I had a most pleasant afternoon meeting with Seattle Piano teacher, Anita Manuel today (that’s her in the middle of the picture!) — we exchanged emails several weeks ago, and she agreed to pop by our offices today, share a tea, and talk a little bit about her business and to give us some feedback on what we’re building.

In a nutshell, Anita’s a walking role model for the TeachStreet educator who we’re trying to empower — she’s been teaching for 6+ years and conducts both private piano lessons in her Seattle home, as well as one-to-one and one-to-many classes at Sherman Clay Pianos, here in Seattle. She has a vibrant teaching business, but would love to add 5-10 regular students to her schedule, and isn’t really sure what the best way is to do that. We talked about some of her options, including some targeted Google Adwords and/or increased activity with her existing online activities with Craigslist.

In addition to her teaching, she’s very active as the Vice President of the Seattle Music Teacher’s Association, and she mentioned that she could see the site as a great place to teach additional things beyond just music — yes, we love that idea!

She had a lot of great feedback for us (we’ll keep that close to the vest!), and more than anything, it was great to get that much more input and energy regarding the need for what we’re building amongst the teacher/teaching community.

If you’re interested in Piano in the Seattle or West Seattle neighborhood, definitely reach out to piano teacher Anita Manuel on TeachStreet.

By the way… Anita was surprised that she could easily add video to her web sites/presence — I promised to provide her some links with relatively inexpensive digital cameras and memory cards that she could pick up to do just that (hint, those links will do the trick!).

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I have this theory that many of us harbor a secret illusion that maybe we really could be the next Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell or Ali Farka Toure (check out the 8,922+ folks who want to do this on 43 Things). Maybe that’s what makes the guitar the most popular instrument in America to learn? And I’m almost certain that that’s why Guitar Hero is an even bigger craze than DDR.

Entrepreneur, musician and guitar teacher John Paul Shields of Seattle, WA was kind enough to take a few minutes to chat with us about his experiences teaching guitar to the next generation of Jimi’s and Joni’s.

(Lest you be confused, this is Jimi Hendrix, not John Paul Shields)

TeachStreet: What made you decide to become a professional guitar instructor?

John Paul Shields: I’ve have always enjoyed teaching in various degrees, whether it was helping my sister with math (which used to be my favorite subject, her least), organizing a soccer team of novices, or showing friends how to ski. It’s just fun to share something I love to do.

But it took awhile to realize my career in music. After a couple years of studying engineering, I realized I was miserable. I decided to switch gears and transferred to the University of Washington, where I enrolled in the music program. One of the courses I took was guitar pedagogy where we had students to teach and work with. I was absolutely enthralled. And that, as they say, was that!

This is John Paul Shields – happy to be playing guitar.

TS: What do you love about teaching?

JPS: I love sharing my passion for the subject. But I also enjoy the opportunities for learning teaching provides. Not only do I learn more about the subject by seeing how other people approach it, but I also get to learn about the students themselves. I have met so many wonderful people and personalities through teaching. I feel really quite lucky.

TS: What types of students do you teach? How do most people find you?

JPS: I work with all styles of guitar—from classical, to rock, to jazz, to various folk music, etc.—so I get all kinds of students. I’ve worked with aspiring professional guitarists, to adults looking for something fun to do in their spare time, to teenagers, to adolescents, to even kids as young as four years old. I love the diversity of students that teaching guitar privately offers, and I see it as my job as their teacher to help make their goals (whatever they might be) become a reality.

TS: How do most people find you?

JPS: I’ve been teaching full time for more than 6 years now, so a lot of my students are repeat students or come from referrals. The only advertising I really do is on craigslist, outside of my website. My website is helpful in letting folks know that I’m a serious instructor, not just a kid teaching a few chords out of their parent’s basement or something.

TS: As a full time teacher, you’re running your own small business. Tell us a little bit about some of the challenges you face.

