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Posts: 372

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Q: How to attract Chinese parents and children?

So, my boss, who is now my business partner, and I have opened another school together in the next city over which we co-own. We already have 2 students just by word of mouth recommendation from current student's parents but I'm trying to figure out better ways to attract more students. Right now we go to the neighboring primary and middle schools and hand out business cards, but I want to do something more and get the kids involved. I was thinking maybe have a field day or something in the park with a booth, and give people American food (hot dogs of course), and bring some of our other students from the 1st school and play flag football with them to allow the parents to see that our students can speak and understand English.

 

What do you guys think? My goal is to have at least 10 students by the fall semester. We've gotten 3 new students in the past week for the first school, so I think it's totally doable. I've spent the last couple of days redoing our curriculum and I'm very excited about this venture. My ultimate vision to open two more schools in Weihai and Qingdao and to be better and more recognized than New Oriental, at least in our province...and also to retire by the time I'm 39. 15 more years to go Smile

9 years 51 weeks ago in  Teaching & Learning - China

 
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Posts: 916

Shifu

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It's always good to see young people hitting out on their own. Good for you Wandering teacher! 

 

Your field day idea sounds awesome! Do some broadcasting in the neighborhood to get as much attendance as possible, you may need loads of hotdogs. Any free food will attract tons of people even if they are not there to attend the event. Maybe you could hand out flyers and give hotdogs to those who turn up with flyers, that way you can measure how effective your flyers were. 

 

If you can have access to neighboring residences, dropping flyers in their mailboxes could also help. Using students to knock on doors helps too. If you are on wechat or qq,  broadcasting your event will get more people to attend. 

 

The above are just some ideas to get better attendance. Hope that helps and good luck on your student enrollment! 

WanderingTeacher:

Thank you for the tips! Yeah I'm thinking I'm going to have my friend a ship me a box of hotdogs from America and buns too..i Just gotta figure out how to keep them hot while we are at the park haha. The broadcasting on wechat and QQ is excellent! I didn't even know i could do that...thanks again! :)

9 years 51 weeks ago
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9 years 51 weeks ago
 
Posts: 2531

Emperor

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Dude, I have ideas for days and experience to boot. Just watch out for your Chinese partner as sometimes they act nice at first and then things go sour. 

 

Building a children's area in your school where kids can play like ball pens, and little activity centers REALLY allow the kids to play with their parents and throw in a English setting, posters, cultural items and it helps a lot. 

 

The idea is entertain them first through interaction with their own children. You absolutely have to make them happy first, Chinese usually buy items based more on emotion than logic. Then educate them on how much happier their lives and their children's lives will be when they can explore the world, build up a better future using English. So you are on the right path with the event and making it about different foods and activities. 

 

Another thing is that Chinese are big about hype. The louder and more energetic the event, the more people it will attract. Then the people that sign up want to gain face by telling others about signing their kids up, so take advantage of that by giving them discounts or special status (VIP customer) for the more people they tell that sign up. Get their children to tell other children and reward that child with a exciting gift. 

 

My wife does something similar and got 20 kids to sign up last Summer because she basically targeted the most popular and intelligent kids in the school to sign up. The rest followed suit because their parents wanted them all to be together, have fun and get smart together haha. So try that method as well. 

 

 

WanderingTeacher:

Thanks Rob! Yeah i gotta hype this up more. The thing is I'm not so much worried about getting a lot of students, just maybe 14 or so. This is because only the wealthier families will be able to afford to send their child to our school anyway because our tuition is the highest in the city. Most schools charge anywhere from 1000 to 3000 a semester...we charge 20,000 a year (8000 each for spring and fall semester and 4000 for summer camp). We do this because 1. We rather have less classes to deal with which leaves us with more free time. 2. Besides the univeristy, we are the only school who has the license in this city to hire foreign teachers. The others borrow students from the University when they can get one and most are indian, paki, Russian or british. And 3. I'm American and these chinese parents seem to love America. So we capitalize on that by promoting an American education from an American teacher. We do not use these chinese English textbooks to teach from, as I brought American ones over with me and I'm currently creating our own textbook that we will use in the future. Luckily I actually like kids so that's why I want to do the flag football at the park. I did a test run this past weekend with my older middle school kids and we played soccer and I told then they could only talk in English and it actually went very well. I feel like a proud parent haha.

9 years 51 weeks ago
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Be very careful handing out free stuff in public. You'll be fighting A-Yi's and grandparents who shamelessly want to grab all the free stuff for themselves. Last Xmas, I was playing santa at a *kids* party, and I was handing out candy one by one to seated audience. It didn't last long: one A-Yi tried to grab the candy bag away from me. As I struggled with her, the rest of the audience figured they should get their free stuff quickly, so I was stormed by dozens of kids and adults alike. I'm very tall, so I could keep the bag out of reach as I threw candy around.

