A Lesson in Disappointment

Before Christmas I had found a beginning ballet/dance class for Gillian to start in January. It was Thursday mornings for 45 minutes for 3-5 year olds. It was perfect for us; a great price and Colin and I could go run in the community center gym while she danced upstairs. Silly woman that I am, I told Gillian all about it and she helped pick out leotard, tights, and ballet slippers after Christmas. All pink. So the day class was supposed to start, she was all dressed and excited and could hardly contain herself! See:



What a NATURAL ; )

Colin even got in on the photo taking (unfortunately his finger was totally covering the lens):


So, off we go. All ready for class. At 10:30 we are right outside the door with two other little girls, waiting to go in and DANCE! The "teacher" walks up and flatly says, "I need 5 kids for the class. I only have 3. So it's canceled." She asked if we could do two other class times (during nap time or dinner time), but we couldn't. Meanwhile, Gillian is trying to take off her sweatpants and put on her ballet shoes. She totally didn't understand what was happening. When I finally got her to understand, she burst into tears. And I don't blame her. I had a few tears handy too. Fortunately she was pretty easily distracted, and we did go to the gym to play for a while. Luckily, there were some other little girls in the gym for her to have fun with. She did make me put on her skirt and ballet slippers while she played though! And she wore them while she napped that afternoon.

While she DID nap, I made a very polite and nice call to the recreation department suggesting that they CALL PEOPLE the day before a class if it's to be canceled. I totally understand not being able to run a class with too few people in it, but, really they could have handled it MUCH better. The lady I spoke to on the phone was very nice and sympathetic and explained that they usually DO place calls, but she wasn't sure what happened in this case. I also made my case that the teacher wasn't very personable and didn't even offer G an apology when she was in TEARS (Michael points out that perhaps we should be GLAD this woman wasn't G's teacher). Anyway, I promised Gillian I would find her a dance class as soon as I could. In the meantime, she's wearing her gear and dancing at home as much as possible.