JPS: The biggest challenge for a small business owner is getting your name out, which I think is true for any business, but it is especially true for an independent guitar studio that isn’t affiliated with a music store. The internet is a mixed blessing for advertising, in that there are lots of chances to get exposure, but there is so much for people to sort through that it can be overwhelming.

Once you start to get the exposure you need to maintain a clientele, you then have to be prepared to administer your business and the appropriate licenses, taxes, scheduling, etc. It can be a daunting task some days to sort through all the emails, but that is what has to be done.

Of course there is also the challenge of implementing business policy. People are busy, and often the first things for them to put aside in times of stress are activities of leisure, which new guitar lessons can fall under. The challenge for me is to maintain a “no show” policy that allows for a mistake or two once in a while, yet still protects my time as a business owner trying to make a living. People tend to forget that someone else would readily use the lesson time they are skipping.

TS: Do you think these challenges are common to music teachers or even all types of teachers starting their own business?

JPS: Absolutely. Especially when the teacher is forming a private studio. It’s hard to strike your own path, though the rewards of freedom and individuality are worth it.

TS: You teach most of your classes from your home studio? What are the pros and cons for this as a teacher and for your students?

JPS: The cons, as mentioned before, are dealing with the challenges of running your own business. But the benefits are having a studio where you can control lesson times and lengths, fees, curriculum, as well as recommendations for instruments and music. I have no conflicts of interest, in turn allowing me to give lessons and information that is tailor to the student, and that makes me happy.

TS: Any favorite or funny moments from class?

JPS: There are too many to count, really, but I guess my favorite thing is watching someone truly acquire a piece of information. It’s so exciting to watch people’s eyes light up as they “get it.”

TS: You have a great website that talks about your teaching services and performances. What do you love about the internet in general? What limitations do you think it has?

JPS: My website is great for helping potential students learn a little more about me and my teaching philosophy. It also allows potential students a chance to hear samples of what I have worked on, as well as see when I—or my students—are performing. It’s amazing the things that you can do with websites these days. It’s a great way for people to gather information and stay in touch. I think most of us would be lost without email.

Of course, as I mentioned before, there is so much information on the web that it can be overwhelming to the looker, which is why sites such as TeachStreet can be such a help.

TS: Any advice for TeachStreet?

JPS: I’d love to expand my teaching business, especially to do more work with younger school-aged students. That said, the idea of mass marketing myself and my business is a little daunting, so keeping things easy and cost-efficient is going to be a priority for teachers like me. I’d challenge TeachStreet to think of ways to reach out to parents in a way that a) markets teachers, and b) helps parents feel really good about where they’re sending their kids. A typical classified ad in a newspaper or online doesn’t give people enough information to really make a good decision. This is something that I’d love to see improved.

Also, a lot of young folks look at craigslist, which is great. However, parents are the ones who are usually paying for lessons, so TS will need to find places and ways to reach out to parents as well as potential young students.

Lastly, it would be useful to help arrange for payment by credit card, if that’s what parents preferred.

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John Paul Shields has taught guitar through the Renton H.O.M.E. program, the Boys and Girls Club in Kirkland, and as a substitute guitar teacher at the University of Washington. He currently teaches out of his private studio, click here to listen to his music samples. JP resides in Seattle, where he continues to perform and teach guitar, play recreational soccer, and work seasonally as a ski instructor. If you’re interested in taking lessons with JP, contact him at
.

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A few questions to the peanut gallery…

• If you’ve taken a class with the John Paul, leave a comment and let us know what you loved.
• If you’ve always thought about starting music lessons, what would give you the extra push to start now? Extra time in your schedule? Knowing the right teacher? A friend taking classes with you? A promotional first class?

All websites and businesses of all kinds (at least, those hoping to attract online visitors) learn early on that they ignore the benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) at their own peril. I’ve learned a lot about SEO from friends at real estate valuation site Zillow, my experiences with funny video site JibJab, and the gurus of SEO at Beyond Ink (note — I highly recommend SEO Queen Alex Bennert at Beyond Ink — she’s not only incredibly smart, but her customer service levels are unbelievable — in fact, she may actually be online more hours than I am ).

