Pros
The children are fantastic, it is lovely to work with them, and you build up a really great working relationship. Also, the course ware is pretty fun to teach, although you do get a bit of a mixed bag. The system is also quite easy to use.
Cons
Where do I start? My biggest complaint steams from how unprofessional the staff are. I do not expect all of the supporting staff to speak perfect English, but I have had an hour long conversation with a staff member because of miscommunication, I would expect that they should be able to communicate with employees or pass me on to someone who can. They have also cancelled a whole day of lessons when I only requested the last hour. When I sat, panicking, watching my lessons vanish, their response was 'OMG :O PLS stand by' then I got sent an animation of a smiley face...I'm sorry but I don't feel like that is appropriate at all. This brings me to the bare faced lies I was told by my recruiter. I travel and volunteer at schools a lot, I also unfortunately suffer form ill health , I applied because I was told it was flexible, it was only after I started working when I realised I was locked in to a fixed time (facing many difficulties when I attempted to change my contact hours due to day light savings), contrary to what I was told and what is all over their ad material. Furthermore, my recruiter told me, as long as I gave 20 days notice, I could book long stretches of time off with no repercussions. I attempted to book 3 days, in a months time (ample notice) and was told I would be docked 10% of my wages for the whole month. They are very happy to punish teachers for the smallest of offences, for example my computer restarted itself just before my contact hours were due to start, so I was five minutes late logging on, even though I did not have a class booked for an hour, I still lost 25% of my wages that day. If a student decides not to come to the lesson, I am docked 40%, if you are late handing in a report you are docked 100% of your pay for that lesson, the list of immature punishments goes on. Lastly, if you need any advice or help, they are impossible to get hold of. Their skype team ignore messages and calls frequently. Being in a different time zone it can be hard to communicate, I will stay up in the wee hours of the morning if I need to discuss a pressing matter, but to no avail. I understand they must be busy, but take a look at their facebook page, you can see a picture of a room full of people on computers, the supposed support staff. If you don't mind being docked for silly things, love working with children, and do not rely on teaching as a wage, go for Dada. But if you wanted to be treated like a professional there are plenty of other great online schools out there.
