Anybody want to open their own school?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
81

So get some posters, or make some posters showing cases for using articles, prepositions and ‘to be.’ Create solid rules and then do feedback on every error they make. Don’t allow lazy answers. Get students to correct each other. After a while this becomes a quick strategy, and students begin to pick each other up on things. Praise the ones who get things right, call them ‘Wise elephant,’ and make a trunk with your arm, anything like that. Kids and adults alike love to be called wise or smart. Then you can continue your love affair with grammar, and they can continue their love affair with vocabulary. Accuracy goes up, vocab (of the pointless kind) becomes less painful for you to teach, and everyone is a winner. I also play ‘conversation killer,’ where the person who lets the conversation die is given ‘the black spot.’ Teach them rubbish like, ‘oh really? Tell me more! What an interesting story.’ Guff like that. Tell them its a two minute chat and then give them ten minutes. My pre-intermediates crap on about the stupidest things now because I have taught them how to crap on, regardless of accuracy.

I say it is about taking the power away from the parents and giving it to the students. The question,‘What would you like to learn about today?’ is usually met with blank stares from the youngest to the oldest, from the French to the Peruvians. They expect you to be in control of them. Flip it around.

Your biggest problem is the monolingual classroom, I’d say.

The potatoes comment hurt me when it was said to my face, but it never stopped me doing exactly whatever the hell I thought was best for those kids. It got me sacked, but what the hell. Who wants to work to someone elses shithouse idea of how to teach? And I feel I was proved right, I have about 30 of those kids still in constant contact with me, they all say how much harder they worked when with me, and that their English has gone backwards since I left. Sure, they are 18 and are trying to be polite, but somedays I cant open facebook or msn cos there they all are, waiting for a chat with me again. And all I ever did was give them dependable grammar rules, and then let them talk/ write about whatever they wanted to. Providing they self corrected.

82

[quote=“marboulette”]Here’s a simple question no one asked. How many students did your school have and how much profit did you make monthly? How many hours per week did you work and what percentage of the net profit came to you, partners, etc.

Simple question, really. Most people open schools so that they can make more money for every hour they work as oppose to just teach for someone else. How much money went directly into your pocket and for how many hours worked, plus, how many students did you need to have to achieve these numbers.

Someone I know has a student base of 100. He doesn’t work in the school. He hires managers and they do everything. He spends half the year running a bed and breakfast on Borocay meawhile the school operates without him. He told me that if he worked there the money would be a lot better, but as it stands, he makes about 25k a month in net profit. That’s it! So he could let go of his manager, and even teach a class or two and the coins saved on payroll translates into additional profit.

In other words, if he worked there full time, he would be making a tad more than the average buxiban teacher on 30hrs/week. That’s with 100 students.

How about you? How did it work out for you? Spill the beans, already.

marboulette[/quote]

Last month revenue was 82k, costs approx. 44k (I’m estimating the electricity bill). I worked 21 hours a week last month. We have 39 students. All proceed go into the pocket of my wife.

83

:discodance: :discodance: :discodance: :discodance: :discodance: You and me’s buddies. I likes what you sez!

Totally agree, really. But it’s a shocker to the paying folks, because they’re expecting something else. If you want to remain in the classroom with the students there’s a whole lot of educating to be done outside the classroom. Like the Mighty Maoman* once said, “you can’t help the student if they’re not in your class.”

As an employed teacher, whoever is employing you, there is a gap between you and the paying customers which is where expectations can differ and agendas can conflict. As your own boss - truly your own boss, not just a service provider under the wing of a parent - you have the opportunity to close that gap by educating the people who pay the money about what is needed. I think you can be either a freelancer or a school operator to achieve this, but you can also be either one and not achieve it. I think if you don’t narrow the gap between your own expectations and the customers’ then you’ll still end up being disappointed.

(*Who is not as mighty as the Mighty Toe, but still right mighty in my book.)

84

In a nutshell! That’s all I do these days.

If I haven’t said it before, I learned more about teaching from Tom Hill than I knew there was to learn. The only difference is that I’ve learned how to persuade the people who give me the money that Tom’s way is right.

85

In a nutshell! That’s all I do these days.