If you’re new to SEO, here are some quick tips and guides to getting up to speed:

1. Head straight to Seattle’s SEOMoz — don’t pass go, don’t collect $200. Their team gives fantastic, practical and well-written SEO advice. Even the free stuff is great, but their Premium SEO Content truly is a steal
2. Take a course! In Seattle, DiscoverU has an Introduction to SEO class — I’m sure if you get creative, you can find others
3. When you’re ready for some professional consulting assistance, I’d again highly recommend Beyond Ink, or SEOMoz.
4. Read a book or blog… OK… I know they’re obvious… but they’re less disruptive than asking me for advice, OK?
5. Finally, Seattle’s Tony Wright gives a fantastic 90-minute intro via the video below — you can also check out his SEO notes and Powerpoint slides

We’ve also now got some SEO teachers and classes listed on TeachStreet.

A bad joke to get us started: If you speak three languages, you’re tri-lingual. Speaking two languages makes you bilingual. But if you only speak one language, then you’re an American.

While I never thought of foreign language learning as a controversial topic, it became one while listening to a podcast on the topic of American’s becoming bilingual on KUOW’s “The Conversation” last night.

Here are some interesting news tidbits that I dug up:

• “Nearly 2/3 of Americans wish they’d taken more foreign language.” Scripps Howard News Service
• “Enrollment for Chinese classes has soared from 5,000 primary and secondary students in 2000 to more than 50,000 today.” Christian Science Monitor.
• A different article by CS Monitor also discusses how after 9/11, Arabic became the new “must have” language and Americans began to take note of the important role that language can play in globalization. Students began flocking to Arabic classes in droves. (One teacher even compared them to the “Sputnik students” of the 60’s, noting the similar surge in students wanting to learn Russian after the infamous satellite launch in 1957.) See similar feedback from our conversation with Seattle Arabic teacher Bill Farhat.
• However, many Americans are more than a little daunted by the 4-5 years it takes to learn Arabic. In fact, it takes almost three times longer to learn basic Arabic than it does to learn French. One plucky foreign affairs writer shares his personal struggle with learning to love such a difficult language in his Slate article “I’m Trying to Learn Arabic.”
• “Being fluent in two languages may help keep the brain sharper for longer.” Multiple studies on health and aging have shown that dancing, reading and playing musical instruments later in life can help ward off dementia. A study reported on by the BBC notes a similar benefit from learning a foreign language. (As an interesting side note, a different BBC article also notes that it make take more brain power to speak Chinese than English.)

(Big brains from language learning? Maybe so!)

Some groups such as U.S. English and English First are spear-heading legislation that, among other things, would virtually ban all use of languages other than English by federal, state and local governments. While this may seem to be a fringe movement, some opinion polls show as many as 85% believe English should become the official language of the United States. Other arguments I’ve heard against foreign language learning are:

• School-aged students need to focus on other “core” areas like math/reading/science
• English is the “world’s language” anyway so why learn anything else?
• It’s hard for students to gain fluency without complete immersion
• My future job won’t need it.

A few organizations that represent the other side of the coin are the ACLU, the Linguistic Society of America, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Education Association and the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. In addition, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages recently noted a slew of positive correlations between bilingualism and intelligence, memory skills, problem solving abilities and attention controls (and goodness knows we all need better attention spans) just to name a few. The recent upsurge in bilingual education for infants and toddlers is indeed another indication that individuals (parents in particular) see a long term benefit in foreign language learning.

So, to come back around to our original question: Is bilingualism necessary for Americans? Ok… so maybe it’s not necessary, as in vital-for-life-to-exist necessary.

