6
Managing It All
When You First Finish teacher training, you’ll probably say an enthusiastic yes to every teaching offer you receive. This is good—the fastest route to being a good teacher is to teach often, in a wide variety of circumstances (studio, gym, community centers, outside, remotely), to a wide range of students with a wide range of ages, abilities, interests, and yoga experience. While it can feel like a trial by fire, adapting on the fly teaches you very quickly how to serve the people who are in front of you.
Soon, though, you’ll need to take control of your teaching schedule to make it sustainable for the long haul. While you might be capable of teaching fifteen classes in one week one time, you probably don’t want to be doing that week in and week out. The key to sustainability is knowing how much you can handle over time, then making strategic choices about which classes and activities are best worth your time. This can be because they feed your soul—at least one of your weekly classes should do just that—but for the most part your classes should be the most lucrative you can find, and the time you spend producing content should earn money for you. Look at the bottom line.
In order to do this, you’ll need to figure a dollar amount for your time. This isn’t just the pay rate you get per class; it should account for your planning and travel time as well as the time and equipment you use to produce video or other content, and it should also take into account the perks, like unlimited classes or free gym memberships, that you are receiving in any given job. It helps to write this out. You can use the following table, or create one of your own.
Envision Your Dream Schedule
To envision your dream schedule, start with a clear-eyed look at your current schedule. Create a table for each regular class you offer, which will help you figure your own hourly rate. (You’ll find a template at yogateacherhandbook.com.) Also note any perks or intangibles like prestige or friendship and how recently you got a pay increase.
Job:
When:
Where:
|
Prep time |
Travel time |
Pay rate |
Hourly rate |
Perks/ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Take an honest look at what you’re getting, and note your reaction. Is it more than you realized? Less? Does it align with the intention and goals for your teaching that you laid out in chapter 3?
Compare this with what you know about your ideal schedule. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you do better powering through two or three back-to-back classes or giving yourself rest after every class? Your reaction will direct you toward things you might need to change.
Sometimes, looking at your in-person schedule with clear eyes will prompt you to generate online content, freeing you from the need to be in any particular place at any particular time. If you would like to move into this realm, add to your dream schedule: time for setup, recording, editing, and promoting your online classes, along with a projection of what you expect to earn from this work. If you are already doing such work, take a good look at how much time you’re spending on it and what you’re earning per hour.
You can then start to design, and maybe even to map out on a calendar, what your ideal schedule would look like. As you mold your schedule to fit your personal needs, seek to arrange it in stacks and prongs.
stacks
A stack occurs on a day when you wear your yoga clothes for more than one thing. This might be teaching two classes back-to-back or, less optimally, one in the morning and one in the evening. Or it might be teaching one and taking one immediately afterward, or vice versa. The former is ideal, since you can turn off your teaching brain when you are a student; in the latter scenario, you may find yourself planning your upcoming class. If you must teach immediately after taking a class, consider sitting for meditation instead of doing savasana at the end of the class you take. You can also plan to record content before or after teaching in person.
Stacks help preserve your energy: They maximize your return on travel time and fuel, and they minimize your laundry load! This increased efficiency will let you have a day or more when you aren’t involved in studio yoga. Having some true downtime on off days will help you refill your well of enthusiasm for your on days.
prongs
If you are teaching classes to a similar population—for example, a flow class on weekday mornings—work to schedule them on nonconsecutive days. That makes a prong. While you may not have the same students on back-to-back days, offering a Tuesday/Thursday class or a Monday/Wednesday class or any other nonconsecutive combination can draw the same students to your class more frequently.
This works especially well when you have more than one class at the same location, but it can also apply if you teach at a studio and at a gym. While students who take yoga as part of their gym membership don’t usually venture beyond the gym, your more loyal students might take classes with you both at the gym and at the studio, especially if the studio class suits their schedule.
If you teach in prongs and have many regular students, you don’t need to devise a completely different class every time. Students value repetition. If someone comes to your Thursday class after doing your planned sequence with you on Tuesday, don’t apologize! Spin it like this: “Great to see you again! You’ll see a similar sequence to Tuesday, and its familiarity will let you feel it better in your body. But pay attention: A few things will be different!”
