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