But it is becoming bilingual a great thing? It is important? Is it an unbeatable opportunity for personal growth, academic improvement, increased job opportunities, greater global and cultural perspective and a more thorough understanding of our complex and ever-changing world (not to mention ease while traveling abroad)? Those of us at TeachStreet are answering that question with a resounding “You bet!”

I had a great discussion today with Jeremy Wilson (that’s him in the bomber jacket on the right, with a fellow named Barrington Irving), from Seattle’s Galvin Flying. I reached out to Galvin, because we noticed that a lot of searches were being made in the ‘Learn to Fly / Seattle Flying School‘ arena and also because my wife bought me an introductory flying class at Galvin several years ago. The number of searches made us wonder, “Will people want to use TeachStreet to find flying schools and teachers, and will those schools be interested in participating with TeachStreet?”

I asked Jeremy first for an overview of Galvin’s flying operations. He told me that they’re actually more than just a flying school — in fact, as a Fixed Base Operation, they not only train future pilots, but also fuel and maintain many aircraft of all types, from private smaller planes to large public aircraft.

He also told me that they were significantly different from many traditional flight schools, since most people go to those schools and learn on decades-old Cessnas. Galvin’s management made the decision to invest in state-of-the-art 21st century aircraft, including new technology aircraft such as those from Diamond , which are a tremendous draw for the more serious flight students. From a cost perspective, this is a big deal — an older Cessna may represent a $40,000 investment for a flight school, whereas a Diamond will likely start at $400,000! Jeremy’s boss, Nick Frisch (he’s the Director of Flight Training) has also made the push for more investment in simulation technologies, and they’re really starting to see that pay off, with more students interested in even higher-level training (i.e. instead of training to fly a Cessna, students are jumping right to ‘Right Seat Training for Boeing 747s’.

He told me that they primarily see 3 types of pilots:

1. Younger students, who have a goal to work for airlines (as a side note, there is a huge need/career opportunity for airline pilots right now)
2. Older, successful business professionals, who are into their ‘golden years’, who have a goal to purchase a plane, learn to fly it, and sometimes to even lease the plane back to Galvin to use for other training
3. Early retirees from the many technology companies in the Pacific Northwest; their goals are varied, but many look to become certified and then even teach for Galvin

Regarding how they find most students, they find that most of the 3rd group come from word of mouth with some online research on top of it (since many of these types have been groomed on the Internet, these are their first, second and third instincts!) However, they find most of the 1st and 2nd groups coming primarily from a mix of online-only sources, including general search engine queries, which lead them ultimately to the Galvin Flying website (Jeremy’s put a lot of effort into making the site more findable by the major search engines). While Jeremy has a list a mile long of things he’d like to improve about their site, he’s found that most students really appreciate the information on different airplanes and the depth of content they’ve made available.

Over the years, he’s made the decision to spend less on traditional advertising sources (yellow pages, print, radio), and instead has listened to his customers, who repeatedly told him they were doing their research online before seeking him out. He has used aggregation sites (similar to what TeachStreet will be doing, in some ways), but wishes that the aggregators did a better job of sending him qualified students, specifically:

• enable the students to see his website URL, so they can do research before contacting them directly
• communicate the actual cost of learning to fly a plane (it isn’t cheap — in fact, it can run to more than $50,000! It’s important to let potential students know that, to appropriately set expectations)
• give them the freedom to describe their business, specialties and other information in their own words — templates are nice for customers, but the amount of information will be different for different subjects

Jeremy closed by wishing us luck and telling us that at the end of the day, if we can help them do an even better job of finding qualified customers/leads and obtain even better class placements in search engines, that it would likely be something they’d be interested in, because there really isn’t a similar alternative for them right now.

Thanks, Jeremy — we appreciate the input and are doing our pre-flight web-site check now!

p.s. I found this Galvin Flying Video on YouTube — it’s a 6-minute Flight Lesson from Galvin — hope it gets your juices flowing to go take a flight lesson!

