Sometimes, when I hear a snappy tune, I can’t help myself and I just have to dance. I’m sure many of you are the same way! This week’s A+ Award winners took that feeling to the next level and started a dance club at their school!
The Dancing Warriors are a group of four seventh graders at Incarnate Word Academy in Parma Heights. Sophia, Hadyn, Anna, and Josie have all been dancing for years. They each even have their own specialties. They decided to take their love for dance, and turn it into an afterschool activity for their classmates. But it wasn’t as simple as just turning on the music and dancing.
They had to come up with a proposal that outlined their plan and present it to the school’s principal and members of the school’s STEAM board. Some of you probably know that STEAM stands for science technology engineering arts and mathematics. Once it was approved, they had to recruit a teacher to serve as the club’s advisor, which turned out to be Mrs. Shipley! The Dancing Warriors told us that planning the club was pretty tough. They met twice a week and even though there were a lot of great ideas, they also had to make compromises to make sure the club would work the way they wanted.
Ms. Hribar told us that the girls demonstrated design thinking at its best and they worked through all kinds of challenges. They had to decide what types of dance to teach their classmates, how to fund the club, and how to make sure the dances were safe so nobody got hurt. The club even has different levels, beginner, intermediate, and advanced, so that everyone can participate. I think I’d be in the advanced group, but NewsHound disagrees.
The Dancing Warriors told us that they’re really proud of the club and that they learned a lot about patience, teamwork, compromise and teaching other people new skills.
This week’s A+ Award goes to the Dancing Warriors for starting a dance club at their school. You never know, I may be the feature act at their year-end recital! Congratulations, girls, keep up the great work.
