Middle School Dances

I hope that all of you will have a chance to come to a middle school dance during the time the you have young ones at Henley.  They really are a sight to see.  Dance is probably a misnomer—while there is some of that going on, there are a lot of kids playing basketball in the gym, goofing around in the computer lab, and eating pizza, soda and candy. Once in a while some actual dancing takes place, and if a young man and a young woman are actually courageous enough to get together for a slow song, it’s a rite of passage indeed.  Of course, at the middle school level, dancing to a slow song involves staying as far apart from one another as possible while still maintaining enough contact to consider it a “dance,” each student having their friend stand beside them while they dance so that each dancer can talk to their friend and not even have to look at the person they are dancing with, and at the end of the song the two dancer’s immediately going their separate ways, oftentimes with no parting words.  A sight to see indeed, and one that is quite different from what you may see at a high school dance.  The sixth grade social is this coming Friday—a great tradition at Henley that allows our nervous neophytes a little bit of a more relaxed atmosphere in which to experience their first dance.  This dance and the ones that will follow always remind me of how lucky we are to work with kids during their middle school years.  The changes they go through from sixth grade to eighth grade are tremendous, and not many people in this word get to watch those transformations every day.  What’s even more of an honor to me is to know that each and every one of us helps to shape those changes for our middle schoolers.  Our jobs are important both inside and outside of the classroom.  The work we are doing with kids will impact them for the rest of their days.  I’m happy to be a part of a team that understands this and takes the work so seriously.  Our sixth grade social is just the beginning for us this year.  If you get a chance, stop by one of the dances—it’s something that I would not want to have missed as a parent.