When I taught the same sequence in multiple classes, I often had students come expressly because they wanted to repeat the class. In fact, this happened so often that I would wrap up classes by saying, “If this sequence felt especially useful to you, or if you’d like to have another crack at it, join me later this week …”
days off
You serve your students best when you are feeling rested and excited to teach. If you phone it in, your energy will dull your class and negatively affect your students’ experience. To feel fresh, you must schedule downtime and days off. This is especially important if you work a day job and teach before or after work and on weekends.
Working on the standard of the two-day weekend, I suggest you have two days per week when you do not have to wear yoga clothes, head to the studio, or practice in public. (If you enjoy a hearty physical yoga practice, at least one of these should be a fully asana-free day, to give your body time to recover.) Initially, you may not be able to have these as back-to-back days, or as Saturday and Sunday; that’s OK. Work toward having them in a two-day block, even if that is Tuesday and Wednesday. Having two days off in a row is the best way to let your body and mind regenerate.
If you share your home with a partner and/or children, let at least one of these days be the same as your partner’s or kids’ days off. Maybe you don’t want to have it be both! A day to yourself, with time to pursue exactly what feeds your soul, is the very best way to recharge so you can help people better.
Schedule Your Rest
Just as you need to envision your ideal work schedule, you should envision your ideal rest schedule. Calendar your downtime like you do your work! What would your best rest protocol look like? Is it days off? Massage? Time with friends? A weekly movie matinee? Write it down, then put it on the calendar.
tend your garden
As the Yoga Sutra tells us, practice becomes firmly rooted when it is attended to for a long time without breaks. The same thing goes for your class. It takes three months to know if a class is DOA, and more than nine, sometimes a full year, to know if it’s going to be viable. The best thing you can do to help your class grow roots is to be there tending it every single week. Try not to have a sub for over 10 percent of your classes. If you have travel plans or conflicts that mean you can’t be there for every class for nine months, maybe a short-term series or a one-off workshop is better, or focus on online content and stick to subbing instead. Also, if you have a job that keeps you late or children who might get sick overnight, try to accept class slots at times when you know you have a backup helper at work or at home, so you can get to the studio even when contingencies happen.
Show up to teach unless you may be contagious. Cramps? Light sniffles from allergies? Ankle sprain? Show up and teach anyway. If you can’t demo, bring an assistant or ask a student to set up front and center as a visual reference. (I’ve done this in the day or two after running ultramarathons, when I had the energy to teach but my ability to get up and down off the floor with any grace was gone.)
As a studio owner, I have heard some really awful reasons for subs. Two memorable ones: “I’m going on a trip tomorrow and haven’t packed yet, so I need a sub for tonight” and “The moon just isn’t right for me.” When you need to ask for a sub, say only what is necessary in your appeal and no more. “I have food poisoning”—sure. But there’s no need to detail your symptoms.
When you are given a new class, it’s smart to get to know the teachers who offer the classes immediately before and after yours—they may be able to help out in the case of a true emergency. Be sure you store their contact information in your phone. Beyond them, identify who among the studio staff would be the best fit to sub your class, and develop a relationship with them. Invite them to your class, go to theirs, and turn to them first when you have a (rare, ideally) scheduled vacation.
substitutes
When you do need a sub, it’s smart to choose one from among your regular students—get a colleague to come to your class. Then students have continuity, and they will know this teacher from previous classes. If you like, you can even have your sub do a guest slot teaching a part of your class, so students learn to love the sub’s teaching and look forward to taking class while you are away.
This is a good way to put a positive spin on having a substitute teacher. It also shows that you are planning your absence carefully, instead of indiscriminately subbing out your class. I think it’s smart to tell your students when you’ll have a sub, but if you find this means the attendance plummets when you are away—especially if your sub is paid per head—you may prefer not to mention it.
Depending on the studio culture, you may pay your sub out of pocket, they may be paid at your going rate, or they may receive a different rate. Be clear on what you are asking of a sub before approaching them to cover your class.
