Northwood College for Girls’ Shuffle for Comic Relief!

Every year the girls and staff at Northwood College for Girls raise funds for either Red Nose Day or Sport Relief.

And this year the new Head, Zara Hubble, was determined to do more than the usual ‘dress up day’ in junior school, and senior school’s ‘cake bake’!

Mrs Hubble explained: “My aim was to create an ambitious project that our whole school could get involved in – one that required dedication, focus and hard work, but is also lots of fun!”.

With this in mind, Mrs Hubble, set the school a special challenge –  to create their own NWC Shuffle Dance that the 850 pupils (aged 3 – 18) and staff members could perform in synchronisation on the school hockey pitch. The girls embraced the idea and voted for their favourite dance music – ‘Everyday I’m Shuffling’ – and the PE teachers set about choreographing the shuffle steps. An intensive training schedule commenced with pupils taught the shuffle during PE lessons and staff members donning their trainers during their break times.

A fundraising target of £1,000 was set and parents were invited to donate money with the promise that the final shuffle performance would be filmed and shared with all.

On 11 March 2019, the day of the official NWC Shuffle arrived and luckily coincided with a special guest to school, the Olympic Gold and Bronze medal winning English field hockey player, Kate Richardson-Walsh OBE.  Visiting the school as a Squadkit Ambassador, Kate was more than happy to get involved and to the delight of the girls, she launched the NWC Shuffle!
The weeks of practise and hard work paid off as the girls, teachers and support staff gave an outstanding performance.

Eight-year-old pupil, Siena, commented: “The Shuffle is the best dance ever, we should do it every lunchtime!”

Mrs Hubble added: “The performance today was perfect, I am so proud of our girls and our staff who wholeheartedly took on this challenge and exceeded my wildest dreams, as has our fundraising figure, which has already reached £3,000!”.

At the end of her visit, Kate concluded: “I had so much fun today, great to meet so many amazing staff and pupils who are so invested in getting the very best out of each other.” Quoting the Shuffle as the favourite part of her day, she concluded, ‘team work definitely made the dream work’.