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At your service,
Teacher’s Servant

Teacher’s Servant 101: Part III – Lesson Management

In the previous parts we have covered student and class management. Now it is time for us to talk about the Teacher’s Servant cornerstone – lessons. The lesson lifecycle has two major phases: scheduling and reporting.

Let’s start with scheduling. There are a number of ways you can start off. You can find a class or a student and click on a “Schedule Lesson” link from there. This would bring you to a schedule a lesson screen already pre-linked to a student or a class. Alternately, you can start scheduling a lesson by following a “Schedule Lesson” link from home, monthly or daily calendar views. The new lesson will default its start date to the current date or daily view date in case of scheduling from a daily calendar view. The end result is the same no matter where you start. You will get the following form to fill:

Schedule Lesson

Schedule Lesson –

Let me guide you through the form field-by-field and explain how your choices will trigger different Teacher’s Servant functions.

The “Title” field is not required field. You can use it to give a narrative description to your lesson, so that you can easily recall later particulars of the lesson. Teacher’s Servant will use title everywhere to identify a lesson if it is defined. For example, it will be used on monthly and daily calendar views or on To-Do forms to identify a lesson to link to . If you don’t define title then Teacher’s Servant will use a linked student or class name (see below on how to link student/class to a lesson) to identify the lesson. If a lesson is not linked to a student or a group then only the lesson start time will be used to identify it.

Tip: don’t use a student or class name in title. Link lessons to a corresponding student or group instead. You will achieve the same result from the lesson description point of view, but make future reporting more accurate.

Lesson “start date and time” and “duration” are the only required fields to schedule a lesson. Fill them up as necessary. Note that duration is in minutes. So, one hour long lesson should have a duration of 60, not 1. Providing accurate lesson duration helps Teacher’s Servant recognize and flag potential scheduling conflicts.

The “For Class” field gives you an ability to link your lesson to a particular class. Just choose a class name from the drop-down box next to it. Click on the “Student” link in parenthesis to a link a lesson to a student instead of a class and the drop-down will be instantly re-populated with your students’ names.

Linking to a student or a class gives you a lot of benefits and we strongly recommend you do so for all or your lessons.

Benefits of Linking Students to Classes –

First of all, it will nicely reference a lesson by its start time and student/class name if title is not defined.

Linked lessons will enable student/class performance and history analysis through a number of Teacher’s Servant reports. You will be able to track student/class “running balance” (i.e. net sum of all lesson costs for a student/class subtracted by corresponding payments) via student/class balance report. This is a nice way to see where you stand financially with regards to a particular student/class.

Note, if you put student/class name as title and do not link your lessons, they will not be associated with a student/class and therefore would not be recognized by student/class specific reports and summaries.

Select the “Trial” check box to indicate a trial lesson. This piece of information will help you later on when you analyze your “conversion rate”. It will also flag lessons with the Trial icon on monthly and daily calendar views. It will also remind you about the specifics of a trial lesson and help you get prepared appropriately.

“Location” is a free text field. You can put whatever you want here to describe the location where a lesson will be held. However, Teacher’s Servant will use this information to show you a map with a help of Google maps when you review/look-up a lesson details. So, if you put an address there or a place of interest Google could map, you will have an extra perk of geo-services like driving directions or satellite view.

The “Rate” field is a price you are charging student/class for this lesson. Please note, that if you are scheduling a lesson for a class this is a total lesson price, not what you are charging members of the class individually.

“Repeats” drop-down allows you to schedule sessions (i.e. a number of lessons that happen on a daily, weekly or monthly basis). Session lessons will be marked on your daily and monthly calendars with the recurrence icon. Using sessions saves you a lot of time, and if anything changes later on you can always modify it. You can modify an individual lesson of a session, all, or all future recurrences of the session.

Lastly, the “Notes” filed. Use it to put any specific information about a lesson.

You can always update/reschedule your lessons by editing them. To edit a lesson go to a calendar view (either daily or monthly) and click on the “Edit Lesson” link (click on a lesson description link in a monthly view first to get a small lesson information pop-up window). The update lesson form is identical to a schedule lesson form. Change whatever you need to change and click on “Save”. If your lesson belongs to a session, Teacher’s Servant will ask you what you actually want to change (in this particular lesson, all session lessons or all future lessons of a session) and make changes per your instructions.

So, now that you have your schedule in place the next thing to do is to report your lessons as they occur. Reporting a lesson is a simple, but very powerful Teacher’s Servant function. By reporting you are setting a lesson’s status as:

• Scheduled (default)
• Performed
• No-Show
• Canceled by Student
• Canceled by Teacher

Lesson’s status will later be used by Teacher’s Servant to provide you with a variety of tools to analyze your teaching and finances. To report a lesson click on “Report Lesson” link available through calendar views and “unreported lessons” navigation panes (for example, on home or payment & expenses pages). Here is the report lesson form for you to use:

Report Lesson

Report Lesson –

The form gives you basic information about the lesson. Choose appropriate status and provide lesson comments (optional). You will be presented with a list of class students to report attendance when reporting a class lesson as performed.

You may also record payments for this class at this time by clicking on the “Add Payment” link.

Click the “Save” button and you are done! Soon you will find that it usually takes less than a minute to report a lesson, but it gives you very powerful information. This information with a little bit of Teacher’s Servant help will simplify and enrich your teaching experience.

These are the basics of the Teacher’s Servant lesson management. As usual, feel free to let me know if you have any questions or have suggestions.

In the next part of Teacher’s Servant 101 we will talk about payments.