This was reported in the last two weeks, but in case you missed it, the University of California Berkeley has started uploading lectures to YouTube. In and of itself, this probably isn’t too earth-shattering, since you can already find many educational lectures at iTunesU, PodClass, (here’s a Faceback App Tutorial Video from my new friend, Gary Gil, who I met at the Graphing Social conference last week!) and LearnOutLoud, to name a few. (Update — another TechCrunch post referred to HowStuffWorks.com being acquired by Discovery — another example of great edutainment content.  Update2 — fantastic post by Andy Kessler on online education possibilities).

But, given the size of Berkeley and the likely bureaucracy that they had to fight through to get approval to get these lectures posted, I think it warrants more coverage by those of us who are trying to transform the way people learn new things — while we (the TeachStreet staff) are probably more excited about in-person, face-to-face learning, we concede that there’s a time and place for all kinds of learning experiences, and the quality of professors at Berkeley is likely about as good as it gets.

Since these lectures are fairly unedited, you’ll need to be prepared for some very real classroom experiences (i.e. a bit boring, not perfect sound, and some long moments of empty sound!), but I listed through two videos, and actually really enjoyed them — I’ve included them both below for your enjoyment.

Physics 10 — Physics for Future Presidents (the beginning 5 minutes of this is great… he relates how a meteor appearance in a Toyota Tacoma Truck Ad actually does serve some educational value!

SIMS 141 – Search, Google, and Life: Sergey Brin, of Google fame, guest lectures!

Note — we sent this our via email to our Homepage Subscribers, so some of you may see this twice (if you subscribe to the blog as well)!

It’s probably been awhile since you signed up for our updates at TeachStreet. We wanted to let you know that our lack of communication hasn’t been for lack of activity; rather, we’ve been heads down building the organization, gathering input from students and teachers, and beginning construction of the website.

We know that your burning question is, “When’s TeachStreet going to be available in my hometown?”

Soon enough, my friends! As for exact dates… in the grand tradition of non-disclosure, our lawyers have helped us learn that we should respond with, “for competitive reasons, we can’t comment on that at the present time.”

However, we have learned a few things that we CAN share. Here’s our Top 5 List of Things We Didn’t Know Two Months Ago:

1) Networks are awesome (yes… Networks work!). Our core launch team is now fully staffed up and the entire team came to us via a personal introduction or network recommendation. Setting aside modesty for 5 seconds, the team we’ve assembled is amazing! In fact, the Web 2.0 term would be “rock stars”, and it’s taken mere hours/days for people to begin making a big impact — it reminds us why we’ve chosen the startup route!

2) This is a slippery and exciting market to size. We’re working with a team of students from the University Venture Fund who are conducting additional market research and financial analysis for us. Together, we’re finding that there’s a huge need (and opportunity) for bringing teachers and students of all kinds together. Thanks UVF for your energetic feedback and hard work.

3) Finding teachers is hard work. Our engineering and data collection teams have been conducting tests in the Seattle market to gather information on teachers, classes and learning opportunities. We’ve already identified more than 450 subject areas (yep, there are classes on everything from accordions and aikido to welding and writing). We plan to have teacher/class coverage for each of these “subjects” in each city — meaning that we’re hoping for 1,000’s of teachers in every city!

Pop Quiz: Can you put these classes in order from most-to-least prevalent? (Answers below)

(a) Guitar

(b) Singing

(c) Belly Dancing

(d) Poker

(e) Mandarin Chinese

4) Frugality isn’t always “all that and a bag of chips”. Making our own desks out of Home Depot hollow core doors was cost-efficient, yes, but actually sweat-inducing hard work. Sure, we saved a few dollars, but the splinters were painful and it’s a lot harder to write code with a few fingers missing! However, (investors take note) that’s the kind of sacrifice we’re willing to make to keep our costs at appropriate “start up-y” levels. (Note, you can see a video of our staff at work on door-desk making on our blog).

