How We Work
We inspire and transform the lives of young people through the power of dance and access to higher education. In Orange County and through our national licensed partners, we use a long-term approach grounded in exploratory dance education to foster the confidence and gifts within each child to innovate, communicate, and collaborate – skills necessary for success in school and in life.
LEARN ABOUT OUR:
How We Work
We inspire and transform the lives of young people through the power of dance and access to higher education. In Orange County and through our national licensed partners, we use a long-term approach grounded in exploratory dance education to foster the confidence and gifts within each child to innovate, communicate, and collaborate – skills necessary for success in school and in life.
LEARN ABOUT OUR:
Theory of Change Model
The Wooden Floor makes a deep, long-term investment in students’ 10-year journey from elementary school to college. Our holistic model serves students year-round, afterschool with dance, academic, college/career readiness, and family support programs, free of charge.
Dance education and performance are core transformational elements through which our youth change the way they think about themselves and develop the ability to reach their full potential. In the dance studio, a rigorous 10-level curriculum develops self-knowledge, which evolves into self-confidence, leadership, cooperative learning, creative problem solving, and joy.
Academic, College and Career Readiness programs ensure that our students have fundamental academic and life skills to access and succeed in higher education.
Our Family Services program takes a case management approach to counseling, crisis intervention, workshops and social service referrals to help families overcome socioeconomic hardships and navigate a path toward economic progress and self-sufficiency.
These core programs comprise our creative youth development model and copyrighted Theory of Change.
OUR IMPACT
20
Consecutive graduating classes where 100 percent of our seniors graduated high school on time and immediately enrolled in higher education
95,000+
Youth that have been positively impacted by The Wooden Floor’s mission
80%
Of our 100+ alumni in college and universities around the world receive scholarships from The Wooden Floor
475
Students currently enrolled at The Wooden Floor Main Street location and Depot at Santiago
OUR STRATEGIC
VISION
2009: The Wooden Floor’s Board of Directors and staff embarked on a significant strategic planning process, resulting in an ambitious 10-year Strategic Vision 2010-2020. Our organizational strengths in leadership, management, and fiscal position brings us to this time when intentional growth and advancement are needed due to three reasons; our record of student success fueled our need to expand current programming, our realization of the rapidly changing college access landscape for our students, and our history of turning away 80% of children who line up to enroll due to space constraints.
2015: The Wooden Floor signed its first licensed partner, CityDance, a recognized leader of high-quality dance education for at-risk students in Washington, DC. The Wooden Floor provides fee-based consulting, training, and curriculum on its model, and The Wooden Floor’s copyrighted Theory of Change and programmatic elements will be implemented in their entirety by CityDance, with flexibility to adapt the curriculum, in order to meet the needs of the community it serves.
2017: The Wooden Floor opened a second location at Depot at Santiago, Tustin-based C&C Development’s new 70-unit workforce housing development. In 2018, Depot at Santiago served an additional 100 students, for a total of nearly 500 students served year-round.