Students teaching students: 32 Intro to Dance students at Traverse City West Senior High School discovered that the best way to learn something is to teach it.
For two sessions last week, six groups of the students took their newfound swing, foxtrot and salsa skills on the road to teach upper elementary grades at Glenn Loomis and Willow Hill. In between the Tuesday morning and the Friday morning sessions, instructor Philip Leete had his students evaluate their lesson plans and modify them as needed.
When the high schoolers returned for the second and final visit, they were pleased at how much the fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Glenn Loomis and the sixth graders at Willow Hill remembered.
"It's been awesome, they got it down really easy,” said Kayla Fasel, a senior at West, adding of Leete: "He just wanted us to learn to teach; he kind of breaks [the steps] down for us in class and he wants to make sure we can do it, too.”
The seventh Intro to Dance group had a mission to perform for residents at Woodside Village Senior Apartments a Mexican-style dance number that they choreographed themselves.
The elementary students appreciated the opportunity to master not only the basic moves, but also some of the flourishes.
"I liked how you did the square and behind the head and the sugar,” said Jasmine Bell, a fifth grade student who with her split fifth/sixth grade class learned to swing. "I tried to remember the moves, how you move your feet — it was kind of hard and kind of easy.”
Nathan Thompson, Bell's classmate, found he could do the steps better than he thought.
"I don't really have to look at my feet, I just look at what my arms are doing,” said the fifth grader.
Leete, a permanent substitute teacher at West High School, had been teaching his students various social dances all semester. He conceived of the road trip as a way to boost his students' skills and share their growing enthusiasm. Students picked their own music as well as determined how to teach their chosen dance style.
"The hardest thing was keeping them interested,” said Nicole Ravellette, also a senior at West who taught with Fasel.
Ravellette noted that her fourth grade students were not necessarily bored, "but they wanted new things.”
"It took us longer to learn,” she added of the her age group's learning curve for the dances.
After just one session in the elementary schools, Leete enthused about his other goal for the project: the life skills gained by his students as they learned to teach.
"It's a difficult skill, to teach,” he said. "It gave me the opportunity to talk about [being an] entrepreneur and making their own way; that if you like something and learn to teach it well, people will pay you money to teach it.”
The idea to tap high schoolers, who are already cool in elementary school kids' eyes, as teachers proved to be a win-win scenario where everyone learned from each other.
"The impact was impressive,” said Leete. "It's interesting in the power of being able to utilize the high schoolers.”
Thompson, for one, rated his high school mentors highly after the two sessions mastering swing steps.
"The teachers are strict and you have to do it perfect,” he noted of the adult instructors in his life. "So it's better to learn from high school kids.”
Some of the last dollars of the now-expired Every Step Counts grant provided busing for the endeavor, noted Patti Tibaldi, the grant coordinator who is also the athletic director at West. She wanted to support Leete's idea in order to bridge the enthusiasm she has seen for Dance Dance Revolution, which is available in all four secondary schools.
"[Dance] is another area that some students will respond to, not everyone likes team sports or getting on a bike,” she noted. "But dance is very social, I really do think it teaches them manners.”