If I haven’t said it before, I learned more about teaching from Tom Hill than I knew there was to learn. The only difference is that I’ve learned how to persuade the people who give me the money that Tom’s way is right.[/quote]

Bloody hell, you made me feel happy. Its nice to have my ego massaged. I thought all I’d ever done was show you how to direct your anger at the PE teacher and not at the late students! :blush:

My upper-intermediates know that when I ask for a ‘full’ answer I want the sentence, the tense made clear, the reason for using that tense, and any extra information. Now I can’t speak without someone piping up with ‘transitive verb Tom’ or ‘wrong time connnective Tom.’ Oh and I have started leaving a challenge on the whiteboard before the students come into class. Usually an anagram, or a class challenge ‘ten crime verbs in the past tense.’ The students come together in a kind of ‘Tom is such an asshole to us,’ kind of way and they are talking in English before I even enter the room. Let them teach each other. They know most of it between them, they just can’t access/ explain it properly.

Also, the books by Mark Hancock, especially Pron Games will change your life. eslgold.com/resources/pronun … games.html That website, esl gold is also pretty cool.

Of course the question is, how do you get them into class in the first place. Well, you must have a network of studes by now… word of mouth is more powerful than all the free bubble tea in China. Although giving away free tea to students when they sigh is also a good idea. They love free shit. I had like 20 years of free tissues from the petrol station becuase they were free and MrsHill said we should have them. I wanted to ‘open the box’ but apparently that was never an option.

86

In a nutshell! That’s all I do these days.

If I haven’t said it before, I learned more about teaching from Tom Hill than I knew there was to learn. The only difference is that I’ve learned how to persuade the people who give me the money that Tom’s way is right.[/quote]

But you don’t have to persuade them in the Yook. TomHill moved back to the land of sanity.

Loretta, for what it’s worth, I think you are less of an arsehole than other teachers. Not sure why I’m blah-ing on in TEIT so much, lately. I think my subconscious is preparing to dump ELT for good!

87

You have to get people to walk through the front door before you can show them how good a teacher you are.

Teaching ability will improve your student retention rates and the number of students who stay after a demo class. Other than that 90% of your students are there because of the smooth talking Taiwanese chap on the front desk. Why is HESS so successful? Their teachers are very inexperienced. Also, remember that the kids don’t pay for classes. It doesn’t really matter to them how good you are as long as it’s fun.

88

[quote=“tomthorne”]You have to get people to walk through the front door before you can show them how good a teacher you are.

Teaching ability will improve your student retention rates and the number of students who stay after a demo class. Other than that 90% of your students are there because of the smooth talking Taiwanese chap on the front desk. Why is HESS so successful? Their teachers are very inexperienced. Also, remember that the kids don’t pay for classes. It doesn’t really matter to them how good you are as long as it’s fun.[/quote]

Fuck off tomthorne, you’re talking crap. Schools do well because the teachers are good. That’s why HESS et al are good. Because the teachers are the dogs proverbial.

89

:laughing: You’ll have to wait until the morning for a bit more circular contradictarianism.

90

Just because you know the time differences.

91

What can I say? I’m just a renaissance woman.

92

I’m looking forward to meeting you.

93

Well, as long as you realise they’ll be a ‘time difference’ between when we agree to meet and when I’ll actually show up.

94

39 students. 21 hours per week and 38k in profit monthly. That’s about NT$420 per hour not including the time your wife puts into it. Crazy.

marboulette

95

I agree. That’s why I said I think it’s different to British kids learning French, and why I said those adolescents here who really don’t want to learn English display the same resistant behaviours.

[quote]I know dozens of adults in Taiwan who learned Chinese so that they became literate as adults in a few years. I’ve seen adults go from poor, error-ridden Chinglish to good B2 levels within a year simply through persistance and motivation. Children cannot do this because they don’t have the cognitive skill. Why not leave them to develop that cognitive skill and then let them choose language if they want to?

‘British teenagers don’t speak French’? I do. Most don’t. It’s a stupid fallacy that firstly everyone needs to learn a difficult foreign language, and that’s not to sound elitist; I wasn’t rich or special and my parents didn’t send me to extra classes. Secondly, it’s idiotic and is not borne out by common sense, experience or research that east Asian native language speakers learning in shitty cheapo extra classes from the age of three produces any improvement in the general level of English. The MOE are fully aware of this, btw.

