39,480 minutes: How can you measure, measure a year?

With the fear of over-emphasizing how important volunteers are to our organization, I wanted to spend some time explaining to you how truly crucial each and every person is that donates their time, expertise, skills, or money to this organization.

A rough estimate, calculated briefly on scratch paper today, reveals a number (probably grossly underestimated) at 1,645 hours or 39,480 minutes.  This number is the amount of TIME spent by volunteers on our organization since January 1, 2011 to November 21, 2011.  That is equivalent to 68.5 days.  How incredible is that? 

I recently heard some wise advice: giving without gratitude becomes meaningless and leads to burned out individuals, who no longer have the joy to serve.  In spirit with Thanksgiving, I would like to acknowledge and give thanks to EACH and EVERY person that has supported us.  From making hairpieces, changing costumes, running an errand, working our performances, corralling kids, taking dancers to the bathroom, making dancers smile, giving a dancer confidence, teaching our dancers to plie, stapling papers, folding brochures, hanging up decorations, coming to Great Day Houston with us, giving up time with your family to spend with us, showing our dancers love, organizing costumes,  accounting, holding a door open for us, making our website, taking pictures, writing articles, taking video, going through trainings, sitting in meetings, offering advice and expertise, bringing patience to our dance classes, believing in us, bringing dance clothes and shoes to us, giving us space for our dancers to dance in, and the list goes on. 

I promise that each of these tasks has made a difference to our dancers.  By stapling papers, you free up time for instructors to focus on curriculum.  By folding brochures, you allow others to learn about us, bring new friends to our dancers, and awareness to their abilities.  By holding a dancer’s hand at a performance, you give them comfort and confidence to take the stage.  You also give them safety when they have to exit the stage or become scared. 

There is no price I could put on all that our community, friends, and families have done for us.  We are grateful beyond words.  YOU give these girls the chance to dance. 

Have a blessed Thanksgiving,

Leah

Making Christmas Cards



 Christmas in the Park 2010



Helping across the floor.

HAIR BOW!

Operation Lipstick= lots of encouragement and smiles.

Great Day Houston!

First recital May 2011- thank you for all your help.

Kissing Heels & Bunny Toes

Kyndell Goff, our Artistic Director, is incredibly creative and a dynamic teacher.  For as long as I can remember she has used the term "kissing heels and bunny toes" to teach children ballet 1st position.  This term became a staple in our ballet class for A Chance to Dance and was also a springboard for how to teach new dancers ballet terminology.  After all, it is a completely different language- it's in French, for those of you who aren't familiar.  This week it dawned on me that we are no longer using metaphoric instructions to describe ballet.  Our dancers know what 1st and 2nd position are. We no longer make windows, we "demi plie". Our mice don't run up the clock- we simply have "passe".

It's easy to focus on what our dancers still have to learn and we often forget how far they have come in such a short time.  I feel it is a daunting task for teenagers to learn the appropriate french terminology for ballet and yet our dancers already have a grasp on the basic ballet vocabulary.  Each of our students has their own goals and their own measures of success, but as a whole, their class has progressed together in its own ways.  At our performance last week, Kyndell and I fondly remembered that a year ago we had one dancer that refused to walk on to stage by herself and instead was held by her buddy for the duration of the performance.  This year, Kyndell exited the stage remarking that this same student did very well and performed most of the dance.  Yes, progress can be accounted for by aging & maturity, but I also believe that our students have worked hard and our Angels and Buddies have worked hard to produce what you, our audience, sees on stage.

Thank you for believing in us and helping us to remember to believe in our students abilities and recognize their accomplishments.

-Leah

We gonna light it up...

Our dancers are prepared and ready for their first performance next Saturday, November 5th.  We will be helping to kick-off the Walk for Habitat for Humanity at MacLean Park in Lake Jackson at 8:10 a.m. to the dance "Dynamite".  Our newest dancers have worked hard to learn this dance so quickly and the community will love it.

Last week, I had the honor of talking with Tamara Bell, the Editor-in-Chief of YGen OutLoud.  If you didn't get a chance to hear the interview, here's a link: http://ygenoutloud.com/keeping-gen-y/young-dancer-lifts-special-needs-students-to-new-heights/ 

Here's the performance schedule for the fall- come and support us, I promise you won't be disappointed by these amazing dancers.

November 5th: Walk for Habitat at MacLean Park= 8:10 a.m.
November 19th: Festival of Lights at the Civic Center in LJ = 11:30 a.m.
December 9th: Christmas in the Park in Clute = 6:15 p.m.

Week Two

This past Saturday was our second week of classes.  We were thrilled to have a new student in Class I and happy to have a few more previous students return this week. 

Our dancers have gotten back into the swing of things very quickly.  We are working on remembering and touching up our routine to "Dynamite" for the Habitat Walk.  Due to one last permit to receive before the new building can get its Certificate of Occupancy, we were housed again by First Presbyterian Church of Lake Jackson at a last minute request.  It goes to show how important our community is to making our organization thrive.

In a walk through of our new building on Friday, I was very impressed at how much it has changed since July!  It is very spacious with great observation windows into each classroom.  The windows, at our request, are made of plexi-glass in order to protect our dancers.  We will attach pictures soon.

We are already thinking ahead to our recital in May of 2012.  Venue is set and we have a couple options for photographers.  However, we are in need of a professional videographer.  This past year, we were very blessed to have a volunteer video the performance for us, because we couldn't find a company that was willing to work with us while keeping in mind our budget.  If anyone knows of a videographer who covers dance recitals in the Houston area for a reasonable price- we are in need!

3,2,1...BLAST OFF!

Welcome to our new A Chance to Dance blog!  Hopefully, this will serve as a place where parents and students can stay updated as well as to keep our supporters informed. 

And.....we're off! Last Saturday we had our first class back since our last recital in May.  Our new building has undergone many renovations and will be a wonderful place, however it wasn't QUITE ready for us this weekend.  Thankfully, First Presbyterian Church of Lake Jackson graciously adjusted their room schedule and allowed us to use their Activity Hall.  The first little dancer to arrive stated "Woooow!  This is a really big room, we will all fit in here.  That's a lot of chasses across the floor!" 

Our new building, Footsteps School of Dance, is going to be a wonderful place for us.  It will have a wheelchair ramp leading up to the entrance to the building and handi-cap parking.  There are two huge ADA regulated bathrooms with plenty of room for all changing and restroom needs for our dancers.  The hallways are large enough for wheelchairs to easily get through and the waiting area is spacious enough for our parents to spread out in.  However, as one mom commented, "Sitting on top of each other last year is how we got to know each other!".  It gets crowded quickly with 10 volunteers, 10 parents, siblings, and 10 dancers all in one space.   

We have 13 students enrolled and were very excited to see ALL of our previous students return this year.  Kyndell and I have decided that we will be performing "Dynamite" at the Habitat for Humanity Walk on 11.5.11- in just one month. 

It was amazing to see how much our dancers have grown over the summer, not just physically, but in maturity.  Some who weren't talking before have become chatter-boxes and some who were shy about being in dance wear, didn't blink an eye before donning a leotard and tights.

Next to our dancers, the most incredible experience I have had in this organization is experiencing the generosity and compassion of our volunteers.  ALL of them are more wonderful than words can express.  There were there early to help set-up at 8:30 a.m. and stayed past 11 to help clean everything up- constantly asking "What can we do? Is there anything we can help with?".  Mind you, many of these "Buddies" are between ages 10 and 13.

We will keep you posted as best as we can on new events, costumes, and performances as the year goes on.  Thank you for welcoming our organization into the community and keeping us going into our second year!