We're in our second week of 100+ degree weather this week. The kids started school on Thursday, and they cut both days short because the school air-conditioning couldn't keep up with the temperature. Today they're doing a full day, but one of the other mothers just called me to say they're letting the kids outside for recess. She found out when they called her in because her older daughter was in the nurse's office for overheating - and then when she went in, she discovered that her younger daughter (in Aaron's class), was out on the blacktop for recess. We will note that it's currently in the upper 90's with an air advisory, and that her younger daughter has asthma and had not been given a dose from her inhaler before being sent out. I know the school needs to run the kids around somehow, but if they're going to send them outside when it's this hot, they need to be very careful about it. Particularly when there's an air advisory. This is the Ohio River Valley, we have a high level of asthmatics. I wouldn't be surprised if a good 20% of the kids at the school have some sort of breathing trouble(asthma, pollen allergies).
We're supposed to have an outdoor combined class on Thursday, but a bunch of us spoke to Master Bertrand (dojo owner, and TKD head) at the pool party on Saturday and he agreed that if it doesn't cool off at least a little, we'll have class inside instead.
In other news, we're building a new dojo! Master Bertrand made the announcement at the pool party. It's about a mile down the road from where we are now. It's going to be about double the space we currently have, and in a more high-traffic area. About the only downside is that we need a lot of new members if we're going to pay for the new place, so we're all being asked to be proselytizers for KMA. I love karate, and I do talk it up as a great thing, but honestly I'm not going to start strong-arming people in the door. It would be lovely if we could add 5-10 people on the Isshinryu side of things though. We suffer a little bit from a lack of variety in the people we work with. All the adults (except the newest guy) are very used to each other by now, and it limits our ability to adjust to somebody new quickly. Plus we added only one new white belt in the last year, and she left again after about a month due to problems with our dojo manager. We had a largish batch of new students start last summer who have all stayed, but nothing like that has happened so far this summer. I guess we're like my friend B's UU church - the retention rate is excellent, it's getting them in the door that's the problem.
1 comment:
I can sympathinze with you on the hot thing. It's currently 102 with a heat index of 105. They're predicting 106 later this week.
Congrats on the new dojo! We just moved into one ourselves, and face the same dilemma. We need bunches of new students to be able to keep it. Sensei has done both a radio and a TV commercial, so hopefully we'll get some new students.
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