I may be pissing in the wind by writing all this. I think it’s a shame that Taiwanese kids are subjected to this constant money-grubbing. It’s not fair for people to make their cash doing it. it’s not about the market, and ‘everybody else is doing it’ it’s about YOU. Are you a force for good or a force for bad or simply not a force for anything?[/quote]

Of course, but that’s how we make our living. I am largely a force for nothing, with some good and some bad thrown in. Not sure what the mix is. I really don’t think much of what anything most of us do in life matters, but it does put money in my hand, which allows me to pursue equally other pointless activities that I try to attach some point to. I’d like to think I could be a force for good, and occasionally, I do get inspired, but I’m just not sure anymore. I do have to admit that I largely have no idea what I’m doing with this teaching gig, which is why I love reading what people like Loretta and Tom Hill write.

96

[quote=“TomHill”][quote][quote]
TomHill wrote:
If you do a good job then results are observable by outcome.

[/quote]
How is the outcome measured though? Most buxibans do all their assessment internally, perhaps so they can bamboozle the parents. I certainly saw that when I worked at Hess. Little Johnny may have got a 98% on his test, but what did that mean?[/quote]

Well, you as the teacher should be aware of improvements in their skills. If a parent wants an observable proof then give it to them.[/quote]

I can show the parents that Johnny can now use the past tense correctly. Then parents will still ask what score he got. I guess you set up the test such that if he can use the past tense correctly he gets 100%, but then the parents of the kid who gets 70% because he can’t use the past tense correctly freak out in the short term and pull him out of your classes, even though in a few months he may eventually get there.

I think this gets back to Loretta’s point about re-educating the parents.

Fox: I think you’re right about getting 75 students. Probably the hardest part is getting them in the door in the first place, as tomthorne points out. Marketing is key there. Nice points about expanding a school. In some ways, it might be better to keep it at 75 students – you don’t make as much money, but you don’t have the logistical nightmares and the stress of wondering if other people will lead to a decline in quality.

You really think it would cost 2,000,000NT to set up a new school? One of the problems with buying a business though is that you buy its problems, especially if you don’t like the curriculum and so on. Still, it might be good to view it simply from the point of buying the license and what’s inside the school (rather than have to set all that up yourself), even if you have to then completely rebuild the student base.

You’ve given me so much food for thought with all of your responses. I can’t thank you enough. You’re right that otherwise you’re just a service provider. It’s a huge and easy trap to fall into.

I’m wondering though, how you gain their trust and respect though (because you obviously do). If you don’t pull their English apart from the get go (which may lose you a potential customer by your own reckoning), then how do you move the goal posts once you’ve already started playing the game? I guess you are a very good salesman.

I think your points about how much money you can make are also right on the money. I think the only way to go is to set up your own group classes. I don’t know how or why people do private lessons for 600NT/hour. Travel time is surely going to be at least 15 minutes each way, and if there’s any prep time at all (of course there is), then the whole thing gets blown right out of the water. Even doing the group class thing at someone’s apartment is not so great, as you pointed out. A friend of a friend was doing one about twenty minutes from where I live for 600NT or 700NT/hour. I can’t remember which. They want me to take it over and I’ve suggested 900NT/hour (knowing that may be pushing it), but I’m even thinking now that I can’t be bothered doing it for that other than as a learning exercise.

97

On what tomthorne said earlier: I actually work for Hess now and he’s 100% right, they tell us it’s better to be a fun teacher than a good teacher, in terms of business. We need to make sure the kids know just enough and are doing enough to show off to their parents, but in reality, if the kids have fun, then they will ask to come back to Hess and be with their friends rather than move to another school.
Another important thing is that you do lots of group activities, creating groups that get along well together. This will make students want to stay at the school because they don’t want to leave behind their friends.
On homework we’re told not to give below a 20/30. And on tests, not below a 75/100. Parents can’t handle the truth about their slow, lazy kids. And it really isn’t Hess’s fault how stubborn the parents can be.

98

I think it is though. I used to work for Hess and I hated all those antics. I do blame Hess, but more than that, I blame(d) myself for being part of it. I was the problem. I was a foot soldier and the war can’t be fought without foot soldiers. I’ve recently fallen into a real slump of resignation over this whole thing, but I think Buttercup is right to a certain extent, and I’ve found a certain measure of inspiration in what Loretta and Tom Hill have written. I do need to re-energise myself and raise the bar again. The Japanese say something about getting knocked down seven times and standing up eight (which doesn’t entirely make sense, but you know what it means).

