Six, Five, Three . . . Let’s Just Keep On Going!
Posted by terrepruitt on July 22, 2019
Last Thursday while I was teaching the Thursday evening yoga class I realized that I had been teaching at the Willow Glen Community for six years. Then I looked at my How Long Have You Been Teaching Here? post and realized it was six years to the day! I started teaching gentle yoga at that community center on July 18 in 2013. It was supposed to be a temporary gig.
I am happy to say that they kept asking me back. Hopefully we can keep the class going for many more years to come. It has grown in attendance, which is nice. It started out with maybe five people and now we are cutting off the sign up at 22 (I think). Usually, not all the people that sign up show up at the same time so we end up with 12 to 15 people.
I’ll also have been teaching Nia on Thursdays for six years this year, but in September. The original time we started back in 2013 was 8:45. I understand the necessity for classes starting on the quarter hour, but sometimes that is not as standard as on the hour or half hour so we were able to change it to a 9:00 am start time in 2015.
Then we even changed locations in January of 2019. The program under which Nia was offered with the City of San Jose was cancelled. The feedback I received from the participants was that they wanted a class that they could drop into – which was not going to be allowed under the new program. So I found a new place to have Nia on Thursdays. We were so lucky that it happens to be right down the street from the community center AND it is on the same day AND it is at the same time. I am so happy that I was able to keep it so close to the same as to make it very convenient for the students. So, as I said, come September 2019, I will have been teaching Nia on Thursday for six years!
In February it had been five years that I have been teaching gentle yoga at the Cypress Community Center. At the time I was teaching Nia before the yoga class so I wasn’t able to step into the original class time when they called to ask me to teach it, but the students that had been signed up for that session agreed to move the class to 10:30. So the class has been at 10:30 on Tuesdays since February 2014.
Our stretch class has been going on for three years. This one is the one that have changed the most. First of all before I started teaching the class it was held at noon. But when I took over we moved it to 10:15 (that weird start time) because I was teaching Nia from 9:00 to 10:00 and when I took over teaching stretch we had to relocate from one room to the next so we needed time to do that. Plus it is always nice to have at least 10 minutes in between classes so that students can exit and enter and those wanting to take both classes can take care of any needs they might have (the instructor too!). Stretch was at the community center, but again, when the city changed programs the students wanted to have class passes and drop-ins so we moved stretch to the same place we moved Nia. Not enough people attended the stretch class though, so the studio could not support it.
So, we moved stretch to the park. The park is great. It is a very nice park. It suits our needs just in fine. There is a huge tree under which we can put our mats. Most of the time the students start off with their mats in the sun and after about 15 minutes they move into the shade. But even though we have great weather in California, we will not be able to stay outside through the winter so we are moving back to the community center. If you want to join us for stretch at the community center, please register. Here is a link to my site that will have the links to register. I don’t want to put the links here as they will die eventually and I rather not have dead links on my blog. (I try not to.)
When we moved stretch to the park we adjusted the start time so that we would have time to get from the studio to the park. It starts at 10:30. When it moves to the community center it will start at 10:30 because I will still need the time to get from the studio to the community center. It actually only takes about 5 minutes to get to either place from the studio, but I can’t guarantee that I can leave right after class. Sometimes I have to talk to students and/or attend to other things so it is safest to start class when I can guarantee for the most part that I can be there.
Well, this post just start out because I was excited that I had been teaching gentle yoga at the Willow Glen Community center for six years to the day and wanted to share . . . the other info just seemed a logical follow.
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