Both dancing clubs and service organizations can be found all around the University — however, one Contracted Independent Organization combines the two activities with volunteering in a novel and engaging way. Founded in 2017, Ballet & Books is a national non-profit organization that pairs mentors with young girls, using social interaction and movement-based activities to enact and embody the material they read.
Maddie Mattox, the marketing director for the University’s Ballet & Books chapter and second-year College and Education student, explained that the program allows mentees to strengthen their reading skills by making connections between movement and the mind.
“The way kids learn best is through activating things like their body and other parts of themselves, other than just memorizing words,” Mattox said. “My mentee got a lot better at reading over the course of the year because she was not just listening to me read to her or trying to read to me because she memorized words, but she was using her body and other parts of her brain to help her learn to read.”
Broken into two segments, the program takes place weekly across the span of eight weeks. First, a personality-based matching process pairs University mentors with compatible students from the Charlottesville community who have signed up to participate. Each lesson involves a 45-minute ballet session taught by University students to learn dance terminology and movements, closely followed by a mentorship session, wherein mentors and mentees read together while incorporating active learning techniques such as dance, games and social interaction.
The mentorship session utilizes the foundation acquired through the dance lesson to help navigate literature, in which students apply their new physical knowledge to books and stories related to dancing. Ballet & Books’ operations currently run in partnership with the Gordon Avenue Public Library, which acts as a meeting point for the mentors and mentees.
The CIO at the University is a chapter of a national organization — which hopes to “strengthen literacy skills, build confidence and incite a passion for learning,” according to their website. The group uses a dynamic curriculum that includes reading books, playing games and completing literacy-building activities to address the fact that only 33 percent of fourth-graders are at or above the appropriate level for reading proficiency set by the National Assessment of Education Progress — a program that provides policymakers with information about student academic achievement levels.
The national Ballet & Books organization has been strengthening its chapter at the University over the past two years, alongside nine others at schools such as the University of Michigan and Duke University.
As the University’s chapter of the organization has grown, its impact has become evident to the mentors. According to Olivia Geisler, Ballet & Books’ director and fourth-year College student, the driving force behind the work she does with Ballet & Books is witnessing the development of the children’s confidence in real time.
“[My mentee and I] were talking about the different parts of a story … and we had watched a little video of ballet, and we were trying to piece together which parts of the ballet correspond with which parts of the story,” Geisler said. “At first, I remember she was struggling with it a little bit, but then once she [found the connection], she just absolutely lit up with excitement and was so happy that she had finally gotten it, and it just felt really good to have led her to that spot.”
While both Geisler and Mattox both have several years of dance experience, as both began dancing at an early age, they said that University students wishing to get involved with the CIO should not feel limited by their dance skills. Instead, Mattox said that the primary requirement for being a mentor is a passion for service.
“I think [we look for] just someone who's passionate about the mission," Mattox said. “Because really, you aren't going to do it for any gain for yourself. It's for the gain, for watching the kids grow … as long as you're passionate about reducing the literacy gap and dedicated to showing up.”
Mattox relayed her hope for how the University’s Ballet & Books chapter can further embed themselves in the community at the University by partnering with Shannon Library or Clark Library. She hopes that by giving children the chance to learn alongside older students in their educational communities, it will inspire a lifelong passion for learning.
With consistent efforts to find the intersection between fun and learning, Ballet & Books at the University strives to exemplify the national organization’s guiding values — education, diversity, community and confidence. By fostering and uplifting the talents of mentors and mentees alike, the organization embodies a strong commitment to the Charlottesville community.
While Geisler spoke to the value of Ballet & Books at the University, she said that volunteering at large is crucial — regardless of the form it takes.
“I'm just really proud to be part of an organization that's really supporting the needs of some of the kids in the Charlottesville community,” Geisler said. “It's really impactful and rewarding to be able to serve kids in this way, and I would encourage everyone to, even if it's not Ballet & Books, [to] just to be part of some sort of service organization … and I think serving other people in some way is really important.”
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