Three steps to make or break your preschool enrichment classes

Three steps to make or break your preschool enrichment classes

Jun 25, 2018 | Group classes, Increasing income, Side hustles, Starting a new group class

Preschool Enrichment Classes: Three Make or Break Steps

1. Selecting a location

In real estate investing, there is a saying that “You make your money when you buy.” While this might seem odd (“Hold on, don’t they write the the big ol’ check after I’ve sold the property?”), it is 100% true. Of course, what they mean is that if you don’t select a quality property that you can buy below market value, you’re not going to realize a profit when it’s time to sell. The same thing is true for your preschool enrichment classes. (Class that are taught by an outside group at a preschool location are often called “enrichment classes”.)

A big part of having a successful class happens long before you start enrolling students. You make your class successful by doing your research and finding a location where the parents already want what you are offering. If you are offering classes in the wrong location, you can do everything else right, but you still won’t have success. So how do you know what makes a great location?

Willing and Able to Pay

Well, first you need parents who are willing and able to pay and who value what you are offering. As you know, I offer language enrichment classes. I look for suburban centers with highly educated parents. These are parents who ALREADY WANT what I’m offering. I don’t have to convince them to enroll their child in Spanish class. They have been looking for a way to expose their kids to a world language, so when I show up, they are excited about enrolling their child.

Besides being willing to pay, they also need to be able to pay. Now, I am a lover of language and I want EVERY kid to be able to learn with me. But I also have to be able to turn a profit, especially until I get myself up and running.

So while you can certainly offer partial scholarships to students who want to take the class but can’t quite afford it, if every student is asking for a scholarship, you have probably chosen the wrong location. Also, I don’t offer any FULL scholarships for this simple reason: most parents can afford something toward the class if it is a true priority for them. Even if it’s $10 per month, I want them to be invested in their child’s success, and that’s a lot more likely if they are making a financial contribution every month.

So there you go.

Step one: Choose a location where parents are already interested in what you are offering and are able to pay for your enrichment classes.

2. Offering a Free class

At the beginning of each semester, I offer a free class at every location. This does several things.

First, it allows me to market my class. We try to keep the free class fun and upbeat, and at the end of class, each student gets a sticker with a reminder for their parents to enroll them in Spanish class. Students also go home with a sheet of frequently asked questions and a registration form.

Require a registration form for the free class

Here’s the real secret to a free class that leads to enrollment, though: require a registration form. When I started, I didn’t want to do this. I was convinced that if the kids experienced my engaging, fun, and all-around wonderful class, they’d sell it to their parents by begging to enroll. Yeah, whatever.

While that might happen in a few cases, it’s pretty rare that a parent who isn’t even interested enough to fill out a registration for a FREE class with absolutely no obligation is going to actually pay for the full enrichment class. Now sometimes it happens that they were just busy and I pick up a couple of registrations for the class even after the free class. But that is definitely the exception rather than the rule.

Because…

Here’s the other thing. If you offer the class to all of the students, your free class isn’t going to be an accurate reflection of how fun your class really is.

At the first preschool I went to, I agreed to offer the free class to all the students. They combined two preschool classes and had me offer a class to 25 preschoolers. It was NO fun. I had to cut all of my best activities to keep it from dissolving into chaos. My enrollment never recovered because none of the kids wanted to take my boring class – which had only been boring because there were too many students.

Step two: Start each semester with a free class, but ONLY for students whose parents fill out a registration form.

3. Educating parents

Whatever type of enrichment class you are offering, whether it’s ballet, karate, computers, language, or STEM, you are the expert. You know how much students will realistically learn and be able to do. You know the long-term benefits. You know why you do what you do and how it will produce learning.

But the parents aren’t experts. They don’t know any of these things. And if you don’t teach them, they never will.

My first location started out with 22 students – so many I had to break it into 2 different classes. I was thrilled. Then almost half of them dropped after the first month. Some of that was explainable. It wasn’t a good fit for some of the kids, and a couple of them had scheduling conflicts that popped up.

You’ve enrolled them, now you’ve got to KEEP them enrolled

However, the majority of it was my failure to educate the parents on language learning. I just assumed that they knew what I knew: how students learn to understand before they start to speak, that students will retain a ton more through Communicative methods (CI, for you language geeks), but it won’t show up as fast, and that learning a second language has very real long-term benefits to the developing brain.

But they didn’t. And so when I asked some of the parents why their kids dropped the class, I got a lot of responses like, “Well, they weren’t able to say anything.” Now, as a language educator, I know that after four 40-minute classes, that’s absolutely normal, but I hadn’t educated THE PARENTS! So they thought my classes were a flop.

