Finch Students Find Out About Themselves Through Dance

An hour before school, Finch Elementary teacher Joan Hamilton slips into her tap shoes and her childhood.

Standing on the stage, she begins the shuffle ball change step that her dad taught her when she was a kid in the 1950s.

On the floor of the auditorium, 110 kids - with taps strapped on their tennis shoes - follow Hamilton’s steps.

Some are graceful. Others struggle to find the rhythm.

To Hamilton they all look, “pretty awesome.”

Hamilton, a couple of other teachers and a handful of parents volunteer their time every Friday morning to teach beginning dance to Finch students. The class is free. It is the only introduction to dance class offered in District 81 elementary schools.

“Dance is one way children can find out about themselves,” said Hamilton, the school’s P.E. teacher.

“They can find out how brave they are,” she said. “It takes a lot of guts to be committed and come every Friday of the year. It takes guts to come out and perform in front of people.”

The class plans to put on a year-end performance.

“The night of the performance I’m just amazed. Even the shy ones really get into it,” Hamilton said.

Joanne England, a mother who helps teach the class, said dance gives kids options. Both of her school-age daughters, fifth-grader Autumn and second-grader Nerissa, are in the program.

“There are a lot of kids who aren’t good in sports,” she said. “This is one alternative they have. Some kids take this class and find out that they really are coordinated. Dance builds self esteem.”

Sixth-grader Rick Kelly says he enjoys dance - even though some kids tease him for being in the class.

“Rick doesn’t care about teasing,” Hamilton said. “He says it makes him feel good. When we do our performance at the end of the year, those kids who aren’t involved, really wish they had been.”

Hamilton knows how good dance can make a kid feel. Her father, Ken Couture, was a tap dancer - ” a real hoofer,” she said. He taught her to tap dance and also taught her popular social dances like the jitter bug.

Hamilton takes the same tact with her students. She teaches them how to dance to the kinds of music they listen to. She starts out the year teaching kids how to dance to hip hop.

“That’s the teaser,” she said. “I like any kind of music that will get kids dancing.”

Then she moves on. By the end of this year, her students will know a little ballet and folk dances like the Virgina reel, too.

Sixth-grader Tiffany Barkley said she enjoys learning the rhythms of different types of music.

Janice Parkim, mother of second-grader Stephen and first-grader Veronica, said she likes her children to learn about styles of dance music.

Second-graders Rachel Everman, Gerene Townsend, Catie Schutz and Erin Lockhart love the class.

Leaving the gym and heading to their classrooms, the girls continued to practice the steps Hamilton has taught them.

Looking ahead to college

Twenty-two Glover Middle School students visited Washington State University last week to get a feel for college life.

The kids are enjoying the benefits of a new partnership between the university and Glover. The idea is to begin tracking students who might not know that college is an option for them and encourage them to start thinking about college, Glover staffer Anne Handler said.

The program targets minority students. It is the first time WSU has worked so closely with a middle school. The WSU organizers took students to classes for one day and let them visit fraternity and sorority leaders.