It's Official: a Call to Action

So since facebook is already burning up about this, i thought we might as well start a blog so we can have all of the info in one place and move it towards some sort of collective action. Here's the email that i sent out and facebooked earlier this evening. Please get involved. Write your own version, reach out to former classmates, and be vocal about it online and in person. Let me know you want in, and i'll add you as an author so you can post your own.

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Hi friends,
I got some really sad and disturbing news today, and I'd really appreciate it if you took a moment of your time to read this consider what i'm proposing.

I just got off of the phone with Debby Kanter, and it seems that St. Andrew's Episcopal School has decided to cut all arts dance classes from their middle school programing. There will still be the upper school after school dance company, as well as the eighth grade's dance as a P.E. class, but all daytime classes for middle school - the ones that weren't electives, meaning that everyone at some point had to take them - have been cut. I find this particularly devastating for a number of reasons, the first and foremost being that this sends a clear message that dance and the skills it hones such as inter-personal awareness and communication, non-verbal communication, and an understanding of one's own body, are not a valued part of our education or society. Moreover, this cut means that a large group of students, since they are not required to take this class for a short period as part of their education, will never expirament with dance on their own, and therefore grow up lacking both the experience of having to think and relate in this different way, and the understanding of the form as an art. Although i feel that it goes without saying, for me this is akin to using the problem of students not initally liking math as an excuse to cut the program. As a artist and "outside the box" thinker I hated math classes. However, i look back on them now with the understanding that they helped teach me to think in a different way, and utilize a certian set of skills. Dance is no different, though our society may say so. This is why i am extremly saddened and disturbed to hear about this specific cut. Furthermore, reducing the dance department to its P.E. components and cutting it out of the SAES arts cirriculum sets up a potential envrionment for it to be further marginalized and eventually cut out of SAES alltogether.

I understand that the econmy is bad and that SAES may be feeling the pressure to cut classes and programs, and I understand that those are all hard choices, where someone will be unhappy. However, particularly with St. Andrew's so concerned with the well rounded "four pillars of education" that we were constantly reminded of, I am at a loss to understand this decision. Particularly with a school that now boasts four music teachers, and "51 interscholastic teams, including 19 Middle School teams and 32 JV and varsity teams, in 13 different sports", i DO NOT understand why they feel the need to make extensive cuts in a program that has the ability to give so many students a small taste of a way of thinking and being alternative to the ones they learn in other classes.

I know that you are all very busy people. I am busy and had other things to do tonight, but I wouldn't be sending this to you if i didn't honestly think it was an extremly important battle to be fighting.

Some of you are dancers, some of you were in high school, and some of you hated that class with all of your heart - i know we come from different places on this one. Some of you are parents and grandparents of students.
I urge you to think about your dance experience at SAES, and if you come to the conclusion that it had any impact whatsoever on you, your child's, and/or your friend's development as a well rounded individual and functioning human being, i urge you to write Mr. Kossasky, and tell him that SAES can not afford to cut their dance program. I'll even go as far as to remind you that i had never danced before coming to St. Andrew's, and, had i not taken one of those middle school classes, would never have found dance and would not be leading the life that I am so blessed to lead right now. Many of you have told me that something in one of my dances has touched you or made you see something in a different light. If you were being honest about that, i hope that you can see how none of that ever would have existed without the spark of these classes, and agree that this is a valid and nessecscary form of education, vital to any school that claims to uphold and honor a sense of intelectual rigor and diversity.

Please take a moment to write, and meanwhile I'll be organizing to see how we can take this to someone higher that Mr. Kossasky.
If you have ideas or board connections, addresses or emails of where to send letters would be much appreciated. Please forward this to as many people as possible.
You can send your letter to:

St. Andrew's Episcopal School
Attn: Robert Kossasky
8804 Postoak Road
Potomac, Maryland 20854

Thank you for your help, sending much love
S