Have you ever felt like you’re drowning in tiny tasks that somehow grew out-of-control overnight?
That’s how I recently felt with Compass Yoga teacher scheduling. Almost a year ago, I started to get requests from more library branches that wanted a regular yoga class in their programming. They had heard about the wonderful classes at the Bloomingdale Branch and once the word spread to one branch, many others piled on.
Of course, I was thrilled by the requests and wanted to fill them all. At the time, I thought the best idea was to find a lot of teachers who would be willing to teach these free classes to get experience. In New York City, there is no shortage of new teachers who need and want experience. So that people wouldn’t feel too overwhelmed by a regular weekly class, I decided to put together rotating rosters of teachers who would share the load at each branch. I also thought this would give the students a variety of teaching styles to keep them engaged in the practice.
These are really nice ideas and they kind of worked, but I completely underestimated the challenges. First, I did a very good job of driving myself crazy as I coordinated the schedules of 17 (!) teachers and then often hunted for last-minute subs. Second, teachers wanted to feel more connected with the students on a regular basis and having a regular weekly class helped them schedule their own lives more efficiently. Third, students wanted to get to know a teacher better rather than seeing 3 or 4 different teachers per month.
I was well aware of the first challenge but didn’t know about the other two. As a result, I began to wonder if we’d have to scale back the library program altogether in an effort to restore my sanity. I wrestled with this idea for weeks, changing my mind every other day. Then a really interesting idea surfaced once I found out about the second and third challenges described above: each branch of the library could have a lead teacher. That teacher may not be able to teach every week and may need to sub out occasionally, but the relative consistency would help me tremendously and would be more helpful to the teachers and students.
In the end, we didn’t need to scale back the library program. We just needed to find a smarter way to manage it. And now with this simpler teacher scheduling structure, we can grow to more branches to help more people. Every challenge has a solution and many times it’s far simpler than we realize. Once we have the will to make something happen (or change), the way opens.
Christa Avampato 