When you substitute for a colleague, give a quick introduction of yourself and mention your regular classes, so students know where they can find you. Without apologizing for being you—that is, for not being Bryan!—contextualize why you do things the way you do. With an explanation like that, your students will appreciate the opportunity to experience a new spin on the class. Ideally, you’ll have been to the class before, so you should be aware of student expectations. When you bid your students goodbye, remind them where they can find you if they want to seek out your class.
handling small classes
Be clear on what constitutes a class. Some places, including my studios, say that one student can constitute a class. We do, however, offer the solo student a choice, phrased like this: “Our policy is that one person makes a class, but I realize you may not be in the mood for a private lesson. Would you like to continue, or save your class credit for next time?” If the student chooses the former, depending on your experience with them and your comfort in deviating from the class plan you’ve prepared, you may be able to tailor a practice to suit your student’s needs. I once taught a single-person class to a student who’d come to the studio immediately after dropping off her mother at assisted living. She really needed and appreciated her yoga practice that day. Often these unintended private lessons are the most gratifying to teach.
On the other hand, if the student declines, don’t take it personally. People come to group exercise classes to be with a group! The dynamic can be weird if the student isn’t expecting a private lesson. Give them room to pass.
Class attendance is predictable only in part, and it fluctuates with the day of the week, the seasons, and the greater picture of what is happening locally, nationally, and even globally. We find that beautiful weather, especially the first pretty day after a stretch of hot or cold temperatures, correlates with a drop in class numbers. Don’t be disheartened if you have a week or two of unusually low numbers. If you’re in a university town, as I am, you’ll see numbers change with the semester—midterms, breaks—and with the football or basketball team schedules.
If low numbers are a trend and you continually find yourself with class sizes of one or two, talk to your management about ways to incentivize new students. These could include offering a special deal (like a month of classes for the price of three, or two) or inviting a few friends to come to class for free to seed the room. My business partner and I cite the term “empty-restaurant syndrome.” People want to be where other people are, and while a restaurant may have the very best cuisine in town, and a class might be absolutely wonderful, it’s odd for patrons when they are the only ones there. Having other customers makes the restaurant or the class seem more desirable.
Check also that what you are teaching matches the description students read online, and ask a trusted friend for feedback on your teaching in the underattended class.
handling large classes
At the other end of the spectrum, you may find yourself with classes that are near or at capacity for the room. This is a nice problem to have! If your class is regularly big and it’s been near capacity for a month or more, you may need to take one or more of the following approaches.
Require Preregistration
You may need to require students to preregister. When you impose this rule, make it clear whether you will allow them to “early cancel,” which means that their class credit reverts to their account, or whether all cancellations are “late cancels,” which means no refunds. Studios can set their own policies about what constitutes an early cancel: It could be up to twenty-four, twelve, or two hours before the class, after which a cancellation is deemed a late cancel.
Either way, you might take a waitlist. Scheduling software can make this easy: It adds students as slots open up and alerts them to their addition. Another approach is to skip the waitlist and allow a handful of students to show up in the hopes of getting in on a standby basis. Your host may have a standard procedure. If you’re the one making the policy, you’ll need to experiment to see what best suits your student base.
Add a Class
Sometimes a big class can be split into two classes, perhaps back-to-back (which lets you do one class preparation for both). If you’re paid per class, this is a way to serve the students while improving your bottom line. If you are being paid per head, recognize that you might divide your numbers across two classes instead of keeping them condensed in one class. Trial and error will help you get it right.
Add an Assistant
If your room fills up but you’re still trying to squeeze in a few more students, having an assistant can help a lot. Between you and this helper, you can shepherd students into a tighter mat arrangement, increasing capacity. Then the assistant can float through the room, delivering props, offering demos, and, when appropriate, giving verbal and manual assists. It can be very helpful to have a second set of eyes on the students in a full room, and between the two of you, you have a better chance of offering individual attention so the students have the same personalized experience they would in a smaller class.
Add a Live Stream
If your studio offers video classes or is willing to try, you could add a live stream of the class, so students can follow along from home. When live streaming a large class, it’s useful to have an assistant handle the camera duties, so you can give the students your full attention. Set up your camera toward the front of the room, with one to three students in focus, so there will always be a demonstration, even if you are moving through the room off-camera. (We will cover video in chapter 7.) These students should sign a model release form. If it’s tough to get students who want to be on camera, offering a free class sometimes does the trick—and you may include your assistant. Be sure the studio charges for the class, and if you are new to streaming, discuss how you will be paid.
