When you think of middle school gym classes, what comes to your mind?
You may think back to tense games of dodgeball, where different group of kids were pitted against each other in a battle of the fittest. You may think of the anxiety of getting picked last for a team, or of your turn up to bat during a softball game. What if you struck out in front of all of your peers?
You may also think fondly back to the only part of the day when you weren't cooped up in a classroom.
When the students of Holton Middle School in Holton, KS, look back on their experience, there will certainly be one thing that sticks out to them.
At the end of each year, the gym curriculum consists of dance classes. The school leaders, as well as gym teacher John Deitrich, strongly believe that dance lessons improve skills that have long been lost to recent generations.
Asking someone to dance takes guts and courage, according to Deitrich. Turning someone down politely also takes a certain amount of poise and people skills that many kids don't have these days. Learning how to interact with each other on such a simple level is pretty foreign to a lot of these kids.
One student, Ben, has really gained a lot of self-worth over the past two years thanks to the school's policy. He now has no trouble asking a girl to dance, and seems to smile a lot more.
Like all other classes and activities, they'll get a grade to reflect their efforts. Students don't have to be the best dancers to get a good grade, just good sports about it.
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