Communicating With Your Students and Increasing Your Class Size

There is no denying that promoting your upcoming classes can remind students to attend and greatly increase your class size. It’s also a great way to keep your students focused on their goals and help them achieve them, whether it’s to lose weight, increase endurance, or become a better climber on their bikes. A weekly reminder in their inbox may be the impetus that kicks them in the butt to fit your class(es) into their busy schedules.

A past article on ICA discussed ways to communicate with your students, promote your class, and educate them via a newsletter. It includes an interview with Bill Roach on why he uses a newsletter and how he does it. It’s worth your while to watch that interview if you haven’t yet, or to revisit it if you saw it 18 months ago when it was posted.

In that article, I also introduced you to Kelly Scymczyk, an instructor in Pennsylvania who is a longtime ICA member, forum contributor, and WSSC attendee. (The photo above is Kelly and me at WSSC 2009.) Kelly has long embraced communicating with her students via a weekly e-mail. I’m on her e-mail list and I am constantly amazed at her messages—I don’t even live close to her and they make me want to come to her classes! For that reason, I wanted to share with you a few more samples of her e-mails to give you some ideas of ways to write your own. Hopefully you have already started implementing this practice. If not, perhaps this will give you more incentive to start one now, especially as we are embracing winter (in the northern hemisphere that is) and an increase in students coming to class. If you are hesitant to do so because you think it will be time consuming or you don’t know what to say, here are a few tips you can glean from Kelly’s e-mails to her students.

1 Comment

  1. This post really inspired me, I am going to try the same, and are very excited on what my students will think about it.

    I was thinking about posting my first email here, but I am not sure how many here understands danish 😉

    Anyway thanks for the inspiration 🙂

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