Stepping Back, Graduation, Convocation, Beyond the Classroom, Color Day; all of these are Rowland Hall traditions that students take part in from 3pre-K to senior year. Even with all of these traditions and more, one stands out as a wholesome connection between the youngest and oldest students: Kinder Day. Kinder Day is an annual tradition where high school students in the intermediate and advanced dance classes make a trip up the hill to teach a day of movement to the Kindergarten class. There’s jumping, running, dancing, acting like animals, making shapes, and having a great time.

Kinder Day has been part of a longstanding connection between the upper school dance program and the lower school for many years, with the current high school class even being taught by teachers Sophia Cutrubes and Grace Riter during their time in the lower school. The high schoolers design every activity themselves, from leading a warm-up to making shapes with negative space to (silently) imitating animals. One student, Aspen Haeri, describes this process, how “Kinder Day as a whole required a ton of forethought into how kindergarteners move about the world, which absolutely factored into how I formulated my lesson plans with Sophie [Cheng].”

Kinder Day is one of the most important traditions for a lot of high school dancers. One student who has been a part of it for the past two years, Elayna Hoglund, described how “it is important because it fosters a love for dance in children early. Some of my best memories from dance are when I was really little, since you have someone to look up to, and it’s great to be that person for them.” Aspen Haeri also shares how “ Kinder Day is important because it provides an amazing and fun way to create meaningful connections between students, and gives older students the opportunity to mentor and inspire kindergarteners to express themselves through movement." Aspen believes that "movement arts as a whole encourages creativity and teamwork, which is so important to instill in them at such a young age.”

While kindergarteners bring great spirit and are adorable, they also bring with them quite a bit of challenge. When asked about the struggles of working with the kindesrs, Elayna mentioned how “working with kids is really hard. I work with kids a lot, and I think it's especially hard in a school environment because kids think they can be all crazy.” This experience is shared by Aspen, who mentioned how “it’s very challenging because they are so full of joy and whimsy, but because of that, it also makes it really hard to keep them on task for longer than a few seconds.” Regardless of these struggles, Aspen also mentions how “the payoff is EXCELLENT when they care and put their whole attention into the activity. It made everything worth it for me in seconds, seeing them work together in the relays, creating movements based on animals, etc.”

Now–next November–we, the Middle & Upper School community, are moving up the hill to the McCarthy campus, the same as the Beginning & Lower Schools. While this move brings lots of new opportunities, it begs the question of what happens to these traditions that are, in a way, based on the separation of the two campuses and the unity it brings by uniting the two in a way that wouldn't otherwise exist. While some may see this as the death of Kinder Day, Aspen views the move as a great opportunity, describing how we should “1000 times yes” continue the tradition as we move up the hill. Aspen describes how “the best part of moving to the new campus is that we will all go to the same campus and this makes things a MILLION times easier to coordinate and plan.” Aspen even mentioned how “on a more selfish note, it made my heart so happy to see them engage with dance in a way that shows they care, and this can be a way to start lasting campus traditions!” Hopefully, this is a tradition that will continue for many more years to come, and maybe this generation of kindergarten students will one day be the teachers!