Teaching Yoga in Tokyo: How to Manage Student Records

Article by Dylan Robertson.

One advantage of working for a fitness club or yoga studio is that they handle all the paperwork and administration for you. Yoga teachers who organize their own classes must find an efficient way to manage student records. This is not only for their convenience, but in case of an emergency, you should have the students’ contact details on hand.

Since July 2008, I’ve been running several weekend classes at my local community center per month. Here’s how I’ve been doing it so far.

Student Registration Forms

I get all new students to fill out a 1-page registration form. I have both English and Japanese versions of this form available. The form requests basic contact information, including an alternative number for emergencies, and a brief liability waiver.

Document Management

Over time, these forms accumulate and become quite difficult to manage. My current solution is:

1. Wait for at least 50 forms to accumulate so I can process them efficiently in a single batch.
2. Go to a FedEx Kinko‘s shop. There the staff scan all the forms for me into a single PDF and give it to me saved on a CD-ROM (no need to bring your own CD-ROM).
3. I then split the PDF into one file per page. Each file is then saved as Last_Name, First_Name. This way, you can easily find them by searching for their name on your computer.

Mailing Lists

So far, I haven’t been sending regular mails out to students. I feel that people either find such emails annoying or stop reading them after a while. A student, who just wanted to try my class once could get irritated if I mailed them regularly with all my class information. So, instead, I do my best to make sure that those who are interested can easily find my class information via the web when they want it.

Privacy

My students’ privacy is crucial, so I make sure my computer is password protected and always stored securely. Since I have the file backed-up securely, I shred the original paper forms. If you don’t have access to a proper shredder, the FedEx Kinko’s shop staff will do it for you for free if you are using one of their other services (or they may charge if it’s a large load of paper, though). They’ll also dispose of the CD-ROM securely if when you are done with it.

Comments?

If you are a solo yoga teacher, how do you go about managing your student records in an efficient and responsible way? Please feel free to post below.