This year at Footprints Dance Centre, we will be continuing to incorporate an awesome youth leadership program called Wingman for Dance. A Wingman is someone who always goes above and beyond to help others. Each month through the year, students at Footprints Dance Centre will all take part in a different activity that will help us learn the important values of being a fun, fair, and inclusive group of dancers. We will always be learning ways to go above and beyond for others. It is our hope that by the end of this year together, we will be BOTH a group of amazing individual dancers and also a strong community that never leaves anyone feeling left out.
For our first Wingman activity of the season, we decided to start the year out with exercises that would help our dancers to bond with one another and create welcoming friendships within their classes. Some of our students have danced with Footprints before, and some are brand new to the studio family so we wanted to make sure that EVERYONE felt welcomed and included into the Footprints Family!
To help cultivate this inclusive environment, teachers in each of our classes picked from 3 different games that would give their students the opportunity to get to know one another better: sharing fun facts about themselves, finding things that they share in common, and brainstorming effective ways that we can make sure that our peers always feel included.
It was so great to see our dancers’ eyes light up when they learned new things about their friends and found new common interests and similarities. At Footprints Dance Centre, it is not only our goal to inspire our students to become great dancers, but more importantly, to inspire them to become great humans. Our dancers inspired us with their generosity and kindness through these activities and we can’t wait to continue to watch them grow throughout the rest of the year!
