Shaka Soul Surfers (Part 2): Estefania Holt on Training Volunteers to Work with the Disability Community for Inclusive Recreation

When Estefania Holt transitioned from the traditional classroom to the open waves, she didn't just change her scenery—she transformed lives. On our latest episode, the founder of Shaka Soul Surfers shares how her innovative surf program is making waves in the special needs community, providing an uplifting and inclusive experience for children with developmental disabilities.

Episode Notes:

Welcome to Part Two of our engaging conversation with Estefania Holt, the inspiring founder of Shaka Soul Surfers. In this episode, we dive deeper into Estefania's unique approach to volunteer training, community building, and the power of surfing as a tool for social skills development and community integration.

Join us as Estefania shares her journey from special education teacher to passionate advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities. She provides insight into the challenges she faced and the innovative solutions she implemented to create a safe, inclusive, and empowering environment for the community she's serving and her volunteers.

Connect with Estefania Holt and Shaka Soul Surfers:
For more information or to get in touch with Estefania and Shaka Soul Surfers, visit https://www.shakasoulsurfers.org/contact.html.

Episode Highlights:

• Estefania's approach to volunteer training and community building.
• The transformative power of surfing for social skills development and community integration.
• The impact of working with high school volunteers and creating long-lasting relationships.
• Estefania's journey from special education teacher to a passionate advocate for the disability community.

Sponsor Message:

A heartfelt thank you to our generous sponsors, Specially Designed Education Services (SDES), publishers of The Functional Academics Program.

SDES's collaborative efforts with educators and families pave the way for a more inclusive and supportive learning environment. Their Functional Academics Program empowers students with moderate to severe disabilities to improve their ability to live independently and show meaningful growth both academically and personally.

To learn more, visit sdesworks.com.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to part two of our engaging conversation with Estefania Holt, the inspiring founder of Shaka Soul Surfers. In this episode, we dive deeper into Estefania's approach to volunteer training, community building and the power of surfing as a tool for social skills development and community integration. Estefania shares her journey from special education teacher to a passionate advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities. She offers insight into the challenges she faced and the innovative solutions she implemented to create a safe, inclusive and empowering environment for the community she's serving and her volunteers. Let's continue to explore Estefania's impactful work and discover the lessons we can learn from her incredible support of parents and participants.

Speaker 1: 0:51

I think any parent just simply wants their child to be safe, to be known, to be understood, to be loved or they cared for, and if there is fear around that that they might want to pull back, they might not want to continue to enter in and have the experience. But for you to understand where those things come from, that it is grounded in communication, that there are barriers, that the families in your community. I love that so much. I was wondering, when you're talking about the volunteers, how you recruit people, how you make sure that they're trained up properly. Can you tell about just your approach to volunteers in that aspect, just making sure that they're equipped and ready to enter into the experience with you.

Speaker 2: 1:43

So for Shaka Soul Surfers, it's me and my dad who primarily opened it, my co-workers I have two co-workers that have been involved at the beginning, so they're a lot of help. When it comes to what I like to say, the special needs aspect, we're all PCM trained, which is professional crisis management. We are able to restrain kids if needed Doesn't happen, but we are safely doing it. We're able to restrain kids if needed, it doesn't happen, but we are safely doing it. We're all CPR certified. We're all behavioral analysis certified, all those things, and that's what we do at our job. So that's that. So I was very good about opening Shaka up with them.

Speaker 2: 2:20

What I ran into, which was an issue that I wanted volunteers, but with adult volunteers, because this again, this is a very as much as this is a fun sport. It's you have the water and you I did my. I do all kids divergent, neurodiverse, I do all of it but my primary goal was my kids that I had at super school, so I wanted to be able to have adults handle it, but no adults wanted to do it. It was a weird thing where I would put it out there and people wanted to get paid, which I understand as an adult, you have to live your life and you have to get paid, but for a volunteer out of the good of your heart. But I got these high school volunteers and they have been like it has blown me away how amazing. And that's want to touch back to the whole comfort thing. I have had a huge group of high school volunteers along with the adult volunteers, but it has been so consistent that what I love about Shaka Soul Servers is there is a relationship not only like Saturday after Saturday, but year after year. So I had two volunteers there now in college but they were siblings and cousins of kids that were in my school.

Speaker 2: 3:36

These kids were very dedicated. Summer after summer they're like, yeah, I want this person this time. I love this person. And it created that comfortability of these parents knew that they were going to be cared for by the same people and that they were enthusiastic and they're high schoolers yeah, but there's no better place to be with at the beach. A lot of these parents like, ooh, volunteering for that, but I'm like you're not in a building, you're not doing which. I'm not saying anything bad, but you're not picking garbage on the side of the road. It's not anything like that. You're at the beach and you have fun, and the kids, when they're not volunteering, they surf. But not once have I ever been like no, I don't want this kid. I don't want this kid. Every single high school volunteer because they want to be molded you know what I mean they want to step up.

Speaker 2: 4:24

They want to step up and yeah, they're, they step up. They're like, hey, listen, we have one. So she is a biter and she has seizures. Is anyone uncomfortable? Not one kid was ever, from 13 to 18, being like no, I'm good, I'll. And we always have people, that adults, that are on standby to make sure that they're okay. And when I do have a big group of volunteer, they always make sure I have a veteran volunteer with newer volunteers and they, they, and some of them were like, yeah, now because of this, I want to be a special needs teacher, because that impact that you can have on someone's life, their trajectory, where they're heading, what they want to be doing.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Just investing your time with high school students and helping them to see you can really create a career path that continues this journey that we're on together.

