{"id":19291,"date":"2017-12-06T16:22:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T21:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=19291"},"modified":"2017-12-13T16:44:18","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T21:44:18","slug":"community-classroom-students-dance-their-way-to-8000-miracles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/community-classroom-students-dance-their-way-to-8000-miracles\/","title":{"rendered":"Community Classroom students dance their way to 8,000 miracles"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Students in York Region\u2019s Community Classrooms are often on the receiving end of support but they proved Friday, one dance move at a time, they can make a huge difference well beyond the community.
\nOver 100 students from York Region\u2019s Community Classrooms \u2013 classrooms tailored to students on the autism spectrum, students living with mild intellectual disabilities, as well as developmentally delayed students, descended on Dr. G.W. Williams Secondary School to get their groove on for a Dance-A-Thon benefiting Toronto\u2019s SickKids Hospital.
\nArmed with a link to their website, as well as pledge forms, the students set out to hit a $2,000 goal \u2013 but they kicked things up to eleven, with the 20 participating schools raising an impressive $8,400 and counting!
\nOrganized by four Williams teachers, with a marketing assist from the school\u2019s Media Arts students, the first seeds of the idea were sown on a field trip last spring to the SNAP (Special Needs Athletic Program) Tournament.
\n\u201cUsually at the half time, they play music and the kids start dancing, which they just loved to do,\u201d said teacher Paul Grassi. \u201cThey love to show off their moves and are just so happy once the music is on. We thought the twist could be that it would be a community exercise where the students could raise funds for SickKids. The kids are so used to receiving things from other people, it would be nice to put themselves out there to raise money and see what that would look like.\u201d
\nUrged on by fellow York Region District School Board teacher Dave Pilkey, one of the lead organizers on the now-annual Student Hoedown which tailors the yearly Magna Hoedown experience to special needs students from across the area, the Williams teachers pitched the idea to students.
\nHaving all, in some way or another, been impacted by the work the Hospital for Sick Children carries out day in and day out, it was an easy sell.
\n\u201cA lot of people really relate to it and I can tell you our website has been going crazy!\u201d said Mr. Paul Grassi as the numbers continued to roll in leading up to the Friday event when they were sitting at just under $2,000. \u201cMy thought at the beginning was, \u2018What if we raise eleven bucks?\u2019 but it has really turned into a nice fundraiser. Over the last few days we have been seeing all these little donations come in and the kids are so excited to watch [the online fundraising] thermometer go up. The Children\u2019s Miracle Network has been amazing in helping us set up our website.
\n\u201cWe told parents, we told the kids, we told the administrators this was not a door-to-door soliciting event at all. The kids have pledge forms, but we don\u2019t want them going to businesses or going down the street knocking on doors \u2013 but we weren\u2019t expecting such a big hit on our website. But, that\u2019s what happened \u2013 a lot of people have donated and, on top of that, the kids have been getting cash and cheque donations.\u201d
\nIn addition to that, one of the students in a school had been making and selling Christmas decorations and selling them in the school at lunchtimes to benefit the hospital, while other schools have donated proceeds from their school stores.
\nHelping the students make the event memorable were a number of community businesses ranging the Dollar Store at Henderson and Yonge, to Costco\u2019s donation of over 320 bottles of water, to PizzaPizza which donated 50 party-size pizzas, and to Williams graduate Megan Flynn of Simply Yummy bakery who donated 500 chocolate chip cookies to keep the students well-fuelled.
\n\u201cAll the main food groups!\u201d Mr. Grassi joked.
\nIt was enough to do the trick, however, as over 120 students filled the Williams cafeteria, showing off their moves to students from other high schools, enjoying tracks as varied from artists as varied as Katy Perry and Taylor Swift to The Spice Girls, all spun by the house DJ \u2013 Williams teacher Mark Watkin.
\nThese dance parties, facilitated by the Children\u2019s Miracle Network, have sparked a fundraising frenzy across the country with Dr. G.W. Williams and the students in the York Region School Board, now adding their spark to the growing flame.
\nThe $8,011 will go directly to the hospital.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

$8,000 and counting raised for SickKids and Children’s Miracle Network<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/2017-12-07-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-519","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 15:27:00","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}