5) Blogging is fun. Speaking of our blog, we’ve been making more frequent and fun posts detailing things that we’re learning about and including interviews with prospective teachers (interviews with a local Seattle Arabic Teacher and Breakdancing Instructor were posted recently). If you’re interested in more getting the fun updates, I highly recommend signing up for updates on our TeachStreet blog. (see the links on the right side of this page).

Finally, as we near the site launch, we’ll be looking for volunteers to help us with site testing, bug testing, data collection, and more. Let us know if you’d be willing to lend a hand!

Yours in learning,

Team TeachStreet

p.s. Quiz Answers… A, D, B, C, E. Our research shows that the top five most popular classes overall that people are looking for are: 1) Guitar, 2) Spanish, 3) English, 4) Piano, 5) Poker… but we thought we’d mix things up a bit with some classes that are a little off the beaten path.

p.p.s. If you’re a Teacher… here are some questions we’d love your feedback on — feel free to email us your response, or give us a call (206-381-0652) and let’s chat!

1) What categories do you teach?

2) What city do you teach in?

3) Do you teach full-time or as a side business? If you teach as an hourly tutor, do you also teach at a local school or community college?

4) Does TeachStreet sound like something you’d be interested in learning more about/participating in?

5) Do you presently use any other online services that sound similar? If so, what are they?

6) How do you currently find your students? What online tools and services do you use? What offline/real-world methods?

Around TeachStreet’s offices, we often talk about learning new stuff and what the more popular learning topics are, including music lessons like Piano and Guitar, sports classes such as Golf and Tennis, and technology interests such as Ruby on Rails and even HTML. But, by far, the most common example keeps coming back to “Learn Spanish (or, insert your language choice here… French, Arabic, English, ESL, etc.)”

In the last few weeks, we’ve seen some really solid new online language learning services launch, including LiveMocha, a new Seattle-area language-learning website. If you haven’t checked it out yet, this blog post by LiveMocha does a great job of introducing what they’ve built, and what their goals are –we highly recommend that you check it out.

Of course, you’ve got 100’s of other options for online language learning, including services like Mango, SpanishSense (here’s a great blog post from their parent company, Praxis, that discusses the differences between ‘delivered and constructed information and learning’) and others… or you could also sidle up to a booth at the airport from the leading software provider, Rosetta Stone, and buy some installable software.

These all involved a large amount of self-study (aka time spent learning on your own) and likely work for many people with limited time, large amounts of travel time spent on airplanes and in hotel rooms, or who possibly live in more remote locations with less robust education provider options. We’re wondering what people prefer — is it online tools (e-learning, video, installed software) or in-person learning experiences including tutors, classes, and evening courses?

In larger cities like Seattle, we have the advantage of having an abundance of learning opportunities — including rich and targeted language schools such as the Seattle Language Academy, DiscoverU and others.

Of course, we also have the advantage of Leonardo, the ‘Green Lake Seattle Spanish Teacher’ — a great painting of him created by Seattle artist Scott Erickson is above — ahh, the wonders of living in a city like Seattle!

We’d love to hear from you — do you have a strong preference (online vs. offline)? Do you have any specific favorite teachers, schools or services?

Just a heads up that we’ll be at next week’s Graphing Social conference in San Jose — it runs Sunday, October 7 thru Tuesday, October 9 and we’ll be in the Bay area meeting with friends, potential investors and other Facebook semi-addicts! If you’re in the vicinity, and have been wondering about all the buzz you’re hearing about Facebook and how it could affect your business, it would be great to catch up with you while we’re in town — if so, drop us a line, and we’ll buy you a coffee/beer/milk

In the interest of full disclosure, the conference organizer, Dave McClure, just happens to be a TeachStreet fan (he’s a board member and investor/advisor) — he’s also just written a fantastic introduction to Facebook, and how to think about graphing your Facebook strategy — an added bonus, if you’re thinking about attending next week’s conference, is that you can get a 25% discount using the link found at the bottom of that article!