A foreigner is a loophole to misbehave, for both kids and adults. Free stuff is an incentive to make use of that loophole. Free hot dogs? That will be a disaster. You'll see your entire hot dog stand pushed over and wrecked by some rude kid who *really* wants his single hot dog. Let them at least pay something, to keep the A-Yi's away. If you assign value to the hot dogs, then they won't steal stuff. You want to attract kids who can afford lessons anyway, so charging something allows you to focus your time on poptential students, instead of freeloaders and moochers.

I suggest handing out free balloons, which just happen to have your school's info printed on them., Lots of shops offers balloon printing services. It's colourful for the kids, and you can hand out the free stuff you want. Even if the kids aren't going to be your students, they'll be walking around with your advertisement on their balloon. You'll still have to devise a method to hand them out in an orderly fashion. I can blow balloons very fast, but I can't stop kids and A-Yi's from sticking their hands in the balloon bag.

Stand outside schools at closing time, but make sure you're not alone. They will storm you no matter what free stuff you hand out. You can include an outdoor event of some sort in your advertisement, with fun stuff like hot dogs for a small register fee (another reason to have a Chinese speaker, pen and paper with you). school security guards might shoo you off the direct entrance area, but their jurisdiction is limited, so remind them of it and just take a few steps back. After frequenting a number of local schools at closing time, you can hold a fun event with the kids who signed up. if you can arrange music on some sort of sound system, it will help you.

WanderingTeacher:

Hahahaha i don't think that would happen here...Firstly i have yet to even see an a-yi in the city and second people in this city and supposedly this entire province are very friendly...i just don't foresee them go batshit crazy over me giving away free food..but there was that one time when these strangers invited me to drink with them and the woman totally stole all of my dumplings i had just bought from another restaurant down the street. I wanted to saying maybe she was drunk and didn't realize it..but i remembered she was not drinking at all...i was very upset. I like the balloon idea also and maybe get some tshirts. This will be so much fun! Lol

9 years 51 weeks ago
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coineineagh:

A city with no a-yi's ... do you live in the Shangri-La of myth and legend? Just wait, they'll show up. Parents can't care for their kids all the time, so nana from the countryside helps out regularly. Free stuff grows on trees where she's from, and she's on a mission to bag as many free stuff with shiny packaging and preservatives as she can. They don't grow on trees back home!

9 years 50 weeks ago
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Posts: 372

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Ive taught all of my students a rap that they will perform before their dance sequence at the field day (the last 10 minutes of every class, I teach them hip hop..The parents love that shit lol)

"Sitting in class
Learning 'bout cash
I spit my rhymes
Always on time
I'll be the best
You'll ever see
Because I go to ZXIET"(name of our school)

I'm getting so exciting just thinking about it hahaha

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9 years 51 weeks ago
 
Posts: 152

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I wish you all the best WT. Finally someone who is not just whining about his low salary, but made a step forward to better income.

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9 years 51 weeks ago
 
Posts: 1198

Shifu

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not to be pessimistic or so but:

 

in before "i spend all my money and emotions to open a business with my chinese partner, but now he cancelt my visa and kicked me out, what can i do?"

 

srsly be careful. One thing i have learned since i m in china. You can trust no one.

WanderingTeacher:

Haha I understand a lot of foreigners have been burned by chinese people on the past but my business partner is not like that. He's a really good man. In fact, his biggest fear is that people will say he is a bad man, so he goes out of his way to make sure he makes people happy. Apparently he and his family (they used to be really poor) was cheated and scammed by many bad men in his early 20s and he never wants people to think of him that way. He just gave his former business partner 150,000rmb to leave the school because they not only had not actually contributed to the business in over 4 years but also was not happy to have me as a another partner as well. I told him to just kick them to the curb since this person's name was not actually on any legal documents or school licenses and in reality all they actually had was a verbal agreement between each other. My business partner refused to do that because he wanted to make the other partner happy and gave them back the money they had initially put into the business + 120,000rmb. Mind you this person initially only asked for 60,000rmb. He's MUCH nicer than I am. I would given them back the 30,000rmb they originally put in and told them to get the hell out. I really am very fortunate to have met him.

9 years 50 weeks ago
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9 years 51 weeks ago
 
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What kind of sycophant would be attracted to Chinese children(Not including jail bait girls with all their school uniforms and clearly obvious see-through shirts)? Despicable despicable despicable.. 

coineineagh:

Though I don't share WT's enthusiasm for the profession, it's a bit extreme to suggest that he's a kiddy fiddler just coz he's excited about the job.

9 years 50 weeks ago
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Vallyntin:

You put a camera in a room with the guy and a 9 year old boy and I will be justified in my tasteless and completely unfounded accusation. 

9 years 50 weeks ago
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WanderingTeacher:

You are fucking disgusting....The fact that you would jump to that conclusion is disturbing to say the very least...fucking disgusting

9 years 50 weeks ago
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9 years 50 weeks ago
 
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