VIDEOS: Dancing Classrooms Helps Children Learn Empathy and Respect Through Ballroom Dance

You've got enough things against you in the outside world," dance teacher Baja Poindexter advises her class of 5th graders at West Athens Elementary School, located in one of Los Angeles's most violent neighborhoods. "When you come to school, it should be a safe space for you, but you have to make it that way by being respectful to each other."

Poindexter is a teaching artist for Dancing Classrooms, a nonprofit based in New York that brings ballroom dancing to schools primarily in underserved communities.

And while learning to dance has its obvious advantages as an exercise and a way to achieve poise and confidence, the 10-week program created by dancer Pierre Dulaine in 1994 uses ballroom dancing to teach elementary and middle school children social-emotional skills like respect and teamwork and, by extension, empathy.

"You can't touch someone in a ballroom-dance frame and that person, for any length of time, be an 'other,'" Rodney Lopez, the global program director, tells The Atlantic.

Growing up in Chicago's South Side, Poindexter started working at age 12 to help support her family while taking free and low-cost dance program she could find. She often used dance as an outlet for the same frustrations she sees in her students today, such as the time verbal jabs at each other about relatives dying from gang violence resulted in multiple crying fits.

"They're at a disadvantage, and, at some point, they realize they're at a disadvantage," she said. "Will dance keep them away from some of these negative things? I do believe that, and that's why I teach."

In a 2014-2015 survey of L.A.-area school principals, 66 percent reported an "increased acceptance of others" among their student bodies working with Dancing Classrooms, while 81 percent of students said they treated others with more respect, following the program. Rob Horowitz, the associate director of the Center for Arts Education Research at Columbia University's Teachers College, recently conducted a two-year study on the program in New York City whose results have yet to be published. In year one (2013-14) of the study, 95 percent of teachers reported their students improved cooperative and collaborative skills; researchers observed 95 percent of students demonstrating cooperative skills.

"They're more respectful toward the girls. In the morning when we go into class, they always say, 'Ladies first.' I call them ladies and gentlemen so they remember," said teacher Michael Peñate.

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Enjoy these videos of Dancing Classroom students in action.