The History of Brave Writer Classes
Since there is some confusion (I’m hearing about it in email) about classes and registrations, I thought I’d clear the issues up here.
We began Brave Writer (then called, The Writing Compass) with a yahoo group (then called e-groups) list that admitted 25 families to one class back in January 2000. Since then, we’ve added a website, teachers and a diversity of classes. We switched from yahoo groups two years ago to the forum software we now use. My classes have usually had about 20-25 families/students in them. From the start, the classes have always filled.
But they used to fill by the day class started. Sometimes I’d even add that last student the morning the new class started.
This year (2005), in the spring, our classes started filling several weeks before class began. So imagine my shock when for this fall, my two most popular classes were full on the first day of registration!
We had 33 families who registered for Kidswrite Basic by 11:00 a.m. and a waiting list of at least twenty. Kidswrite Intermediate had 25 kids registered by the end of the day.
Unprecedented.
One of the difficulties with growth is that it goes in spurts. We aren’t meaning to make the classes hard to get into. We have never had a class fill on the first day of registration. Usually, they take a couple of weeks to fill.
So this is all new to us. I’m still mostly a one-woman operation. My husband does book lay-outs and most of the website tech-y stuff (I do updates, but he designs and builds everything which is a big job) and I have three teachers, not counting my husband who is now leading the Slingshot Companion. We’ve also got one staff member who writes the Slingshot. (Yay for her!)
That means that data entry, class registrations, language arts subscription programs, the blog, the Scratch Pad, email questions, writing the high school book, the Brave Writer Lifestyle, etc. all come through me. I even answer my own phone calls.
And I homeschool my five kids, too.
So far, I’ve been able to juggle all this successfully. This year, though, we’re hiring staff to help.
In the meantime, we’re also considering new ways to make registrations fair and easier on all of you (I didn’t mean for Brits to have to get up so early to register!).
There will definitely be more classes this year. I hope to teach some of them! (I love teaching.) So if you didn’t get in yet, don’t despair. We’ll do our best to help you who are on the waiting lists to find a class that works for you at some point.
Thanks for your patience.
Julie
