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The youth team after their fullout

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Handing out poms

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Handing out poms

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Giving a correction to Jayla Gunn about her toetouch

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Talking about technique from their previous competition video

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Putting th sticky notes on their clothes

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Writing the names

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Getting clothes from the boxes

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Folding clothes

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Folding clothes from the first day

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For my community service project I chose a place that I would consider my second home. Planet Dance in New Albany has been my studio my whole dance career. A former dazzlers mom actually co-owns the building so it was very easy to get in touch with her and work out details about my community service. She wrote Sara and I a list of chores to do for our first couple of hours and then we got to help coach the next day to fill in the rest of our hours.

Sara and I dance at planet almost every single day and whenever we found out about this project we automatically knew we wanted to help out at our favorite place. We are always talking about how disgusting the floors are and how chaotic the building is. We do not have anyone that maintains and cleans up Planet so it’s always messy.

On September 6 I worked from 5:30-9:30 and on the 7th from 3:00-9:00. On the first day we were given a list of chores. First, we organized all of the new clothes for the youth and mini team. We were given a box of clothes and a list of sizes and had to get all of their stuff into one pile, fold them, write the name of that individual on a sticky note and put it on top, and then organize them on the table based off of their team. Everyone got a shirt, shorts, and a tank top. This took us roughly two hours. Next, we helped clean the whole studio. We completely cleaned and mopped the bathroom and organized all of the cleaning supplies in there as well. Then, we went around sweeping up all of the bobby pins and nasty hairs on the floors. We also picked up any leftover water bottles and empty food bags and threw them in a garbage bag. Lastly, we took our big bag of trash to the dumpster.

The second day we helped coach the youth and minis team of Planet Dance. They had back to back practices because some of them compete on both teams. First, we helped Maddy coach the youth team at 3:00. We gave them corrections and even demonstrated how to do specific things correctly. When their practice was over at 5:00 we helped to hand out their poms for the upcoming competition on Saturday. At 6:00 the youth team had begun their practice. They are coached by Brittany. We helped them to focus on the small technical skills that they lacked such as pointing their feet, development of legs in turns and jumps, and sharpness. Brittany had them use their wrist weights to allow them to get used to the feeling of extra weight so it will be easier for them to punch their arms when they take them off. Then, since Sara had finished her community service I stayed after with Brittany and helped her hand out poms and bows for that team as well as rhinestone their uniforms for their competition.

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Planet Dance was the place that changed my life forever. I truly feel like it is my second home. I love to dance and be around the environment that’s comes with it which is why I chose this as my community service. Since I have been at planet almost everyday for the past 10 years I know how little it is cleaned. I knew this would be a perfect opportunity to help out the studio I love and get some community service hours in too. I spoke to Charlotte Ipsan about wanting to get some community service in at Planet Dance and she had plenty of things for us to do!

The first day was very slow. We mainly just picked up around planet and cleaned everything you could think of. Personally I do not mind cleaning, but for five hours it was pretty rough. The organizing was not as boring as I thought it would be. The second day we got to coach the young planet teams and it honestly made me consider being a dance coach in college. I had never seen myself as wanting to coach kids but that day changed my mind. It was cool to see dance in a different perspective. I really enjoyed the time I spent with those girls.

Overall, I believe that this community service changed my outlook on dance. It has made me really appreciate and understand my coaches better. I learned a lot from those two days. I learned that I strongly dislike cleaning but actually enjoy organization and teaching dance. This is a good project for students because it allows them to help out in their community and discover what means the most to them. It breaks that feeling of timidness that all high schoolers have about volunteer work. I truly think that this project gives people the nerve to interact with others and help make a change for someone. I think this project should be required but I feel like ten hours is kind of excessive. Most students are very busy with sports and other activities which makes ten hours very hard to find someone that can comply to all of those dates and times.