Saturday, March 18, 2006

TKD evangelism

After class today there was a meeting of the "Leadership Group." While I'm not officially a member of this group, Master Hughes has told me he'd like me to get involved.

"If you're not a member, you can come and observe today," said Ms. Pryor. So I did.

The discussion was centered on the issue of getting more new students for our school. I was glad to hear this being discussed. Attendance has been dropping off for a while. As I've said before, we've lost a number of black belts, and there are few new students. Today, until Jason arrived, I was the lowest belt.

The children wanted to have "bring a buddy to TKD day." Which isn't a bad idea. Others suggested getting involved in more demos. Ms. Pryor wanted to know how to get the word out to the media about our activities, and I told her I could write press releases (I wrote some last year after our students went to tournaments).

Pam asked "what were we doing before that we're not doing now?" That was a good question. I wanted to ask "how did everyone here find out about this school?"

Our family started because of a great deal on the first two months of lessons offered through the local community college. I wonder if our school is still doing that. . . and I wonder what else would be a good way to promote our school and TKD to our community.

So here's my question to you readers: How did you find out about your TKD school? What got you going there?

And if you don't do martial arts, how did you get started in whatever it is you love to do?

2 comments:

TKD Rocker said...

I don't remember much about choosing a school because I was only 6, but I do remember going to a place called "Khe Hans" first. I took a small introductory class, and the only things that stuck out in my mind were 1)I was the only student who knew how to bow correctly, and 2)The instructor made me give him a hug at the end. I think that creeped my parents out, so we continued looking at schools in the area. The 2nd place we went was Kim's Black Belt Academy. I remember meeting Mr. Coleman and having a lot of fun in the class. After that, we didn't look at any more schools, and I joined Kim's Black Belt Academy.

Anonymous said...

I started because my neice (a 20-something at the time) was enrolled and always talked about how it was challenging but fun. Turns out, my first day of class was her last day before she moved out-of-state for a job, so we only attended one class together.

My own dojang is experiencing an enrollment lull right now, and more worrisome, an attendance lull. Only the die-hards and a few new white-belts have consistent attendance -- all the mid-level belts seem to be on a self-imposed spring break!
Kicker Chick