I did it! (But imagine a high-pitched toddler voice. I hear it all the time in my house, haha.)
what I’m working on right now
Vocab Visualizer Vault
Organizing/cleaning up worksheets
Video courses
- Killing it with Kana course – putting together the second half of the last video and adding some character hint videos based on what’s been helping my students (teaching a class with this right now).
In-person physical Japanese classes in Chicago
Running a class right now and it’s great being able to see student’s faces!
I’ve got plenty of openings so I’ll push the marketing next month.
The rest
- Putting together new material for the こどものにほんご Japanese for Kids classes.
- Continuing to offload things to my Japanese Language and Culture Consultant. She’s only able to work part-time, which is perfect for now because I’m the bottleneck at the moment.
what’s in progress but not being worked on
The Principal Principles of Speaking Japanese
A new way to flashcard
Japan Planned, Packed, Primed
Japan Planned, Packed, Primed PALS
what I finished in the last month
Video courses
Killing it with Kana course
- Added a few audio files.
- It took 60 hours but I finished the rest of the workbook: I mean, it’s totally done.
- Got the vocab images I wanted
- Highlighted the area matching the vocab on the photos
- Set them into the pages (this was a pain; seriously wish I hadn’t started this with Microsoft Word)
- Made the quizzes
- Got the outlines of my drawings in Illustrator
- Overlaid the kana characters on top
In-person physical Japanese classes in Chicago
Settled on using Starbucks and a library for in-person lessons.
Which means online and in-person have to be on separate days. I tried twice to do both and online was a fail; either my phone is too weak or the reception was poor at that space to support multiple students on a Discord video call.
- Marketed across newsletter, social media and Google Business.
- Updated sign-up automations (seems like Mailchimp can’t pick up when someone signs up for a specific session though so I’m having to assign people by hand).
- Updated products in the shop to include offline or give students the ability to add a location.
Vocab Visualizer Vault
- Researched build setup.
- Gave it its own subdomain.
- Outlined the my ideas for making it more internet and user-friendly. This is probably going to be the big thing for 2024.
The rest
- Fixed issues with the order bump in the checkout area.
- Gave feedback on student worksheets.
conclusions/final thoughts
I spent a decent amount of time chasing people this month to sign up. Marketing efforts didn’t really pan out but I’ll keep trying.
One of my problems has always been being scared to reach out or remind people (I don’t want to be a bother) but I did that this month and got 2 students into my classes that probably would have remembered too late.