So if you want to KEEP those students you worked so hard to get, you’ve got to educate parents, and communicate regularly. Ideally, these should be short, informative blurbs of 150 words or less. They can be sent through e-mail or handed out on paper. Each one should cover one TINY bit of information and use only terms that a newbie could totally understand. Don’t go all jargon on them; make it something that 6 year-old could understand.

Step three: Educate parents so they know how you teach, why you teach that way, and how it benefits their child.

Can I guarantee you’ll have successful classes? No. There are too many variables, too many moving parts to make guarantees. But I can tell you this: keeping these three steps in mind will put you light years ahead of those who neglect them!

Remember, you got this!

4 reasons group classes are better than tutoring

4 reasons group classes are better than tutoring

Jun 24, 2018 | Group classes, Increasing income, Side hustles

So why are group classes – classes with 4 or more students – superior to individual tutoring? Here are four reasons.

When teachers think of making extra money, one of the first things that pops into their heads is tutoring. After all, they already work in education. They are good at breaking down complex concepts. And they relate well to young learners. They have all the qualifications and they feel pretty comfortable with what it takes to get started. In short, it is totally within their comfort zone.

However, sometimes there are serious rewards for stepping out of the comfort zone and trying something a little scary. And this is one of those situations.

Group classes are more fun

I’ve done individual tutoring, and I enjoyed it. It was really rewarding, and my students were super-motivated. However, it was a little boring. No matter how interested the student is, the spark of interaction between one student and another is missing. As a teacher, that’s part of what I live for.

Get 4, 10, or even 20 students together, and somehow the energy just multiplies. Instead of an isolated learner and a teacher, you have a group dynamic. They make connections on their own that I just couldn’t make for them. (Now sometimes there’s a bit more energy that one might want, but that’s a whole different story, and for the most part, it’s very manageable.)

Group classes are more secure

Let’s say you devote 3 hours per week to tutoring. One student per hour for three hours. If you have three tutoring students and one decides that they don’t want tutoring anymore, that’s a 1/3 reduction in your tutoring income. You could take a huge pay cut simply because someone decides they want to play a sport or are “just too busy.” If you are counting on that income, it can be a major problem.

However, let’s change that scenario to group classes. Again, let’s say you devote 3 hours per week to student contact time and keep your minimum class size at 5. Even if 3 students decide they are “just too busy,” at most that’s only 1/5 of your clientele, and probably a lot less. Not super, but a heck of a lot better than the other scenario.

Group classes provide better value for your clients

Let’s say that you want to make a minimum of $60 per student contact hour. And let’s face it, your time is absolutely worth that. If you do private tutoring, you have to charge parents $60 for an hour lesson or $30 for a half-lesson. That means that only parents who are fairly affluent can afford to work with you.

But you know that LOTS of kids can benefit from your services, so instead, you offer classes. You design a weekly preschool group class that lasts 30 minutes and charge $12 per session per child. You have 5 students enroll. That’s a lot more affordable for parents! More kids can benefit.

And just because you are teaching more children, it doesn’t mean that each student is getting less. They are getting the same learning, as long as class sizes are reasonable. They might even learn more because they will be engaged and having fun with their friends. So you can offer the same benefit for a much better price.

Let’s apply that same concept to adult learners. You still want to make a minimum of $60 per hour, but adults can handle longer classes. Your group class becomes 75 minutes for $18. (That would cost an individual learner $75, so a major difference there.) Eight students enroll. Again, students get the same benefit (and often more) for less money and you are still making your hourly minimum.

Better income for you

So, if you were doing your math in the last two examples, you might have noticed that while the students were receiving a much greater value, you were also doing better in the group classes.

With 5 students paying $12 each for a 30 minute class (and that is usually as long as I recommend a preschool class last), you made $60 for only HALF an hour of contact time. That’s twice your minimum.

In the adult class scenario, you were teaching 75 minutes, but you were making $144. That is over $100 per hour.

It pays to be out of the comfort zone

If you have your heart set on individual tutoring, by all means, go for it. After all, this is your gig and you are in charge. Here are some tips if that’s the route you choose to take. But if you are willing to do something that could make you a little uncomfortable at first, you can provide incredible value to your students, have a lot of fun, and increase both your security and your hourly rate. If you’d like to try out the idea, check out my guest posts on fluencymatters.com or martinabex.com to get some ideas.