We don't have teacher bios on display, for reasons we'll explain below! But first, let's explain the steps we recommend taking to choose a teacher.
How we recommend choosing a teacher
All of our teachers are exceptional; we only hire and retain amazing, native-speaking educators. So that's first, know that whomever you work with will be really good at teaching their native language. Next, we've found these steps work really well when choosing a teacher:
Examine teacher's schedules, and find as many as possible that work for you. By far, the #1 success factor we have seen over teaching many many thousands of students, is sticking with lessons on a regular schedule. In order for you to do that, you need to have a teacher who is available when you are able to take lessons!
Schedule one or two short 30 minute lessons with one or two different teachers. Which teachers? Again we recommend the choosing the teachers whose schedules best fit yours. You can start with just one teacher if you want; our students often find they really love the first teacher they take a lesson with.
If you don't "love" the lesson you had, there are two options:
Give the teacher feedback, directly. Send them a message saying exactly what worked well for you, and what didn't. This is what we highly recommend; your teacher can adjust to your learning style, they just need to know what works well for you!
The other option is trying a lesson with another teacher. Definitely do this if you want to "see what's out there" so to speak. What we don't recommend, because it just doesn't work well, is taking lesson after lesson with different teachers each time, and never giving anyone feedback. That would be like going to barber after barber, never telling them what you didn't like about your haircut, and constantly being frustrated that your haircut isn't perfect. If you tell an experienced, professional barber what you like and don't like, 95% of the time they'll be able to adjust and give you the perfect cut. The same idea applies to a professional teacher!
In the end, we definitely do recommend sticking with one teacher. Sometimes two is ok. You want your teacher to get to know you, your goals, your learning style, your strengths, your weaknesses, etc. and the only way they can do that = time. Over time, your teacher will get to know all of these things, your lessons will be excellent, and your progress will follow 🙂
Why don't you have bios anymore?
Great question. In the past, we did list short bios for each teacher. What this resulted in was students choosing a teacher based on a few sentences in a bio, or a picture of the teacher hiking up a mountain. You as a student might think "I like mountain climbing, this teacher does too, they'll be great at teaching me German!" When in reality the teacher went on one hike and was terrified the entire time 🙂 This is actually a true story we heard when we asked a particular student how they chose their teacher.
Additionally, there was a bit of a "race" between teachers to create better and better bios.
None of this led to the end goal, which in our opinion should be you finding a teacher who will do a great job helping you reach your language learning goals.
Seeing this we asked ourselves "what are the main things that lead students to being happy, and successfully meeting their language learning goals?" We had already discovered that, by far, the #1 predictor of student success was the student setting up and sticking with a consistent schedule. So that's why we strongly recommend you look at teachers' schedules on the main schedule page, and find one that works well for you. If you still want more information, contact your learning coach, it's their job!