How To Overcome Online Teaching Challenges While Travelling

Ever thought about taking your TEFL certificate on the road? 

Matt and Perlie are TEFL teachers and digital nomads who have lived and breathed the realities of being global online teachers – working remotely whilst travelling through over 20 countries. 

From navigating time zones to grappling with patchy wifi, they know the real challenges with online teaching and how to adapt to maintain a flexible, professional, and fulfilling lifestyle. 

Whether you’re wondering if teaching English online full-time is for you or weighing up the logistics of life on the move, this is an honest take packed full of tips, lessons, and hard-earned advice. Take it away, chaps! 

Read more about teaching English online on our blog.

What is life like teaching online full-time? 

Having taught in the classroom for close to 4 years across Spain, South Korea and Türkiye, my girlfriend and I decided we wanted to take the show on the road by becoming digital nomads, teaching online to fund and sustain our travels. 

We made this decision in August 2023 and have been on the road ever since, generally spending a month in a different country. 

Fast forward to today, and we’ve been to 24 countries in that time and have never looked back.

Today, we’re going to share with you the ins and outs of this truly exhilarating lifestyle! 

To be transparent: we’ve been working for a range of companies. We were both hired to teach through a Polish company where we worked for several months until this company unexpectedly declared bankruptcy. 

Fortunately, we were able to retain many of our students from these classes in the form of private lessons, effectively making us our own bosses. Additionally, we work for an American company that organises private lessons for students across the US, generally with adults who have just moved to the US for work.

Matt cooking while lesson planning (!) in Turkey

What does a typical workday look like for you when you’re on the move? 

A typical workday…well, I’d like to dive into a typical month first. 

We’ve made it our style to spend each month in a different country. So, we start by securing an AirBnB for the month, usually in a country’s capital city. 

Top tip: Booking accommodation for at least a month can get you a discount on the advertised rate.

We use this as our base for the month, travelling on the weekends around the country. A capital city is the best option for us as it is the most connected to the rest of the country. 

As we focus on travelling during the weekend, we use the week to hunker down and work. 

We generally start classes between 6 and 8 am to accommodate our mostly Polish students. We work a few hours at home before having a few hours break before our American students come online. We typically finish by 7pm and then can focus on dinner plans. 

It’s a pretty standard day with flexibility and we truly work for the weekend where you can find us jetting off to some destination!

Sounds fab!

What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced while teaching online and travelling?

Unreliable wifi

While the lifestyle looks glamorous on social media (we only share our travels ;-)), there are many challenges while teaching online. 

The first and most detrimental problem is connectivity issues. 

Read more: What Internet Speed Do I Need To Teach English Online?

As our whole job is centred on being online and having the ability to connect with your students, a stable connection is required 24/7. If there’s an issue with the connection for whatever reason, we sometimes have to cancel a class – which means no money. 

It’s super important to make sure our accommodation doesn’t have a single negative review about the wifi. 

Finding accommodation

This brings us to our next challenge: finding appropriate accommodation. 

Finding somewhere for a whole month can be a tall order. You’re effectively locking yourself into somewhere that may not turn out to be how it is advertised on the platform. We have been mostly lucky in finding the right apartments, but once had to cancel our full-month and look for other accommodation in India because of insufficient wifi (even though the listing mentioned “super-fast wifi”). 

Time zone headaches

Additionally, moving from one time zone to the next can drastically change your schedule (and you have to be flexible with this lifestyle). 

For example, during our 5 months in Asia, we got to sleep in but had to work through the night based on our students’ location, whereas in Latin America, we had more stable schedules. 

Matt & Perlie in Busan

What tech or equipment makes teaching while travelling easier? 

As you are on the computer for the job and speaking to students all day, it’s important to have proper headphones and sometimes multiple ones in case you are forgetful (like us). I recommend headphones that are comfortable for you and at the same time offer noise cancellation as you and your students don’t want to be distracted from external sounds. 

We recommend that you get an eSIM for the country you’re staying in so that you can use it as a personal hotspot in the event that the normal wifi doesn’t work properly. I’m sure you can see a trend here- insufficient or unreliablewifi makes this lifestyle extremely difficult, so prepare yourself for these unfortunate incidents. 

How do you handle internet issues while working from different locations?

After nearly 2 years on the road, I can honestly say we’ve been lucky for the most part in securing proper AirBnB’s with fast wifi. 

However, we have many negative memories in Jaipur, India, where power cuts are notorious for occurring almost daily. While the power came back usually within a few minutes, this always put a damper on the flow of our classes. 

We sometimes taught in cafes that said in their reviews that the wifi was reliable. 

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t, and we had to cope with a slow connection. 

All in all, you have to scour the reviews of anywhere that you plan on working. But also, if you’re going to work at a cafe, GET THERE EARLY TO SCOPE OUT THE wifi. Don’t just rely on reviews because if you get to the cafe, and it’s not great wifi, and you have class in a few minutes, well, you’re out of luck. 

How do you manage time zones while teaching online and travelling?

Time zones can for sure be difficult to manage, especially if you try and calculate in your head (Tip: don’t do that – mistakes happen). 

Hello Google Calendar! This tool is a lifesaver as you can create and organise your whole day while tying it to your current location or even toggling in for your future destinations. This was especially handy in places like India, where the time zone difference is unusual – 3.5 hours ahead of Poland, for example.

