Side hustles for teachers

Teachers, who want to earn a little money on the side, have a wealth of side hustles to choose from. Side hustles for teachers break into two categories — those perfect for summer and those that work year-round. 

Summer side hustles:

Host a camp or workshop

Working parents pay a small fortune to send their kids to summer camp and daycare. If you can handle a full day’s worth of students, you may be able to earn $200 to $800 per child, per week. That’s the typical cost range for day camp, according to the American Camp Association. In other words, if you have 10 kids in your camp, you could be taking in $2,000 – $8,000 a week, or $8,000 to $32,000 per month.

Of course, there are some practical issues that you must address before you start. The American Camp Association has a guide to help you get started, which suggests you start by making a few key decisions. For instance, is this an academic camp or a fun camp? Where will the camp/workshop be held? Do the kids need transportation to get there and back? Are permits or approvals necessary to launch or use the site where you expect to hold your camp? Do you need aides and other staff?

Once you’ve got those details whipped, consider putting together a flier to send to parents before the end of school.

Travel and teach

If you’d like to combine seeing the world and teaching, check out TeachAway. This site books temporary teaching gigs all around the globe and requires the hiring districts to help teachers with visas, bank accounts and other practical needs.

Year-round side hustles for teachers

Tutor

You can also make decent money with one-on-one tutoring. And if you don’t have students of your own, a number of online platforms will help you find and book candidates. The tutoring platform that appears to offer the best pay is Chelsea International Education. It also has the strictest requirements, but you are likely to meet them if you’re a working school teacher. The site requires teaching credentials, experience and a recent lifescan.

If you can’t qualify to tutor with Chelsea, Wyzant and Varsity Tutors welcome potential tutors with experience teaching in most academic topics, languages and music. Music instructor can also check out LessonFace, which allows you to teach music online. You’re a coach? Consider CoachUp, which markets your availability for one-on-one athletic training.

Offer educational material

If you have created clever teaching aids or other materials for your classroom, you may want to try selling them to other teachers on a site called TeachersPayTeacher. The site allows you to price and list your products without paying a listing fee. But it charges a commission when they sell.

Teach an online class

You have the presence to get in front of 30 students and teach every day. Can you do the same in front of a webcam? If you can, you may be able to earn a continuing stream of income by putting your class online. Naturally, this can be the class you actually teach or it can be something different.

If you create an online version of your existing class, you have a natural audience in your current students. It could be used as supplimental material for those struggling. Or you could offer lessons on a one-off basis for students who missed a class. Consider the student who wants to go on a holiday that will overlap a few school days. What if he could catch up by watching your videos for, say, a $5 or $10 fee per missed class? The kids who have trouble keeping up, likewise, could buy your entire course — or just the sessions where they’re struggling — and use it as a cheaper version of one-on-one tutoring.

Those with another skill that they’d like to teach — knitting, cooking, art, drama — have the abillity to do that too. Two sites, Teachable and Thinkific, allow you to design, price and upload your course material for free, paying a commission only when your classes sell. A similar site called Udemy allows consumers to offer courses on its platform, too. Udemy does some marketing for you. But, it has a high commission structure and often forces teachers to accept cut-rates for their classes.