Mission and Vision

Our mission is to cultivate essential life skills in children  through the practice of social dance. 

Our vision is to have schools and communities where every child is connected, respected, and provided a safe environment in which to thrive.

 

Through the art of Ballroom Dancing, Dancing Classrooms helps children succeed in life by unleashing rapid development of essential social, emotional, and cognitive skills. A distinctively rich, in-school experience, the program engages students in the joy, discipline and teamwork of social dance and creates mutually respectful and effective learning environments. 

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The teaching philosophy is one of inside out versus outside in. The program takes the dance that is inherent to students’ bodies and helps them bring it out in a supportive and collaborative setting utilizing a technique called the “Dulaine Method”, which grooms youth for positive social interaction and teaches them how to use appropriate forms of verbal and non-verbal communication. It is the reinforcement of manners and the respectful language transformations that fascinate program supporters most.
 

Carefully and systematically selected and trained in the Dulaine Method and the Dancing Classroom Curriculum, our Teaching Artists work very closely with classroom teachers in creating curriculum connection assignments to support their academic goals. In addition to work that supports academic content areas, students write reflections that give the children a voice about how they feel about learning to dance, working with their classmates, and other Social Emotional Learning-based experiences. 

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In addition to the social development goals of the program, DCDC aligns with COMAR Requirements for Fine Arts, the National Core Arts Standards for Dance, and the National Common Core curriculum standards.