That sounds crazy!

This was extremely confusing when organising classes because of the difference in 30 minutes that we had never seen before. I really can’t recommend Google Calendar or another organising software enough to avoid any mistakes with bouncing around time zones.

How do you balance teaching with enjoying travel?

We set boundaries in the form of focusing on our goals. We treat the week as our normal working week with minimal exploration of our home base. We use the weekends as our time to explore more in-depth. 

This allows us to enjoy the travel more and not feel burnout from constantly being on the move. Even though our month-long AirBnB is a temporary home, it’s still our home for the month. 

During our first month as digital nomads, we were in Guatemala. As we had just started this lifestyle, we thought we had to constantly go out sightseeing in between teaching. 

As you can imagine, it became exhausting and we knew we wanted to use our next country, Montenegro, as our first with an actual home base. 

Post-Montenegro, we haven’t changed this style as it has served as well and given the perfect balance of work and travel. 

How do you maintain professionalism while teaching on the move?

Professionalism is key in this world because, at the end of the day, people are paying you for a service, and you need to treat it as such. Therefore, we generally teach at our AirBnB (to avoid the noise at cafes), and create an environment that has no distractions. 

Of course, sometimes there are distractions even at our home base; people knocking on the door, poor lighting, etc. But, it’s important to be honest with your students and ask if they are too distracted to continue (this has never been the case). 

Luckily, we have formed quite a rapport with our regular students and they can be as excited as us about our new locations. 

How do you choose accommodation that’s suitable for teaching online?

• We exclusively use AirBnB because of its monthly discount feature. We would go way over budget (sometimes 3 or 4x) if we use other platforms that work with hotels. With this feature, we can sometimes save hundreds because we are paying for the month instead of a nightly rate. 

• As it’s two of us working together, we always look for more spacious accommodations as we don’t want to be in the same room teaching (we tried this and failed in Montenegro. Never again!). 

• We always look for accommodation near some form of public transport – bus or metro. 

• We comb through the reviews for information about wifi. In major cities like Buenos Aires or Kuala Lumpur, it’s not hard to find apartments with many reviews about wifi. However, in rural Montenegro, it is! 

• Always message the AirBnB host ahead of time and ask them to send you a speed test to really hone in on your best option! Don’t move forward with accommodation without reviews – MAJOR RED FLAG!

Top tip: We have used TrustedHousesitters on numerous occasions in 10+ countries where we have received free accommodation in exchange for watching cats/dogs of people travelling. This has been an amazing way to “live” in a normal house instead of an AirBnB! 

How do travel days affect your teaching schedule, and how do you manage that? 

Sometimes we have longer weekends because our Monday mornings are generally free. Therefore, we occasionally use Monday morning to fly back to our home base. We try not to mix a travel day with a work day because it can get messy. 

Yet, as we have private students, we can reschedule classes without a problem. 

But there are risks with travelling on a work day where you anticipate being back in time for class but then there are delays. We have experienced a few delays where we have had to reschedule classes or even take a class from an airport – try and minimise this risk by not mixing these days together! 

Does travelling ever impact your income or ability to take bookings?

After our time in Asia, we headed to Europe and then eventually back home before beginning a Latin American adventure. 

Due to the drastic change in time zones, we did lose some students who couldn’t accommodate a scheduling change. However, many students were able to move around their schedules for us. 

Additionally, we were able to pick up some new students with my new schedule. All in all, it’s important to be flexible with change, particularly if you’re planning to travel between continents. 

Read more: 11 Best Places To Teach English Online 

How do you handle loneliness, burnout, or the lack of stability that can come with this lifestyle?

Thankfully, my partner and I are doing this together so we never experience loneliness because we have each other. Yet, sometimes we experience burnout from our constant movement between countries. 

We combat this feeling by reminding ourselves why we started: to see and experience the world. We take a step back and we get out of a funk this way. 

Additionally, we take rest days or rest weekends to give our bodies a break from being inside a plane, train or bus. 

What advice would you give to teachers thinking about teaching online while travelling?

If you’re reading this, you may be asking yourself: “Do I want to be an online TEFL teacher?” My advice to you is simple: Yes, try it! 

Much like TEFL in the classroom, you never know if you like or dislike something until you try it. 

It’s the same with teaching online. 

I recommend that you start online teaching from the comfort of your own home before taking it on the road. Unlike teaching in the classroom, you aren’t locked into a contract that is generally a year. If you don’t like it, you can quit and you won’t have to endure the process of breaking a contract early. 

Read more: Leaving Or Ending A TEFL Contract: What You Need To Know

You have more flexibility as an online teacher; you can work as little or as much as you want and do it from a new place anytime. 

While I loved my time teaching in Spain, South Korea and Türkiye, there were times when I just wanted a change in scenery. 

Teaching online gives you the freedom because you go where you want to go, when you want to go. 

It’s a big world out there. I recommend you take your laptop and get out there to explore, while making money online. 

Sounds good to us Matt, thanks for sharing your tips! If you’ve been inspired by Matt and Perlie’s story and are thinking of becoming a global teacher, check out our exclusive TEFL guide on how to live and work overseas. Once you’ve finished there, you’re ready to take the plunge with our accredited TEFL qualifications!