2024-08-05

Teaching my regular classes at the Ross Farnsworth - East Valley YMCA.

I really love teaching at a health club (as opposed to having my own place). No rent, no utilities, no billing, etc. I just show up, punch the clock, punch some students, and go home. But every now and then it backfires.

Yesterday, I woke up to an e-mail from our facility director telling me my classes would be cancelled this week because they’d rented out the room I use months ago and had forgotten to tell me until day-of. Whoops. Hey, 💩 happens. I get it. There’s no sense getting upset about it - let’s just find a solution, right?

It turns out half the gym didn’t have any scheduled activities during my class time, so we moved class to the gym. There was basketball practice on the other half of the gym, so it was loud and distracting. Fortunately, I can be pretty loud and distracting when I want to be, so I was able to keep everyone’s attention. 😉

But then, about 2/3 of the way through the adult class, a basketball team showed up claiming they were scheduled to be in the gym. Given the earlier mix-up, I figured something like this might happen and had planned ahead. We moved out into the lobby where I broke out my laptop and projector and proceeded to give an impromptu lecture on karate history to fill the remainder of the time.

Was it ideal? Nope. Did it work? Yep. But it pays to plan ahead for disruptions and have a few worksheets, videos, and lectures prepared ahead of time.

We’ll see how it goes on Wednesday.