Have you ever traveled/vacationed with a client?
If the money were right, my travel expenses were paid, and it was to a place that I wanted to vacation, and I only had to teach / train a small portion of the day and the rest was at my liberty, I would consider.
I did one of those “teach for a week” gigs in the Dominican Republic 2 summers ago. In exchange for teaching 2 hours a day, I got the all-inclusive hotel room for free for the week, for my family of 4. There were pros and cons to that.
Pros:
Free room and board for 4
It was a country to which I hadn’t traveled yet
The resort has one of the largest on-property water parks in the caribbean, so it was perfect for my family
Only 2 hours teaching commitment per day.
Cons:
Teaching hours were one in the am, one in the pm, so we had no ability to leave the property and tour the country (this was NOT the schedule that had been posted online when I selected the offer).
The price of our airfare for 4 far outweighed the value of the free week’s hotel, so even though I saved about $1,500 on room and meals, we spent $6,000 on airfare.
Neutral:
The teaching venue / amenities can vary widely.
People are on vacation to rest, relax, and party. Teaching poolside, many will join you for a few songs, then go back to the pool; don’t take that personally. One afternoon, I had an ENTIRE class of 20+ people walk away because a photographer with a monkey walked by and they all wanted to get their picture taken with the monkey. Most of them came back, but for about 5 minutes, I was teaching alone. Talk about humility! Whenever I start to get a big ego about how great an instructor I am, I remind myself that I’m slightly less interesting than an 18 inch tall monkey.
If I had the opportunity again, I’d go with a fellow instructor and hang around the pool, and I’d buy airfare on sale. That would make it fun, rather than having a family mad at me because my teaching responsibilities kept me away from them.