Author Archives: Tim

Musings on flyering 2

April 1, 2008 – 9:05 am

Nearly two months ago I gave myself a flyering S.T.A.G. for the duration of February and March. It certainly wasn’t my favourite time of year to be out promoting スミス英会話 in front of the two stations that sandwich my school - 長岡天神 (Nagaoka Tenjin) or 長岡京 (Nagaokakyo). It was often cold, sometimes snowing [...]

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The picture board

March 16, 2008 – 11:59 pm

One of my favourite things in my classroom is a cork board which hosts dozens of pictures from around the world. I have a passion for photography and travel, and a few years ago I realised that the bare walls of the Nagaokakyo school were the perfect canvas for displaying some of my favourite travel [...]

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Musings on Flyering 1

February 6, 2008 – 7:35 am

I went out to do some flyers the other night, and during the lulls between the express train hordes I got to thinking about what I’ve learned over the years of promoting my school by handing out flyers.
Beyond the common sense questions of where to stand at the exit, how often to vary locations and [...]

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Absence and the students stay longer??

October 17, 2007 – 5:25 am

I referred previously to the system working well in my absence, and in the past I had been worried about whether that would be the case. I’ve been running the Smiths school here in Nagaoka for a number of years, and having experienced a few birthing pangs at the beginning, feel entirely justified in treating [...]

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A welcome return to what I know

October 13, 2007 – 8:28 pm

When I went to France to experience life as a language student, I was hoping to find some insights that might help my own English school here in Nagaoka. In fact it actually confirmed many of the things that I already knew: small classes are good, sentence frames (as can be found in the one [...]

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A busman’s holiday - le premier jour

September 4, 2007 – 3:15 pm

Now that I’ve left my English school (Smith’s School of English Nagaoka) running smoothly in the very capable hands of Gen (my profit-share teacher) for the summer, I’ve just started a language course myself and I’m gaining a new perspective on language schools from the other side of the desk. I’m in Montpellier, France, and [...]

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On Why Students Keep Coming

April 10, 2007 – 3:33 am

After nearly ten years of teaching English, eight of those spent in Japan and over five in the Smiths franchise system, I have reached the profound conclusion that running a small language school for adults is much like operating a successful hairdresser’s, and I’m not simply referring to handing out fliers on the street…
A Quick [...]

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