Needed: information on giving classes locally

If you could be so kind as to assist me, I want to give informal classes in my local area.

I can't take the time to create the demand, so I need a vendor to help facilitate my efforts.

By this I mean I need to find someone who can plug my class into an existing structure of some kind, and assist me with the room, obtaining leads and the like.

I don't qualify to give classes at the local Community College as I don't believe I possess the needed teaching certifications.

Thank you very much for any assistance.

Cheers!

Jack Rackham

Not sure where you are located...
In California one resource is "
The Learning Annex" and some of
the local YMCA's and YWCA's.

Other magazine resource which help in
promoting classes in California
are "Open Exchange" and "Common Ground".

I could be of more assistance if I knew
where you are located..

Jack, have you thought of offering a teaser type course on a site like learn.com. I don't know what kind of course you are contemplating offering, but I know that site is full of all kinds of fun, short courses that are offered free. There's no cost to you as an instructor to offer it, and you get some free publicity for yourself. With the free publicity, and provided you have a web presence, this will help with the marketing of your own courses.

If we ever get around to completing our interior design booklets, it is our plan to offer an online intro course on interior design. In fact, creating the course content will be one of the more difficult jobs to accomplish. If you already have your course content, then it seems you're on your way.

There are other sites, that I've bookmarked, which I can provide you, if you are interested in exploring the online route. The nice thing I find about online learning is, you can easily accommodate a larger number of students per class, and if you were doing it full time, you could have more than one class running simultaneously.

> I can't take the time to create the demand,
> so I need a vendor to help facilitate my
> efforts.

From the research that I've done, once you have the course content, many of these online sites will give you complete control for you to structure your course any way you choose. And you're also in control of setting your own tuition fee per student. The fee to you as an instructor to sign up, is often a very nominal $100+.

Good luck
Eliz.

Jack:

I teach at 25 different schools in NY & MA.

When I was getting started in late 1996 I sent letters to 375 different schools asking:

1) Do you have a continuing Ed program?

2) If so, do you have a class like mine?

3) If not, can I teach it?

The responses were:

1) No program

2) Yes we have one, fill out these docs with your qualifications

3) Yes, we have one, sign here!

At that point I had no qualifications so I went with the ones who said sign here!

I had 7 schools that first semester. And after that guess what I had? QUALIFICATIONS!!

Many of the continuing ed directors took my class and provided glowing recommendations which I could then use for the schools who wanted qualifications.

I've worked my way up to 25 different schools who provided adequate attendance twice per year for my one night class. I've discarded some schools along the way for lack of attendance and quite frankly 25 is about the limit. I do 3 or 4 a week during the season.

These numbers include 4 community colleges. The rest are school district continuing education programs and one company similar to the Learning Annex. I do have a B.S. from a 4 year college but no teaching certificate.

By and large they want interesting classes taught by interesting people.

Good luck!

Leo

P.S. The schools do all the promotion in their booklets. A local CBS affiliate is working on a story about people who've had success after taking my class. They came to me on that one.

P.P.S. I try to get the schools to put my phone and email in the booklets because it's great FREE advertising. If they can't come to my class they can contact me directly for more info.

> If you could be so kind as to assist me, I
> want to give informal classes in my local
> area.

> I can't take the time to create the demand,
> so I need a vendor to help facilitate my
> efforts.

> By this I mean I need to find someone who
> can plug my class into an existing structure
> of some kind, and assist me with the room,
> obtaining leads and the like.

> I don't qualify to give classes at the local
> Community College as I don't believe I
> possess the needed teaching certifications.

> Thank you very much for any assistance.

> Cheers!

> Jack Rackham

Hi Jack!

Great idea and very useful to promote yourself.

The continuing ed idea in community colleges is a great route where you do not need the same credentials as a teacher in the regular classroom.

Another place to look is in Parks and Rec departments that offer classes.

Best wishes for an abundant future!

With Purpose and Passion,

JULIE


Always Learning Here, Too!

Teleclasses by phone? For a few years now, I've been presenting classes that way as yet another format for delivering the work. Teleclasses are like a big conference call on the phone, where everyone in the class phones in to the same phone number (including the instructor) and pays the regular long-distance charges for a long-distance phone call. I was doing fee-based classes for awhile. Now my class is a one-hour free class that I offer every other week through www.teleclass.com There is no cost for the 'bridge' phone line they offer when you are not charging for the class. They have a nominal fee for the bridge line when you are charging for the class.

Additionally, they send out an email announcement each week to the thousands and thousands of people on their list (not sure the exact number), announcing all of what is being offered for the following week. Teleclass.com appears to have no limit to the number of classes you can offer through them. Through this mechanism, there is no physical room to deal with, no transportation to consider, the existance of a promotional structure, and an opportunity to reach a world-wide audience basically for free ! I've had people from around the world take my classes. Let's see, so far it's been the UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan, I believe.

As for qualifications, they don't require any certification to present a class. Some other teleclass sites do require going through their own teleclass training process. Teleclass.com does not. You may want to just check out their web site for further info, and lots of very interesting classes that are provided each week.

Hope this helps,
Paulette




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