Pre-calculus students surprise school with courtyard flash mob

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Lexi Rima

Pre-calculus student Max Hein (pictured second from left) performs in the courtyard flash mob, using his hands to make the curve of a graph. “I really enjoyed the choice of music,” Hein said. “Uptown Funk is actually one of the few modern songs I respect, because it’s super funky, and also uptown.”

Lexi Rima, Reporter
June 2, 2015

In order to commemorate all that they learned in class, the pre-calculus students of Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Battles performed a surprise flash mob in the courtyard during passing period on May 21. A junior participant, Bronsen Chong, found it a useful way to remember the graphs, as the dance was accordingly styled like the graphs they learned.

“The teachers saw other schools doing graph dances and wanted to do so as well,” Chong said. “They also saw it as a good way to get us to memorize the types of graphs. The dance was pretty easy to learn because we would learn it in small bits at a time.”

Another junior student, Max Hein, recalled hours of practice for the dance.

“We practiced the dance at the beginning of class every day, starting early on in the year,” Hein said. “There were teams that designed the shirts and choreographed the dance during DEN early this semester. As the choreography came out, we would learn it in class, and we also had a couple DEN and after school practices.”

Despite the amount of practice they devoted, the students accordingly found the dance simple to learn.

“The choreography was clever and it went along with the words of the song, Uptown Funk,” Hein said. “It wasn’t terribly hard to learn, because there are a lot of repeating parts in the song.”

One of the senior participants, Heather Box, also found the dance easy to learn as well as fun.

“It probably took me about two months to learn the whole dance,” Box said. “It wasn’t difficult, but I didn’t look at it enough to learn it sooner. My favorite part was the whole experience of joining with a bunch of people for a common goal, and we made a dance to match perfectly to the music.”

When reflecting on the performance, Chong believes the flash mob was successful.

“Our group was so much larger than I was expecting,” Chong said. “Every time we would practice as a group, not everyone would show up each time, so when we finally got together for the actual dance, I was surprised by the number of people. The dance was super fun and we got extra credit.”