Rebecca Schwartz, a rising senior at High School North, recently completed her Girl Scout Gold Award. Her project, “Dance Workout for Fitness Fun,” was designed to get children up and moving to music. She held her weekly program at the Cherry Tree Club for children ages 3 to 5. Her mentor is Wendy Schutzer and her adviser and troop leader is Kate Henkel.
Schwartz, who began dancing when she was three years old, created a dance program to show children how exercising can be both fun and healthy. “My dance program was created to get children up on their feet and exercising,” she says. “Childhood obesity has become a growing problem in America because many children don’t exercise, either because they choose not to or don’t find it fun.”
She began planning the program a year ago. “I created lesson plans for each dance session, and I choreographed numerous dances to different songs,” she says. “To make sure the program was sustainable, I put together a list of dance exercises, organized and explained the dance steps I used in the dances, and made a CD of all the music I used.” She also purchased scarves for the children to use in dance and bought children’s stories about dance.
“The whole experience was very rewarding,” says Schwartz. “My program was very successful because as the classes went on, I saw huge amounts of improvement in every child’s dance ability and they were able to remember the choreography to the different songs.”
A West Windsor resident for 17 years, at North she is a pole vaulter on the track team, participates in the musicals, and is a member of the National Honor Society. Her mother, Kathleen Schwartz, is a software tester at Dow Jones; and her brother, Ian Schwartz, is a sophomore at North.
“I love to work with kids because they are so much fun and so happy to be there, especially at that age. Every time I would see them they would be smiling and that made my job as a teacher so much more enjoyable,” she says. “I have been a Girl Scout since kindergarten and I am very proud that I have come this far in my scouting experience and have been able to do so much for others through Girl Scouts.”
