. They use teachers to review upcoming products and then recruit authors for new programs as needed.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing this post and engaging with lots of teachers on Instagram, discussing ways to earn extra money as a teacher. It’s a real shame to think that we need to look elsewhere for extra income, but how and ever, it’s nice to be able to compile a list of options for teachers, should they feel they need to earn extra money.
A massive thank you to all of the teachers that engaged with me on this, I really appreciate it. If you have any other ways for teachers to earn extra money, please leave a comment below, I’d love to hear from you!
