Rachel Peck Link assignment

Rachel Peck

1.I volunteered my time at a camp that EIU Dancers held for a high school dance team, The TRI- county Trojans. This is the pom team that performs and basketball and football games throughout the school year.

2. This assignment relates to many courses I have taken at Eastern Illinois University.  This can even go along with this class. This team has many disadvantages when it came to getting their team started. They were lacking technical skills, confidence, and choreography because this is something they are trying to build up.  They also were very limited when it came to money and getting people to come in and help them. These dancers were very eager to learn and had a wonderful time.

3. During my volunteer time I was able to work with the dancers, teach them choreography, and network with the coach. Their coach was extremely nice and was very excited for her girls. She even got right in there with the girls to learn the routines that we provided for them to take back to their school to perform them at games. The coach was so impressed with how much the dancers learned and enjoyed them self, she asked if we would be willing to continue to help them.

4. I feel that this was great for our community. The dance team was able to see how hard we work and I feel they learned a lot about themselves as well. When the day begun they were really timid and by the end of the day they were new dancers. The coach doesn’t have a lot of help or experience so this experience helped the team a lot. The people from our dance team that volunteered their time talked about going to different schools and doing this more often. A lot of schools can’t gets people to come into to their school to work with their dance teams because they simply don’t have the money to do it. We as a group, talked about going around the community and offering more of our time and teaching them new routines to perform and to work on their technique, so they continue to improve.

5. Overall, I had a wonderful time volunteering my time to work with this dance team at the camp. The girls worked so hard on our long day (8am-3pm). They got a lot out of it as well. I feel they were able to gain confidence and learned some ways to better their technique. It wasn’t only about them getting better, but it was about them enjoying what they are doing and feel comfortable doing it.  When the day was over they had three really great routines to take back to their school to perform. I would do this again in a heartbeat. All of the people who helped that day and gave up their time, including me, felt it was really rewarding because the day camp we had for them will be something they will always remember.

This is a picture of a couple of the girls learning a hip hop dance:)