Halfway through September. Is it the most difficult month of the year? As language school managers, we are so “on” this month, a good start all feels crucial to a good year and we're being pulled and pushed in different directions by different people. How are you doing; rocking a gentle simmer or are you reaching boiling point?
Managing TEFL is a companion for language school leaders by Simon Pearlman
So, are you at boiling point? What are you most concerned about right now? Student numbers? Teachers? Getting started? Other work you really should be doing?
Student numbers
Naturally this is one of our key concerns. How are the metrics looking? Have we got enough? What's our return rate? How are we doing with new students? What's our average class size? What's the profile of our student body? And maybe we're thinking, “oh my goodness, we really do need more students, how can we get more students?”
These are all fundamental questions to ask, we should know the answers. We know, for example, that a healthy language school has a good amount of the youngest students who will, all being well, be with us for years to come. How are we doing with the infant and early primary groups? These questions are crucial to understanding our business and to help us shape strategy but is now the time to ask them?
While of course it's a pressure, can we affect change at this point? Perhaps not, the marketing (or perhaps the lack of marketing) is not a discussion for now. What's done is done, we can only react to what comes through the door. Of course, we can pay for promotion on social media and search engines, but that should ideally be part of a campaign rather than a knee-jerk reaction. As someone wise suggested, we need to accept the things we cannot change, and that can be a challenge for us all. Ok, and if we’re not actively marketing our courses, what can we do? We can sell. We can do our best to ensure that people who come through the door sign up for the courses.
Avoid stress over student numbers, do your best to sell courses, work in collaboration with the admin team and other managers and maybe leave the counting until October.
And breathe deeply.
Recruitment
So many of us are still looking to add one or two teachers to the team and with the start date looming, we really need to get it all done and dusted.
There seems to be a general problem of a lack of qualified, experienced teachers. It's becoming more and more difficult to recruit quality teachers and right now we're at the sharp end of it all.
Even when we think we've got the team in place, so often we get little surprises. Returning teachers have had a change of plan, new teachers have been offered more hours elsewhere, and they tell us with so little time to react. Of course, we understand that circumstances change but is there a lack of professionalism? Do schools get judged more harshly than teachers? If a school said to a teacher they'd shaken hands with on a position, “sorry, a better teacher has just come along, so there's no longer a position for you”, that would rightly be seen very negatively, so is it OK for teachers to do effectively the same thing when they say, “sorry but I’ve been offered a better job elsewhere”.
Having enough teachers is clearly essential and right now there is no escape from writing and rewriting timetables. We need to react, we need to be creative and try to keep calm.
And breathe deeply again.
On-boarding staff
The way we start the year is so important. How are teachers and the rest of the team feeling? How are they feeling about the organisation? How are they feeling about themselves and their roles? How can we best kick things off and support everyone?
One of the manager's key roles is to support their team. At this stage it's about clarity and confidence, we need to be as clear as possible and we need to show that everything is under control. It's time for the classic duck meme, appearing serene on the surface but legs going like the clappers under the water.
And, yes, breathe deeply.
Organising your work, being agile.
And at the same time as all of this we need to organise ourselves too. Our time and attention is demanded by so many different people right now. We need to be organised with a clear plan as well as agile enough to accommodate change and shift our focus.
It might be that we're a teacher short, does that mean we pick up those extra hours? That's the easiest solution but is it the best? What can't we do if we're in class? And can that student go into class with their friends, even though we're pretty sure it's not the right class for them? There are choices to make, we need to be ready for them. And while we might have it clear in our minds, how open to change should we be?
Breathe deeply
Through all this we need to keep calm, we need to be present, we need to breathe deeply. Before you do the next level test, or interview a teacher or look at the timetable yet again, as you finish one job and move on to the next, as you move from one room to another, take a moment to take 3 or 4 good long, deep breaths. It's guaranteed to do you good.
Good luck with September, and happy Managing TEFL!