Squatting to the beat of “Uptown Funk,” a swarm of freshmen P.E. students danced in the middle of the large gym during a rally on April 3. The whole school cheered them on in 360 surround sound while P.E. teacher Yuko Aoki rushed back and forth, gleefully recording and leading the dance.
Since last year, a new state mandate requires all freshmen to take P.E. Alongside this change, a new P.E. curriculum was introduced to the school district. Swimming, self-defense, weightlifting and dance are among the eight domains required in the new P.E. curriculum.
Aoki said that part of the mandate is to allow freshmen to experience all aspects of fitness, not only in their chosen sport.
“If you play only one sport, you aren’t going to attain the other aspects of fitness as a high school freshman,” Aoki said. “If you become old and you decide on one particular sport, that’s one thing. But for 14 to 15 year olds, this age group should have a variety of opportunities.”
Since the dance unit teaches students coordination through choreography and moving with rhythm, Aoki — along with other freshman P.E. teacher Rick Ellis — incorporated a dance unit in the spring semester that culminates in performing at a rally.
Aoki recalls searching through old CDs for dance videos from former AP U.S. History and Dance Fitness teacher Kim Anzalone to find the perfect song.
“Before COVID-19 hit, retired teacher Ms. Anzalone made us an old CD recording of dancing,” Aoki said. “I remembered dancing to a CD recording for the first time and found that the song was ‘Uptown Funk.’ I chose this recording because everyone knows the song, and it’s very catchy.”
Four weeks before the rally, students started learning the dance in short sessions spread throughout the weeks. They were taught using the old video recording of Anzalone walking through the simple choreography of “Uptown Funk.” Practicing amid the weights and benches of the weight room, students had around 10 practice sessions of around 30 minutes to master the dance, Aoki said.
While some freshmen like Cameron Follmar practiced the dance with his dance group twice during tutorial, freshman Sanjana Aiyer did not practice outside of class, but enjoyed the practice time during class.
“We watched the video as a whole class a couple of times and then we split off into groups to review,” Aiyer said. “I really liked practicing because we chose our own groups.”
After mastering the dance, students demonstrated their proficiency through two assignments: submitting a video recording of them dancing alone and doing a group dance either virtually or in person in front of Aoki during Tutorial.
Students were graded based on knowledge of choreography, technique and effort. For a third, optional assignment, students were encouraged to participate in the rally dance with a reward of two extra credit points.
Aoki decided that participation in rally dance would be extra credit in order to accommodate the different comfort levels of students.
“It’s cute to see the shy boys and girls dancing,” she said. “The difficult part is trying not to make it seem intimidating so that everyone feels comfortable performing. For the performance, I was not trying to force students to dance in public.”
While Aoki will be retiring at the end of the school year, she hopes the dance unit will persist, possibly even uniting all grade levels to dance together.
“The original idea was to eventually have four years of students knowing the dance so in the final rally, all grades would perform the dance together with Class of 2028 being the oldest grade,” Aoki said. “That was my dream.”
