dance

dance: (v) to move one's feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps, esp. to the accompaniment of music.

One month from today will be our school's annual Christmas program. The details of this I am still not sure of. Up until last week the only thing I knew about this program was that it is on Friday December 17th. Then, at our staff meeting last Thursday, I was told that each grade was to learn a choreographed dance to a predetermined song. GREAT! We spent the majority of our staff meeting scanning through the DVD recording of all the dances sent to us from our school headquarters in Tegucigalpa. I saw a 20 second clip of my dance which was just long enough to stress me out over the thought of my 5th graders being disciplined enough to pull this off. I will be needing a miracle for sure. And when are we going to practice?

Monday morning I overheard talk between some of the teachers, in Spanish, about the Christmas program dances. I only caught the tail end and the few words of Spanish that I knew. I quickly asked Andrea, who speaks fluent Spanish, what was going on with the dances. The look on her face matched my emotions exactly after she told me that we are to take 2 class periods every day, from now until Christmas, to practice for the dance. I'm sorry? I just had parent teacher conferences this weekend where loads of parents insisted that I spend more time on subjects such as History and Science, because their students are struggling in those classes. So I asked the principal, just to be sure. He said Science, History and Reading aren't the important classes, Math and Language are what really matter. Right. So after I told parents that I would spend more time on those classes, you are telling me to cut them so we can dance? Sometimes... the way things are done here in Honduras...

ANYWAY. I spent the next few mornings frantically rearranging my schedule for the rest of the semester, in order to have enough time to dance and still give these kids an education. That meant EVERY class would take a hit, the important ones and the "not as important" ones.

Bryony and Holly used their Penmanship time on Tuesday to start teaching the dance to the 5th graders. I was amazed, when I used Art class later that day to work on the dance with them, to see that they had actually learned something. Miraculously by the end of the day Wednesday half the dance was finished. Sure my voice is sounding a bit froggy and I never want to count to 8 again, but the 5th graders, MY 5TH GRADERS are learning a dance! I never thought I'd see the day. Let's just hope the second half of the dance goes just as well. :)