When I told one of my students, last week, that it had taken me 70h hours to create this website, transfer the content to the new design I had developed, and add brand-new pictures taken by Adrian Murray and edited by Helen Murray, such as the one below, he seemed surprised. Not by the fact that website creation/editing takes that long, but that I had done it all myself.
This made me reflect on the fact that, as a freelancer language teacher, there are so many things that I do, on top of my actual job, i.e. preparing lessons and teaching French/English online, which are not visible to my students.
This includes admin work (planning/scheduling), website editing, writing posts for this blog and several online platforms, attending networking events, not to mention designing everything: from my logo to every video, post visual, and reel. It’s all me!
I used to be a marketing executive for Cambridge University Press, that job is the reason I moved to England in the first place in 2003. It was my first in this country, my second with a British educational publisher, and that’s where I learned all about visuals, branding, and messaging. Now grant you, being one’s own customer isn’t quite the same thing, but it's all come handy!
And while, at times, it can feel like a lot to juggle and requires pacing myself, here are my main takeways:
I get to decide exactly how to introduce myself and my teaching.
I can implement changes immediately.
I can change my mind (and have done so a couple of times!), which is particularly useful when learning to promote oneself and one’s own teaching method.
What I teach, and learn from teaching my students, invariably seeps into my posts, my designing, and my mindset when interacting online. It‘s all part of the same idea!
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