Young Yoga Masters held a survey for the month of May, 2023. In that time we got almost a hundred responses from kids yoga teachers and those who want to become teachers. Here are the results to these questions:
- Who is teaching kids yoga?
- Where are they located?
- What kind of training do they already have?
- Plus, the logistics of the survey (what program I used, etc)
Don’t Make this Mistake
Before you read on, it’s important to note that the numbers are easy to misinterpret. For example:
- In the first question about connection to kids’ yoga, the number one response, 41 people, said “I’m already a kids yoga teacher.” (51 people did not choose this response).
- The question about training had the number one answer as people had 0 – 20 hours of kids yoga training (coincidentally also 41 people).
You might think people those 41 people with 0 – 20 hours of training are the same people who answered that they are already kids yoga teachers, but the individual responses show this is not the case. Only one person identified themself a kids yoga teacher with 0-20 hours of training, and this person indicated they’ve been teaching yoga for 20+ years (before the children’s yoga teacher designation existed at Yoga Alliance!).
Most people who answered 0-20 hours training did not identify as a kids yoga teacher… but we hope they will eventually.
As you look at the final tallies, review each question on it’s own, you can read the answers below each graph.
Now, let’s take a look at what people answered:
Who is Teaching Kids Yoga?
Q. Describe Your Connection to Kids Yoga:
Participants could check all the boxes that apply, so there were 185 answers! Here are the responses:
- Already a kids yoga teacher: 41
- Kids in my family (eg. parent, aunt, grandparent): 40
- Yoga Teacher interested in teaching yoga to children: 28
- School Teacher (grades K-3): 18
- Work with children (not a teacher or ECE): 17
- School Teacher (grades 4 – junior high): 14
- Early childhood educator: 13
- Other: 14
Q. Where are you located?
Respondents could give one response.
- USA: 36
- Canada: 31
- England: 5
- India: 4
- Ireland: 3
- Australia: 2
- Chile: 1
- Serbia: 1
- Czech Republic: 1
Q. What Kids’ Yoga Training do you already have?
Participants could check one.
- 0 – 20 hours kids yoga teacher training: 41
- 21-94 hours kids yoga teacher training: 23
- 95+ Hour Graduate from a Registered Children’s Yoga School (RCYS): 8
- 95+ Hours of Training but not with an RCYS: 7
- RCYT (Registered Children’s Yoga Teacher = 95 HR + 200 HR + Registered with Yoga Alliance): 5
- Other: 8
Logistics of the Survey
For those thinking of running a survey, here’s how I ran it:
- Set goals for the survey: my main goal was to get feedback about what people are thinking about teaching kids’ yoga. My secondary goal was sharing the Yoga Alphabet postcards, a really useful resource, which is also part of our kids yoga training. My third goal was to promote the kids yoga teacher training.
- Methodology: I thought about running social media ads and decided I didn’t want to pay that money to social media. Social media is designed to be addictive and some of the yoga on social media is a problem. I also decided to offer prizes to entice people to fill in the survey, then had the brainstorm to do a mail out as well. This felt like a great way to actually support people who are making an impact in the real world by teaching yoga in a way that empowers kids! I got excited about sending the actual postcards so I decided that everyone could get this prize and added 5 additional grand prizes to be drawn from the entries.
- JotForm for the survey. Once I set my goals and knew what info I needed, I developed the survey. I wanted it to be short (5 questions). I used my paid version of Jotform for the survey, it’s a tool I’ve used for years for registration, intake forms, waivers, contracts, and surveys. It’s quite easy to use and it gives good reports and spreadsheets to review answers and keeps my contracts organized and in one place.
- Got the word out: once I had my great mail out offer and the survey ready, I set about telling people about it. In one month I included the survey 5 times in my email newsletter, and posted anywhere I could for free on social media.
- Mailed out Postcards: after the survey was over, I drew the prize winners and mailed out postcards to anyone who added their address. Yes, hard copies in the actual mail! Almost 1000 postcards went out into the world. My hope is that people will share a few of the postcards with others who are interested in kids yoga and they will see how dang useful our resources are!
Thanks for Completing the Survey!
I’m drilling down into the other responses about people’s goals for kids yoga. There’s a lot of interest in games and the business side of teaching kids yoga.
Watch for an email series on these topics and possibly some new courses.
Your feedback means so much to helping us serve kids yoga teachers!
