As part of my attempt to balance work with life, I have added yoga to my day. I’ve dabbled with yoga in the past but decided to go ahead and start with a beginning video. My experience with yoga videos in the past have been that they have really been for intermediate practitioners and then offer ideas for how beginners can modify their poses. The instructors don’t look anything like me and seem able to stretch in impossible ways. I struggle to keep up and end up feeling pretty defeated.

Finally, however, I have found a series of videos that really are for beginners! Short bits that focus on specific areas done by a woman who at least sort of looks like me. She doesn’t have to talk about modifications because she is instructing at my level. No struggling to keep up as it moves at a slow pace.

Another lesson for educators: we need to meet our students where they are and not where we wish they were.