Speaker 2: 5:20

That's what I started. It's so crazy because I started Shaka Soul Surfers primarily for my kids, as I said before, but because of the support we've gotten from high school surfers that are in high school. They literally volunteer and they're like I really want to start surfing. Now I have them. They're competing on a national level. I have people that I we have a program called Lend a Shaka where if they volunteer and they're really passionate about it and I know boards are very expensive we'll donate a board to them and they'll text me on the weekends hey, I'm out here ripping it with some other Shaka people. I think a couple of them have started dating. It's like a whole thing. I love it. It's turned into a community instead of a special needs nonprofit.

Speaker 3: 6:07

That's amazing.

Speaker 2: 6:08

I've had some of the Shaka volunteers start babysitting some of the special needs kids because the parents feel comfortable. It's turned into a community and I'm very happy, wonderful.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Now, before we continue with our discussion, I want to take a moment to talk about something exciting happening in the world of education. Have you heard of Functional Academics by SDES? Their collaborative efforts with educators and families are paving the way for a more inclusive and supportive learning environment. Stay tuned for more details in this brief word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3: 6:43

Functional Academics by SDES's collaborative work with educators and families, just like you, provides an in-depth understanding of your needs in the community we serve. You've asked, we listen, it's coming. Stay tuned with more to come at SDESworkscom.

Speaker 1: 7:02

Thank you, SDES, for your continued commitment to innovative approaches to building functional academics in our special education classrooms and for your support of our FAS15 champions. Now let's get back to this episode and our conversation. Wonderful Is this a full year thing? Is it all year or just seasonal? How often do you provide those opportunities for the community?

Speaker 2: 7:31

Yeah, so the actual surfing program is seasonal because once you get in the wintertime there's hurricane season, because we do live in Florida. It gets cold but then not really gets cold, but the cold front that comes through it's a ripping season. It's the actual surfing season. Summer is primarily flat, which is great because for our kids and the disabilities and just most of the physical disabilities and need a lot of assistance, it's really good. So we do offer that program but we do have events. You know we have competition amongst the kids and we do have fundraisers here and there. So we keep it open from March until November doing events, fundraisers. But the actual surfing season is in June, july, a little bit of August and we do community events where we have different. We've had a therapy program, super school. They come out and they do like a surf day that we provide for them for free. So that's it's seasonal, but it's from March to November.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I gotcha, so tell us where. To November I gotcha, so tell us where to find. How can people find you? Where are you located? How do they reach out, Just if they want to learn more, if they want to get connected, if they want to sign up for surf school.

Speaker 2: 8:54

Tell our listeners where they can find you and find Shaka Soul Surfers? Yeah, for sure. So I worded it so Shaka Soul Surfer is basically who my dad is, where they don't really compete, but they've gone all over the world and my papa, my dad, his name is Carl Nichols. He literally is like a symbol for surfing. So I put Shaka soul surfers and that's where everyone can find me. If you just put it in Google cause I put a much mesh of words together we're located in Deerfield Beach, florida. Okay, they can. We have Shaka soul surfers on Facebook and Instagram. We have our website. Um, just push Shaka soul surfers on Google and you can. Definitely you'll see us. We're everywhere.

Speaker 1: 9:38

Fantastic, fantastic. And you're wearing a very cool shirt and I actually want to get one, so I'm going to try to figure out a way I can buy one of those, absolutely. But yeah, let me ask you one last question If you could go back in time to your time in the classroom, what word of advice would you give yourself when you were going through some of the more difficult times? Just something that we can encourage our listeners who are just starting in the field.

Speaker 2: 10:05

Yeah, I was actually thinking about this since I saw this question and I really didn't know. But after talking with you for a little bit, I think the advice I would give my younger self or other people really think outside the box. I know in school they teach you these are the steps for you to do these things or anything when it comes to teaching, especially special needs. When I was in school it was so rigid and I'm like, okay, cool, this is how I have to do it. Don't do that. Think outside the box. If something is not working, there is something out there for everyone. You just need to. It's not always there, but you need to come up with it. Just think outside the box.

Speaker 2: 10:48

If it wasn't for my time at super school and if it wasn't for my, I got my master's. If it wasn't my time for that, I got it in criminal justice. I'm not using it, but just to, I think, thinking outside the box before we end. I was going to school for special needs and because of unforeseen circumstances, I did not graduate with that degree. Okay, and I was very lucky to find I was very lucky to find Caitlin, who I knew, and she brought me back into this, but I just didn't. I thought outside the box and it just led me to here. And it's not rigid and I know that's not how life is, but with special needs there's always something for everybody. You just need to think outside the box, that's true.

Speaker 2: 11:32

And that's what I didn't do while I was, when I was working as a teacher. I was just like okay, like when is this going to end or change or finish or start? That's how I was thinking, and you can't think that way. You need to think okay, this started, what can I do to help myself or others, or just another person, Because that might end up leading you somewhere you didn't expect it to.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Right and your journey is a beautiful journey. You've taken your own passion to really incredible places to impact a lot of people. So I just want to tell you thank you so much for spending time to share your story, share about the work that you're doing out there with the surf school, and just I just want to applaud you and tell you keep going and keep thinking outside the box, like you said. So thank you so much. We'll make sure that in the show notes there's all the information to get connected to Chaka Soul Surfers and Estefania Holt. Thank you so much and I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Please come down to Florida. We would love to have you. Yes, I am planning on booking a trip soon. All right, take care, all right, thanks. A heartfelt thank you to our generous sponsors, specially Designed Education Services. Publishers of the Functional Academics Program, please take a moment to learn more about the only true, comprehensive functional academics program that enables students with moderate to severe disabilities to improve their ability to live independently and show meaningful growth, both academically and personally, while creating accountability with data-driven, evidence-based results. Visit SDESworkscom to learn more.