Ask for More Money
If you are hosting a class yourself, once it’s been full for a month or more, raise the rates by a few dollars. You might announce that this will happen in a few weeks so that your current students have a chance to buy a package at the current rates.
If you’re teaching in a gym or studio, point out your consistently full class to your manager and ask whether it might be time for a raise.
asking for a raise
When you are feeling busy or your classes are full, it may be time to ask for a pay raise, especially if it has been a year or two since your last increase, or if you have recently upgraded your credentials by completing a specialty training keyed to what you teach or have become an E-RYT 200, RYT 500, or E-RYT 500. All of these are entry points to a discussion with your manager or studio owner about your hourly rate. So are specific contributions you’ve made to the studio, like bringing in a new population of students or subbing liberally and cheerfully. Likewise, any contributions to the field, like publishing a book, developing a new volunteer program to bring yoga to underserved populations, or the like are worth mentioning in your discussion of your pay rate.
Before you ask for a raise, do your research. What is the going rate in the area? Have you hit the benchmarks set for you when you were hired or at your last pay raise, if they were explicit? Does the studio seem to be on solid financial footing? Sometimes management puts up a good front but the money is just not there.
I suggest raising the issue in an email that offers a phone call or in-person meeting with your manager. This introduces the topic while letting your manager consider whether there is room in the budget to pay you more. Your message could look like this.
Dear [Manager],
What a continual pleasure it is to be teaching at Carolina Yoga Company! In the three years that I’ve been on the schedule, I’ve taught over 600 hours at the studio and upgraded my Yoga Alliance registry to E-RYT 200. As you know, I’m enrolled in the studio’s 500-hour teacher training, and I’ve served as the assistant for two of Sage’s intensives, helping with setup and support.
To help fund this education, I’d like to discuss raising my per-head rate to $5.50/hour from its current $4.50 [or my per-class rate from $30 to $35—whatever feels right].
Would you like to meet to discuss this possibility and my contributions to the studio? I’d love to get together for coffee or, if it’s simpler, schedule a phone call or drop in early for your class.
There are other ways to increase your average pay per class to free up energy, if not generate more money. Depending on the pay structure at the place or places where you work, you may be able to combine two classes into one without losing many students. If you’re being paid per head, this is one way to increase your payment per hour. This extra money frees up time for you to give yoga away to needy populations and to continue your own personal studentship and practice. It makes you the best, most professional yoga teacher you can be.
There are also things your studio might do for you beyond increasing your pay. For example, your manager might offer you a free continuing education workshop or arrange a scholarship trade for you to take a training at another studio in exchange for sending one of their teachers to a workshop at your studio. Or you could receive some extra support in class: an assistant to help manage your mats, an extra desk worker to handle check-in and to cover all your nonteaching chores.
handling burnout
Nothing is more normal than feeling uninspired—or even unmotivated—to teach. In fact, I feel this way before almost every class, and I have come to recognize it as an expression of my nerves. I want to serve my students well, I am lightly anxious about doing a good job, and for me this translates into not feeling like teaching. But the moment class begins, this feeling goes away for me! On the day it doesn’t, I will need to give myself a sabbatical: to step away from teaching, if only for a week or two of vacation, and find ways to get my mojo back.
When you feel burned out on yoga, your immediate reaction should be to go into urgent self-care mode. Carve out time for more sleep. Eat well. Hydrate. Dial back your obligations and scale back the hours you spend practicing rigorous asana or undertaking other exercise. Choose gentle and restorative yoga over challenging practices. Turn to things that regularly inspire you, whether that is spending time with friends, time in nature, or time reading.
As part of this preemptive self-care, get back to the basics of why you love yoga. Revisit a class with your original teacher. Try a mellow class at a new studio, or something fresh online. Reread the writing you were prompted to do in part 1 of this book. Talk to your mentors about how you’re feeling. If the mood persists, talk to a professional therapist. You don’t need to be up all the time. Inspiration waxes and wanes.
handling competition
Even with the explosion of yoga over the last decades and the expansion of video content online, there are still many more people not practicing yoga than who currently are. There is certainly enough of a student base for every yoga teacher to find a group of people to help. This may not always be in a studio, which by definition has a more limited group of potential students coming through. It might instead mean you seek out places where you can share your teachings outside of conventional methods: schools, community centers, prisons. Remember that there is abundance waiting for you if your goal is simply to share yoga.
