Students from Ms. Rivas and Ms. Greminger’s Spanish classes found themselves trying something a little different in class Jan. 16: Latin dancing.

Rivas believes in experiential learning. Rather than simply teaching her students Spanish, she wants to bring the culture that surrounds the language to life in her classroom. In fact, she even gives her students extra credit for choosing to immerse themselves in Spanish experiences, such as movies or festivals.

“I always try to get them out of the classroom and out of just wordlists and that sort of thing,” Ms. Rivas said. “To me, that’s why people want to continue with languages is these types of things.”

So, when Rivas saw that one of her Spanish teaching friends had posted a video on Facebook of her students learning how to salsa dance from a company called Latin Beginnings, she knew she had to check it out.

“I thought, well that’s a really great idea.”

Latin Beginnings was started by David Blake and Tashia Ochoa. The two met at a fashion show when they performed together and hit it off. Their relationship grew to become business partners when they started Latin Beginnings, a dance company that’s mission is twofold.

“Our whole goal is to get guys and girls familiar with being social on the dance floor and knowing their roles on the dance floor.”

Not only do Blake and Ochoa hope to teach people how to dance, they also hope that their influence runs deeper than that.

“[We’re] basically helping young men like find a respectable point for women and how to treat them,” Ochoa said. “So if you can treat a young lady good on a dance floor and protect her on a dance floor, you can apply those same rules and those same principles off the dance floor.”

Dance partners Danielle Kunz and Josh Geisler were caught off guard by this experience. Geisler thought it would be more like the “cha cha slide” and Kunz thought they’d just be watching Blake and Ochoa dance. However, Kunz said that she really enjoyed learning how to dance and when asked if she would ever go to the Latin Beginnings dance studio to learn more she said, “Yes! That’d be so fun!”