Coolidge Students Get Their Groove On

children stomped their feet, clapped their hands, and slid to the left and right while learning some new dance moves and enjoying some physical activity.

The Learn to Dance Day was the second of the school district’s Get Fit Family Adventure series, which is being held through the Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) grant. The district learned on Oct. 1 that it received the $1.4 million grant, which will be used over the next three years.

The event offered Coolidge students and their families an hour of dance instruction by physical education teacher Pam Krause and students from her dance class. Children and their families danced to songs such as the Electric Slide, the Cha-Cha Slide, Thriller, and the Macarena. They also learned some swing dancing.

“It’s a way of getting families involved in the fitness of the kids,” said Shirley LeMay, health teacher and Get Fit Family Adventure liaison for Coolidge.

The school has offered dances in the past, but the children didn’t know the steps, LeMay said, adding that the Learn to Dance Day provides this instruction.

Although one student, 8-year-old Camden McDonald, said he was familiar with the steps already and that the Cha-Cha Slide is his favorite.

“I know all these dances,” he said, explaining that he learned them when he attended .

Pat Degon, the district’s director of health, physical education, and family consumer science, said she counted more than 120 students and parents at the event. Degon, who applied for the grant, said the goal is to “boost everybody’s level of physical activity” and to get children and their families to participate in 60 minutes of exercise per day.

The grant will be used for indoor and outdoor equipment throughout the district, which could include challenge course elements such as horizontal climbing walls and cargo nets, she said.

The first Get Fit Adventure—the event—was held last month at Shrewsbury High School. The district must hold three such events per year and will likely hold the next one in the fall, according to Degon.