Changing Lives through Dancing by David Woodbury
Arthur Murray Santa Monica
As we are now teaching 100 lessons almost every week, and moving to 125 lessons soon, I take a moment and stop and reflect on the past few years. We were teaching 125 lessons with a full staff and many students on March 20, 2020. My motto for the school for the year was “See Clearly in 20/20!” “May all your dreams come into focus in 20/20” “Focus on all your goals in 20/20”. Then we closed and went to Zoom!
We open and closed twice, with a day of riots in between, for a total of 175 days. The second time we opened was the real deal and we slowly came up from 35 lessons a week. We did not put up butcher paper on our doors and let staff and students come in the back door during the pandemic. We stayed on Zoom until Santa Monica said to return to our brick and mortar school.
In the middle of 2023, we added 4 new staff and our school doubled in size in a month.
We doubled in October, and now Arthur Murray Santa Monica is on the way up again!
Looking back at 2020, I do now have clarity. It was one of the hardest trials we, and everyone else had ever experienced. Santa Monica went through a trial by fire.
As an Ambassador for the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, I see firsthand all the new businesses opening in our city. We attend so many ribbon-cuttings. We are growing as a city again.
It was chaos and an attack on our way of life and test of all the character and experience we could muster. I do look back on the big picture and this is what I see now.
First, the pandemic humbled me. It broke me in a lot of ways, and I changed towards our staff and students. I became more thankful and appreciative of the staff who stayed and helped us grow. I appreciate all the new young staff who went through those years of isolation as young people.
I truly love our students and I’m so grateful and thankful for each new student who walks through our front door. If you don’t know about the “Cadillac Treatment”, or the philosophy of “Going the Extra Mile”, we practice both here at Arthur Murray Santa Monica.
Secondly, the clarity I see is this, God will throw tough challenges at us. He will give us the strength to bear the burden. I’m sitting here at my lovely desk listening to all the fun and laughter of all the lessons going on in our ballroom. It is amazing. I see our big parties and all the staff dancing with our many students. We came back and we are dancing and moving forward.
Please take a minute and just look around and see how far we have come and look ahead to the future to see bright promise. Visualize that things are getting better and will be better. The big picture is that we are alive, and we are living in a world full of wonderful new possibilities.
Thanks for reading,
David Woodbury
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