Hess are a huge part of the problem. They’ve been around long enough now, and they’re the biggest (or close to it). They have an enormous amount of power to change the whole nature of the market that one individual teacher, or even a small buxiban, doesn’t have. Instead, they’re running all these little projects setting up offices overseas and trying to expand into China.

Likewise, they have an enormous ability to change the way foreign teachers are treated. They always used to come to our branch and tell us that things weren’t good and that we weren’t working hard enough, which just ground us down further and lowered morale. Things weren’t good because morale was so low and we were all so sick and stressed, including the HNST who was a hair away from a nervous breakdown. There was a very close link between that, staff turnover (only one person had stayed at the branch for longer than a year in the several years it had been open) and student turnover (about 50%). They kept doing things the same way. It seemed crazy to me that they could run a business model like that, but it obviously worked from the staff side of things (as there seems to be no shortage of fresh North American college graduates, especially now), though it seems odd to me that such things wouldn’t catch up with them in terms of enrollments. Actually, I think it has. I left there more than eighteen months ago now, but another guy I knew moved to that branch and worked there until recently. He said that and another branch nearby were both in serious trouble, and that when he and his girlfriend (who was the HNST at the other branch) left to return to the West, everything was going to fall in a heap. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but perhaps not too far off the mark.

99

Admittedly I’m not experienced as you are, but I care more about being the best teacher I can be given whatever circumstances I’m in. I’m a lot more business oriented than concerned with blaming myself as a “foot soldier” in a “war”. I simply don’t see it as being that big of a deal. The fact of the matter is that I see kids at my school have made lots of progress over the years, some very much so. Whatever is happening here is working on some level, and if it gives the parents the illusion of it being the absolute best thing for their kids vs what you think is the best, then I’m happy to keep the parents happy. What’s more, some kids are hopeless, and these schools are just a business in the end. You maximize an individual child’s success any way you can. If the kid fails the tests and doesn’t pass, then that’s his problem in the end, but some kids are slower and just refuse to learn. Others just need to be pushed in the right way. Hess is hardly getting in the way of that.

Maybe it’s just because my branch is relatively independent from the corporate system. We train at our own school and are told to heavily alter the set lesson plans, for example. But what I have seen has inspired a little more hope than doubt, and I see no need thus far to blame Hess for a problem that I have not yet observed on a grand scale.

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[quote]Fox: I think you’re right about getting 75 students. Probably the hardest part is getting them in the door in the first place, as tomthorne points out. Marketing is key there. Nice points about expanding a school. In some ways, it might be better to keep it at 75 students – you don’t make as much money, but you don’t have the logistical nightmares and the stress of wondering if other people will lead to a decline in quality.

You really think it would cost 2,000,000NT to set up a new school? One of the problems with buying a business though is that you buy its problems, especially if you don’t like the curriculum and so on. Still, it might be good to view it simply from the point of buying the license and what’s inside the school (rather than have to set all that up yourself), even if you have to then completely rebuild the student base.[/quote]

It is very very difficult to make 200000 out of a school on a pure profit basis, not impossible of course, and there will be plenty doing it, but you’d have to be running an exceptional school, very well organized in terms of keeping the quality of teachers up, student numbers in class buoyed, management etc. If you are teaching in a school that you own that might be possible, but you would still have to have your numbers up over a 110 to 20 with all the logistical problems I mentioned earlier. On a pure management basis with rent of around 50000 you’d need about 150 students if your average class size were 13.

At 75, you are not working so hard, can control the quality readily and expand a little whilst still keeping up the quality by running maybe one other Chinese English teacher or even different classes like math or science.

The 2 million mark comes from franchising schools in the 90’s but I think the number is still valid from what friends who’ve done it have told me.

If you buy a failing school, you get a core of students and as long as you are a good teacher the parents will respond positively, but you have to remember that every time a parent goes to an independent school, they are there for a reason. They have made a choice of this school over the omnipresent chain schools. So even if it is failing financially for the owner, the students are there because of that owner or their teachers. So you have to expect some drop off unless you hit the mark hard and well in the small window of opportunity you have to keep the students. Location is also an important factor in buying an old school.