Opening a SUP Business

                     

  It's been a couple (since March) of crazy months. 😬I'm a special education preschool teacher and have been working for home since March when the schools closed due to COVID - 19. During Spring Break I was supposed to go on a four day cruise 🚢to Mexico with an charity organization called Recreational Horizons, that takes adults with disabilities on vacation. The day before we were supposed to leave on the cruise, it was cancelled. I went on Spring Break and never went back to school! In the first phase my yoga studio closed as well. The world turned online. Everything including restaurants, bars, hair salons, everything except grocery stores and places like Home Depot, only necessary business were open. Everything was closed! This new thing called Zoom appeared. It had been around for quite a while and I even have a friend that worked for Zoom. Now it was the newest thing. All meetings were online. We even had a Yogis Night In on Zoom. 🎉I was doing circle time once a week on Zoom with my special education preschool students, running IEP meetings and transition to kindergarten meetings on Google Meetings. The yoga studio had turned into online yoga. I was teaching my normal classes and even added some extra ones because I could do them from home. I made it through all the online meetings that I'd never done before and trying to do preschool circle time on Zoom. 😌 It was now the end of the school year. I always do a preschool graduation ceremony for my students. Some of my students are with me for three years. We had to have parents drive up to pick up any student belongings like diapers, wipes, formula, change of clothing, etc. I bought Hawaiian leis and felt graduation caps online at Oriental Trading Co. My kids each got their preschool graduation certificate, a lei and I took their picture wearing their cute graduation cap. Our last preschool circle on Zoom I took all their pictures from Drive Thru Graduation and my wonderful husband Mykel created a video with the Pomp and Circumstance Graduation March song. We cried and watched the video together a couple times. My students were laughing and yelling out who was in the picture. They loved it when their picture came up even when they had already watched the video before. The teachers were able to go for two hours and get our personal belongings, turn in our keys and our school laptop. Usually we spend our first week of summer planning for the next school year, but this time no planning dates were set. We didn't take down our classrooms and move all the furniture to one side of the room for the custodian to do a summer cleaning. It didn't feel like the school year was over. The closure comes at graduation and then spending the next day tearing down my classroom. It was a strange feeling! 😕

  Wow! Now it's summer, but I'm still at home minus the school laptop, my lesson plan book, my big blue chair for circle, and some books I grabbed from school in my hour given to get classroom supplies in April. Hmm, what to do? Covid- 19 is still on the rise especially in AZ. Camp Challenge, the special education summer camp that I work at for the City of Tempe, was closed and was hoping to be able to open for the second session in July. The yoga studio is still closed. We in AZ are still under Phase I closures. I'm enjoying teaching online. I'm not getting paid, but I've used my last check from the school district to pay my mortgage payments for June and July so I'm feeling a little more relaxed about not working technically. Recreational Horizons had to cancel the trip our summer trip to California since Disneyland and all amusement parks are closed. We are now in June and being asked to stay home and stay safe. This is the time I usually travel. I'm on summer break, but it doesn't feel like break except that I'm home all day, everyday😜. The dogs 🐕are extremely happy! Luckily we have a house with a pool and that's kind of where the whole stand up paddle board (SUP) business started. I wanted to take an SUP class like I did last year for my birthday, but all the gyms, pools, everything was still closed. I started looking online to see if I could find classes that were coming up maybe in July or something so I could sign up with my friends and we'd have something to look forward to doing. I came across an online (because everything is online now) SUP training + SUP board combo. What? I could own my own board and teach other people SUP yoga at my own house in my own pool. Hmm! With social distancing being the new phrase, outside private lessons with the yoga student in the pool and me on the side of the pool far from them sounded great. I talked to Mykel who sells insurance and he checked into what we needed to do to have a business at the house using the pool. I bought liability insurance for yoga and started the online training. A couple days later my SUP yoga board arrived and we set up my board in the pool. Figuring out how to anchor it down took us some brainstorming.  I absolutely love it! I finished my online training and passed all my tests. Now it was time for me to practice with students to video tape my class and send it to my instructor for my certification. I have so many amazing friends and yoga students that I was able to video tape all my classes needed within the first two weeks. Mykel made a cute video for me and I sent it to my instructor. My SUP course instructor called me, we discussed my classes and if I had any questions. I am excited to have my SUP certification and enjoy teaching SUP yoga, HIIT and circuit training sessions a couple times a week from home. It's the best home job ever! I get to hang out with my friends for an hour teaching yoga. When I don't have a student I get to practice my yoga on the board. I love it! I make my hours and I feel so blessed. 🙏💜🙏