September 2, 2009
A language curriculum for the very young
BY LIZ FARMER
Daily Record Business Writer
What started out as a way to save time for Angel Menefee has grown into a full-fledged business for the Towson mother of three and former middle school Spanish teacher.
After being asked by a private preschool to teach Spanish part time, Menefee had a better idea: Write a curriculum and sell it to the school.
“Just adding up what it was going to be for the school at $40 to $60 an hour for a few hours a week — by the time they bought this curriculum it was a fraction of what it was going to cost to have me come in,” she said. “Meanwhile this stuff is all integrated into classroom learning so your kids are not being pulled out to do a special class.”
The school loved the idea, she said, and Menefee quickly sold the curriculum to three others. She started her company the next year, in 2005, and called it Trampoline, learning programs for young minds.
Since then Menefee has consulted with other language experts to develop learning exercises and curricula for German, French and Italian. She is working on one for Mandarin Chinese. She has also expanded the concept to other subjects like sports and art history, and she is expanding her World Cultures curriculum.
Each language curriculum set costs about $1,500 and is for children ages 2 through 9. Other sets range in price from $495 to $1,795.
Unlike having a freelance teacher visit each class once a week for a lesson, the subjects are integrated into daily exercises and learning activities. The programs come with a CD of the pronunciation of all vocabulary words.
“You may have Spanish peppered throughout the day while they’re in the gym or the classroom or the playground,” said Mike Glasser who, along with his wife, Janelle, is a Sparks-based franchisee for the Goddard School for Early Childhood Development, a national child care company.
Glasser said not having to hire a freelance teacher more than makes up for the one-time expense of the curriculum, which holds down costs. Tuition at the Glassers’ school, which employs 30 people, ranges from $400 per month to well over $1,000, depending on the number of days a child attends.
With the recession pinching many families’ wallets, the school has seen more turnover this year but has maintained relatively steady business, serving 140 families, the Glassers said. And, offering a unique and worldly curriculum is a nice selling point.
“It’s not just language but it’s culture and games, geography and all these other ways to expose them to something new,” said Janelle Glasser. “They’re not going to come out fluent in the language, but they will come out with an awareness of the culture … that the world is bigger than Sparks, Maryland.”
Since she founded her company, Menefee has contracted with the Goddard Schools to have her curriculum used at each new location. She has also sold to about 80 percent of the approximately 300 existing Goddard Schools and developed a social etiquette program for the company called the Goddard Guide to Getting Along.
Nobel Learning Communities, a nationwide network of more than 170 private schools for preschool- through middle school-aged children, has also purchased Menefee’s lessons.
Locally, Menefee has sold to some private, Lutheran schools but said she has yet to crack into the public education sphere. She is trying to get on the recommended resource textbook list for public schools this year.
“Public schools are a little harder because it’s a big entity,” she said. “It’s breaking in from the top [with the school board] versus private schools, [where] you just go to the owner.”