If your goal is to earn money teaching yoga, you’ll sometimes bump up against competition. This could be vying with another teacher or many other teachers for a prime-time slot, an invitation to a festival, or even social media followers or sponsorships. Or it could be noticing another teacher who seems to be crushing it in your online niche. Comparison is the thief of joy! When you find yourself feeling envious of another teacher, you have a special opportunity to undergo some self-study about the root of your feelings. This can prompt you to next steps to develop your own skill set to move closer to what you want for yourself.
Sometimes you perceive competition because a teacher or a studio seems to be following a little too closely in your footsteps—for example, offering workshops on topics similar to yours, maybe even using language that’s very like what you use. Or maybe it’s using imagery or music or sequencing similar to what you are offering. Often, this truly has nothing to do with you. Or it could be a flattering imitation: Someone sees your success and tries to emulate it. If it seems to be a more deliberate poaching of your creative content, take a careful look while giving the perceived competition the benefit of the doubt. Is it feasible this isn’t about you? If you still believe it is, talk to your yoga mentors before approaching your colleague to discuss the issue.
Often the best response is to focus more clearly on yourself and your own goals. When you are faced with a sense of competition, revisit the writing you did in part 1 of this book. Get in touch with who you are as a teacher, who your students are, and how you can help them in your own unique way. If you can stay in your own lane and focus on being the best version of your authentic self that you can be, your students will find you, and they will appreciate you for exactly who you are and what you have to share.
leaving a regular job
What happens when you are ready to move on? If the studio has a regular schedule-change window, alert the owner and/or manager shortly before the window opens, so they have a chance to begin thinking about who will be the best replacement for you. Based on your subs and students, you may have suggestions for a replacement, but do not speak to your potential replacement until you have talked to your manager. The management may want to take the class in a different direction. This is their prerogative and should be their choice, not yours.
If you have online content housed at the studio site, refer to your contract about whether it will continue to be available—and whether you will be paid for it, and how. The circumstances of your departure will likely affect the outcome: If you are taking a maternity leave and plan to return, it will likely stay online; if you are terminated or leaving to open your own studio or to teach for the competition, it will likely not.
Make sure you are clear on the terms of your noncompetition clause, if you signed one. These may cover a limited range and a limited period of time. Even if you did not agree to such a clause in your contract, be sensitive and canny about where you agree to teach after leaving your current position. You may wind up hurting feelings and closing a door to future employment. Use your best judgment and your mentor’s advice when making such choices. You’ll want to decide how much to share with your current employer about why you’re leaving. If it’s corporate culture, is that something they might change with carefully expressed feedback? If it’s just money, be prepared for your current host to offer you a raise, and consider whether you’d stay in that case. You’ll want to be careful about committing to a new place before seeing whether your current employer might match your offer.
Depending on the situation and the studio culture, you may be asked to leave immediately when you give your notice, so be prepared for this outcome. It is often not a personal choice from the business side, but simply because when things are changing it can be smoothest to change them immediately.
Talk to your employer about when and whether you or they will let your students know that you have moved on and to where. This varies case by case, and it’s best to ask and to be sure you understand the answer. Do not use the studio software to access students’ contact information—that is a breach of the students’ privacy and some managers may see it as theft, since the information belongs to the business, not the teacher. If you are leaving for another studio, especially if you are teaching a similar class at the same time, do not expect that your soon-to-be-ex-employer will let you announce this in class. If you are taking a sabbatical or an indefinite maternity leave, you may be welcome to mention this in class.
Depending on the circumstances of your departure, you may not be able to let your students know. Naturally, you would want them to find you in your new location even if you can’t expressly mention it, which is why it’s good to have an online presence that makes your schedule easy to find. You can post your new schedule on your social media and, of course, on your website, as well as on your newsletter list. Following the promotional advice from chapter 4 will make you easy for students to find.
Now that you’ve thought through the teacher you want to be, how you’ll express that to employers and students, what you want your workweek to look like, and how your business will be structured, it’s time to think through what you do in your interactions with students in your regular weekly classes.