At your service,
Teacher’s Servant

Teacher’s Servant 101: Part II – Class Management

Today we will talk about class management. Classes, like students, could be linked to lessons, To-Dos, payments, and expenses. Therefore, setting up classes before you schedule lessons, record payments or record expenses could save you time later and enable all the benefits Teacher’s Servant has to offer you. However, you can organize classes at any time and link them to existing lessons, payments, To-Dos and expenses.

Getting Started –

To start go to the “Student & Classes” section and click on the “New Class” button (or alternately click on “Add Class” link at the bottom of the home page). Fill up the “New Class“ form with class name (the only required field) and rate information.

New Class Form

Rates –

The rate is an hourly rate you charge the entire class (note – this is not a rate for each student in the class). The rate will be used by Teacher’s Servant to default lesson cost when you are scheduling lessons for this class. It could also be used as a quick look-up for your class terms. However, we suggest you keep all your legal paperwork separate anyway.

Comments –

Use the “Comments” field to document class specific information like teaching terms or location.

You can stop right here and start working with your new class. However, we recommend you add your students to the class. By doing so you enable more detailed reporting, and Teacher’s Servant attendance tracking feature. Now, every time you report a lesson (we’ll cover how to report a lesson in the following parts of this 101) Teacher’s Servant will give you an ability to report who has actually attended the lesson and who missed it. Later on you can use this data to analyze your class or individual student attendance history.

Students –

Adding a student to a class is easy. Just click on the “Click to add a student” link and you will have a drop-down list of all your students to choose from. Click the link every time you add them one by one. Click on the “recycle bin” icon next to a student to remove from the class if you accidentally added a student to the class. You can add or remove students (or otherwise update your class information) at anytime using the update class functionality.

Now, with your class name, rate, comment, and students defined, click on the “Create” button and you are all set with your class.

Searching –

Finding a class to look-up its information or update it is easy. Just go to the “Student & Classes” section. The “My classes” pane on the left will give you a number of ways to find a class you are looking for. You could simply start typing class name in the search box. Classes with matching names will start showing up right below the search box as you type! You don’t have to click on a search button (actually, we don’t have one) – just keep typing until you see the class you are looking for. Don’t remember class name? Just choose your class from the list of top 5 or all of your classes (make sure the search box is empty and toggle between top 5 and all classes by choosing a corresponding link in parenthesis). Click on the found class link and get class information. The class info view also has useful links to schedule a lesson for the class or make a To-Do conveniently pre-linked to the class or update class details.

In the next part of the Teacher’s Servant 101 I will talk about Teacher’s Servant cornerstone – Lesson management.

Yours,
Teacher’s Servant

Teacher’s Servant 101: Part I – Student Management

You can start using the Teacher’s Servant from anywhere you want, but we suggest you first organize your student information. Everything in Teacher’s Servant is integrated, so it is helpful to start off with the big picture in mind.

Having your student information in place allows you to be able to organize all of your information and link it to your students. You can link classes, schedule lessons, make To-Dos, report payments, and report expenses.

Linking Your Information –

When you link you will experience the full benefits from the Teacher’s Servant features and this will help you save time. For example, when you schedule a lesson you don’t have to type your student’s name over and over again in the title filed – you simply choose it from the drop down box. Linking enables searching and reporting by student. If you want to see all of the lessons you taught a particular student last month, and review the notes you made for those lessons, all you have to do is run the student’s history. Since you have all of the information linked to the student you can just look at their history.

Teacher’s Servant is a good place to have your student data stored for quick and easy access.

· Looking for a phone number to call?

· Teaching a kid and need to drop a line to his or her parents?

· Want to look up specific notes you made about a student?

Just go to the “Student & Classes” section and use the powerful Teacher’s Servant search capability to quickly find a student of interest by first name, last name or nickname.

Getting Started –

To get started go to the “Student & Classes” section and click on the “New Student” button or the “Add Student” link at the bottom of the home page. You will get this simple to fill form:

First and Last name fields are required. The rest is up to you.

Rates –

Use the “Rate” field to set the default hourly rate you are charging this student for a lesson. It will later be used to default lesson’s rate overriding teacher’s default rate (set-up under my account) and therefore saving you time. You could override this default for a specific lesson if it differs. It will also serve as a quick look-up of the terms you are teaching this student under. You still might want to have a contract in place that outlines all of the legal terms and conditions of your teaching arrangements. However to get the terms quickly just put them on a “student file” at Teacher’s Servant.

Classes –

You can add a student to the class or classes (if they are already defined) by clicking on the “click to add to a class” link and choosing a class from the drop-down list. You can do it later when you are organizing your classes (we will cover this in the next part of Teacher’s Servant 101). Have you added a student to a class by a mistake? You don’t have to cancel and start all over again. Just click on the “recycle bin” icon on the right and keep going.

Guardian Information –

Are you teaching kids? Want to have their parent’s, uncle’s, aunt’s or other guardian’s contact information? It is easy. Just click on the “Add Guardian” link below the “Comments” box and add as many guardians as needed. Click on the “recycle bin” next to it to delete a guardian.

In the next parts of my 101 we will discuss how to group your students into classes (if you are teaching classes) and start scheduling classes. Stay tuned by subscribing to my RSS!

Yours,
Teacher’s Servant

Welcome to the Teacher’s Servant Blog

Welcome to our Blog!

Teacher’s Servant (www.TeachersServant.com) is a new web-service for teachers and tutors. Teacher’s Servant was launched as a private beta on August 4, 2008. Sign-up today to make Teacher’s Servant be a part of your teaching life.

In the next few days I will guide you through the main features of the service and we’ll try to answer any questions you might have. Please feel free to ask them here or through the service web-site.

Yours,

Teacher’s Servant