So, I went back to teaching baby ballet this week. I had an interesting experience last night. For starters, in some of my classes I now have a portable wall separating the classroom with two classes going on at the same time. Let me tell you: I hate this. It was not my idea. I guess they’re trying to squeeze in as many classes as possible and this is the solution. I can’t wait to leave this dumb job. (Soon…soon).
Anyway, I had one little girl completely fall and do a face plant on the ground…you know…she landed on her head? She immediately started screaming, and I jumped into high gear with the usual questions: “Where does it hurt? Can I see? Do you want a hug?” There’s a fine line between fake hurt and real hurt with these three-year-olds. (I mean, come on, they don’t have far to fall). But this kid was really hurt and struggling to hold it together. We finally agreed that going to get a drink of water was the best solution. After we all trucked off to get some water, this little girl put herself in the corner. No ceremony, no noise, she wordlessly found a corner and sat in it. I interpreted this to mean when she’s crying and upset, the corner represents “down time.” In fact, she wouldn’t even leave the corner by the end of class. We ended up doing curtsies and bows in her corner because she refused to get up. Her parents were on the other side of the glass door the entire time and were really great about letting her do what she needed to do. They didn’t rush in and try to take over and (thank God) they didn’t blame me for her fall.
The bottom line was that she was wearing crappy Walmart slippers (that’s right, slippers, the kind you would wear around the house). Sadly, my little dance store competes with the likes of Walmart and their fake ballet slippers–hey, they’re only six bucks! But these crappy pieces of garbage are not even close to real ballet slippers. They don’t support the foot, they’re usually bought too large so they slide around in them, they’re sized S, M, or L which gives the kid’s no true fit. In short they are accident prone, face plant-inducing, bad dance-promoting, fake ballet slippers.

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JUST SAY NO TO FAUX BALLET SHOES!