By Jill Carey
After teaching entrepreneurship for two years—and becoming Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship’s 2013 Teacher of the Year—Annie Warshaw decided to put her curriculum into practice. The result is Smarty Pants Yoga: a mobile yoga business that empowers elementary-age girls to realize their leadership potential.
Smarty Pants Yoga specializes in empowering girls through its eight-week after-school program, though it also provides in-school intervention, art therapy workshops and birthday parties. Each one- hour session incorporates reading, yoga, crafts and more—it’s not your typical sit-with-a-book-and- sound-it-out enrichment program.
The girls moo and meow while moving through yoga postures at the pace of turtles, rabbits and rocket-fueled cheetahs. Then they cozy up with a book that chronicles the adventures of two girls who encounter the joys and travails of the modern miss: finding security in self, overcoming labels and discovering the awesome power of womanhood.
All in all, it’s one hour that sets girls on a path toward becoming confident change-makers. To boot, it’s a vehicle toward educational equity. “The achievement gap is part and parcel with the gender gap,” Warshaw explains. “Until we see a 50/50 balance of males and females in Congress, we’ll see imbalances in America’s classrooms.”
The program is currently available in more than 20 Chicago-area schools and community centers. Parents have lauded Smarty Pants Yoga, principals have ranked it as the top-enrollment after-school program, and girls have screamed for it as if it were all five members of One Direction scooping ice cream.
To begin a partnership, enroll in a session or get more information, visit smartypantsyoga.com or contact Jill Carey at jill@smartypantsyoga.com.
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