Kids Do The Darndest Things

As I walk into the classroom, I can barely hear my teacher above all the noise. True to form, though, she has that amazing teacher ability to be heard above all else. I barely catch her telling the class to take out our planners, math notebooks, pens and pencils, and then put our backpacks on the hooks in the back of the classroom. We will have three minutes of music to perform these tasks.

I can imagine some of you at home are cocking your heads and furrowing your brows thinking, “This sounds a little juvenile for Stanford, maybe that “list” article had more truth to it than we thought…” Well, you would be wrong. This is my classroom at EPACS, East Palo Alto Charter School. Once a week, every girl on our team heads over to tutor for an hour with her specific class. The women’s water polo team has been tutoring at EPACS for about ten years now, and this year, I’m helping out with fourth graders. Now, back to my morning.

With a single click on her laptop, my teacher starts playing Cali Swag District’s “Teach Me How To Dougie” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnPJmDc0b_M).

Again, a little background: This song is hugely popular with my age group mainly because it’s one of those songs that doubles as a dance tutorial. Honestly, “The Dougie” is probably one of the more popular “songs that come with a dance move” because it leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation. For example, ask Cassie to Dougie the next time you see her and it won’t look like the music video, I guarantee it. Anyway, like I said, the song is popular with my age group, but due to some choice lyrics (don’t worry loyal followers, I’ve attached the clean version!) I couldn’t exactly imagine my fourth graders having this song on their iPods or anything. Well, now it’s my turn to be wrong.

I truly believe I missed one of those golden opportunities for fame (or at least an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show) by not having a video camera on hand to record what happened next. As if on cue, the whole class stopped what they were doing – Christian and Jose stopped rough housing, Maria and Anna stopped whispering – and began to Dougie. And you know what, they did look like the music video. Let me be absolutely clear. I am purely referring to their dancing abilities. My fourth graders were smoother, more confident, more coordinated, and more wildly impressive than any dougie I had ever seen before. Believe it or not, as a connoisseur of dance, I’ve seen quite a few.

Jaw dropped in shock and jealousy at their incredible swag, I was more upset than a 1st grader deprived of recess when the three minutes stopped and the kids were quietly sitting with their materials at the ready. Time to learn – proportions were on the agenda. Another harrowing test of my math abilities sans scientific calculator.