Hi, my name is Tammy Arnold. In the summer of 1994, I saw a line dance demo at the Waverly Cheese Festival. It sparked my interest into trying to learn how to dance. Never danced before in my life, I decided to take a friend up with me for the first time. I found out quickly how hard it was to learn at the time. So my friend and I ended up watching more than doing. Still determined, I kept up going back by myself to keep on trying. After a month, I finally learned my first line dance. By Christmas that year, I had several dances down and could have fun out dancing. The next September, I was asked to co teach with Dawn Lohmann at her class. By the next year I was teaching by myself at Quinlans. I started out there every Tues and Thursday nights teaching and found out that I loved watching people learn that they didn’t have two left feet and could actually be proud of themselves. From there, we ended up moving to Tioga Tae Kwon Do and teaching there. By this time, my group had done several demos out in the community. We did The Dave Smith Run, Waverly Cheese Festival, and Sayre crazy days. A couple years in a row, my group participated the the Valley Variety Talent Show at Athens High School. At this time the classes were held at Tom Thumb Daycare. In 1997, my mom passed away. She was my sidekick at the classes. I ended up not teaching in the fall of 2001 due to personal reasons. After several years off and numerous life changes, I started going back to my friend Jackie Streeters classes. This was a year of being diagnosed with a dvt and three other blood clots. It took a little bit but the dances started to come back to me. Then I had a few of my old dance friends contact me to get back dancing. So last September, I held my first class in about fourteen years. The best part about teaching line dance is to watch people, adults and kids, learn that they can do just about anything when they try. My ten year old that dances went from being shy and quiet, to standing in front and helping with the dance steps. To me that is a reward in itself. My classes range in ages from 10 to 76 years of age. I love seeing the smiles on their faces when they walk in the door ready to learn.