Meet Maya Reeves: World-traveler and Preply tutor
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Tutors at Preply are a fascinating bunch. Multi-talented, experienced, well-traveled – and incredible communicators. We love getting to know each and every one of them, hearing their stories, and finding out what motivates them to teach. That’s why we’d like to introduce you to Maya Reeves – a Danish and English tutor at Preply.
Today, Maya is speaking to us from the beautiful Niagara Falls, in Canada – but she also bases herself between Brooklyn, New York, and Barcelona, Spain. She’s certainly very international! In fact, in her household, her family speaks six languages between them – Italian, Danish, English, Spanish, Catalan, and French.
As you can probably already tell, Maya is passionate about travel, languages, and learning:
“I really love meeting new people from all over the world,” she says. “My whole life I’ve traveled. I was lucky enough to hitchhike all around Europe with my father when I was growing up. So now it’s amazing for me to have all these international connections on Preply.”
Read on to find out how Maya first opened a language school and how Preply has helped her start afresh on the other side of the world.
Tutoring: a life-long vocation
Tutoring really is in Maya’s blood. Her dad was a Danish teacher and many other family members were educators too – teaching biology, philosophy, English, you name it.
“Since I was seven or eight years old, I would go to other families to tutor kids,” she says. “My brother and I didn’t get an allowance, so we were very creative!”
As a bilingual English and Danish speaker living in Denmark at the time, Maya could make a little extra money helping the children learn another language. “The classes were mostly conversational but occasionally had basic writing, too.”
She later went on to be a language teacher and then Director of Studies.
Fast forward to 2006 and Maya arrived in Spain. “When I got there, I soon realized that very few people spoke English,” she says. “It was heaven for a language teacher like me. And after working in academies for a couple of years – both as a teacher and director of studies – I opened my own school.”
Her academy was based just outside Barcelona. It offered a number of languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Danish, Russian, Arabic, Spanish, and Catalan.
Maya ran the school for eight years. In that time, she noticed a tangible change in the city. The Catalan public education system had placed more emphasis on teaching English – and it was required by many university courses. “It seemed like everyone could speak English now. I was worried that demand for classes would drop.”
She felt it was time to do something different. She headed back to North America with her husband and children.
“I kept the school open for a couple of years, working remotely, then took some time off.”
An unexpected change
Maya’s well-deserved rest was interrupted suddenly in early 2020. “I went through an emergency operation. It was a setback for me and, during my recovery, I didn’t want to be stuck in my house doing nothing.”
Her husband, knowing just what Maya needed, found the perfect solution online. “He knows me very well. He researched and saw Preply was easy to use, the calendar was great – and all looked very modern and professional. So, he set me up on the system. When I logged in later, I found I already had students waiting for me,” she says.
Maya had mixed feelings about teaching online, at first. “My first Skype lesson was in 2006, so I had lots of experience. But I’m an introverted person – and when I meet someone for the first time online, I’m a little nervous!”
But her classes went well and Preply has definitely simplified things for Maya.
“It’s a great platform, it’s a great community – and if you’re teaching English you have all the resources you need to start up.”
If you are thinking about starting your journey with Preply, check out the tutor resources Maya has mentioned here.
Maya’s experience with Preply
“Running a school is just so much responsibility. You have to look after teachers, students and then there’s all the administration you have to do. On Preply it’s all done for you – you just need to file your taxes.”
Overall, tutoring on Preply has made her lessons more enjoyable, as she can focus on what really matters – her students.
Maya also appreciates the work that goes on behind the scenes, saying that by attracting so many students, the platform makes it easy for tutors like her to thrive:
“Preply has a strong marketing team. When you google ‘German teachers,’ for example, Preply will pop up.”
She also makes the most of the Question and Answer section on Preply. “If you answer clearly and well, you can find new students.”
“I’ve found Preply to be so easy to use, that I’ve actually put my own students into the system – it just makes it more convenient for me to run everything there,” she says.
Maya’s students on Preply
Maya tells us that although she began by tutoring English, Danish is the most satisfying language for her.
“I find the grammar to be more complicated, but also more interesting than English. In fact, Danish is much easier to understand if you already know a language like Italian, German or Spanish.”
Her students have a very mixed set of goals. Some are living and working in Denmark, others need to take a complicated university entrance exam, and some are simply fans of Scandinavian Noir movies!
“The most fun classes are when you can laugh and have a good time with your students and they get excited to tell you things,” she says. “That happens a lot – we’re not just tutors – there’s something about not meeting in person that makes them open up.”
Maya doesn’t just teach adults. “The kids are amazing, and they have the funniest stories. Whenever they do activities, they have the greatest imaginations – especially when you don’t correct them all the time.”
Does teaching online sound like it might be your cup of tea, too? Whether you want to work with kids, teens, or adults – we’d love to tell you more about online tutoring jobs at Preply.
Advice for delivering engaging classes online
Maya explains that being a good online tutor requires lots of flexibility.
“You have to be a chameleon in some ways – you have to be able to change how you teach according to the students’ needs.”
She recommends:
- Mixing things up: Your classes will be more engaging if you keep things fresh, with different activities, class structures, and ways of presenting ideas.
- Having lots of resources: You never know what’s going to happen in your class. It’s important to have a range of resources on hand in case your student needs more practice or finishes much faster than you thought.
- Understanding student needs: Every student is unique. As you get to know them you’ll learn whether they prefer using a coursebook, or like to spend more time studying authentic materials.
Learn more about becoming an online tutor at Preply
Nearly 50,000 thousand tutors trust Preply. Learn more about how you can get an online tutoring job with us.
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