I’d like to say that the Enspyre event [url]That start-up conference for foreigners was quite a pleasant way to spend the day. Considering the multitude of different needs of attendees and the range of things that could have been covered, I thought all involved did a great job of keeping everyone satisfied. No one seemed bored. It was quite inspiring, and I’m sure everyone learned a few things. Hats off to Elias and all his friends.
Now, about my meeting…
Kevin and I, who were both at the meeting and lingering around the end of the bar afterwards, are in the throes of opening a “new kind of buxiban”. The main ideas behind it are: teachers plan their own course and lessons; they contract the classroom from us and set their own tuition; we share marketing; the teacher and his/her students are part of a learning center community; courses must be designed for a given level, have a set number of classes (teacher’s choice), be topic-based rather than grammar-based, and make use of the methods and philosophies that fall under the umbrella term, Communicative Language Teaching, or CLT. (CLT targets experiential acquisition rather than reflective learning) You can look it up on Google.); and teachers must behave and dress professionally.
You can get more details by emailing us through our Web site found here: http://www.iclt.net
On the site, you can navigate to login/instructor and click on the ‘proceed’ link to get to the Teacher Resource Center. There is a bit more information about our teaching opportunities there. You will need to email us for a password to access the downloads which have all the details, well the ones we’ve got worked out so far.
Notice that we are not putting this up on Tealit. We’re looking for people with entreprenneurial spirit actually. We want our teachers to be a bit bizzy. We are hoping to achieve a bit of that gung ho motivational spirit in our classrooms. We’re teaching Taiwanese adults who aren’t used to communicative classes.
What’s in it for you? A lot. First of all, you’re empowered financially when working with us (not for us). Your classroom costs are fixed, but your student numbers are only limited by our classroom size. And we have an auditorium too, if you feel up for it. Turn yourself into a product. And you’ll benefit by being part of our appealing package. Our learning center will have a cafe, computer lab, online lessons (that’s where we stuff the old grammar syllabus), scheduled activities, and more, as well as possible opportunities in the future for people who start working with us early.
The money? It looks like it should be quite easy to get a class going that can earn you at least $600/h with a modest number of students, say 5 or 6. That could rise to over $1200 with just a few more students depending on how much you charge for the class. A full class could be really lucrative. Do two courses if you like. We’ll even guarantee a minimum wage for courses we definitely want to see open. We want the teachers to make good money so that they will be happy and do well. We’re just limiting profit growth on our real estate and channeling it to the teacher, figuring that will get his loyalty. If business really takes off and we need to raise the rent to save our faces, people who got in early will be laughing. The contract protects the teacher from rent increases.
We’re very nice people to work with. That’s part of our business plan. We want to avoid a lot of the problems that other buxibans waste money dealing with. Plus, we have other products that most buxibans don’t have. Check the Website to learn more.
Email if you’re interested: creative@creative-english.com for the password and more info. We’ll put you on the mailing list too.
peter@iclt.net if you want to reach me specifically
Thanks again, Elias, Ann, Donovan, Chris, Mark and the “Enspyre Girls” whose uniforms were very inspiring. That was the best $250 I’ve spent in a long time.
If any of you nice people have any words of advice for us, please hit us with it. And if you know of any other thread where I should post this, please tell me by email. Keep in mind that we don’t want TOO many people.
The meeting is on both Saturday 3/8 and Sunday 3/9 at 2 PM. Come to either version. We want to make sure all interested people can come. Come just to see the place. It’s really nice. There are photos on the Website.
