So I am a teacher and my son was participating in Dancing Classrooms program. They had a demonstration today at their school, Valley View Elementary. Now i never take off work, but decided to go see this event since it is my son's last year of elementary school.
What i saw were kids having fun doing something that you would never dream of kids enjoying. I saw boys dressed up in ties and long pants, girls in dresses, boys escorting girls to their seats, kids being polite, kids smiling enjoying different kinds of music, kids concentrating so hard on the dance steps that it looked like their heads would explode.
Every single child who was in this program had learned so many different dances and they were so proud to show us. They chachaed, rumbaed, swinged, tangoed and had a great time. These 10 and 11 year olds were behaving like young ladies and gentlemen and they loved it!. And my son is in a class of about 24 boys and 6 girls and they borrowed some 4th grade girls to help be partners. There was no talk of Cooties or anthing like that, just kids having fun.I was so proud and thrilled that at a LAUSD school we were able to bring in this program. Unfortunately this is not the case for many schools. We are lucky to have parents who push to get these in the schools. What a great thing if all schools could have this?
This program started in New York and a documentary called Madhot Ballroom was filmed. We as parents need to keep pushing to gain arts funding for our schools, because things like this make our kids want to come to class each day. And this is coming from a math teacher!!!
Please continue to support our schools for that all kids can have this experience and fun and smile when they come to school.
