Ashley Garcia, 18, left, and Chris Walker, 13, dance together on their own accord during a movement class. Instructor Ehud Krauss, pictured right in red sweatshirt uses music, dance and movement to foster learning, expression and interaction among children with autism.

Wish Book Home

Updates with partial lists of donors:

A very special shopping spree | 02.06.05

Wish Book funds still being accepted | 01.30.05

Gifts lead to happy endings for many | 01.23.05

S.J. students put best foot forward | 01.16.05

Wish Book elf's moving story | 01.08.05

Pals honor late woman with fundraising effort | 01.01.05

Kids rally to raise funds for others | 12.25.04

Dream holiday for Cruz-Mendez family | 12.25.04

Young athletes get new uniforms | 12.18.04

Students master the lesson of giving | 12.11.04

Three brothers respond to Wish Book | 12.04.04


How to fulfill a wish:

Each Wish Book story includes links to donate, so that you can earmark your donations through our secure server.

Donate to the Wish Book Fund.

Print out this form to send your donation by mail.


Questions?

Contact us at wishbook@ mercurynews.com

Email this Wish Book story to a friend

About Wish Book

Staff credits

By TRACIE WHITE / Special to the Mercury News

dance class can be a challenge -- particularly if you can't always control your limbs, don't like to be touched and lose it if someone changes your routine in the slightest bit. Who would have thought that autistic kids would really dig boogying down to pop music?

"It's incredible. I don't know what it is,'' says dance teacher Ehud Krauss, a New York-trained modern dancer who has made a career out of bringing dance to unlikely places, including the jail cells of incarcerated youth.

Eight year-old Alec Robertson, center, dances during a movement class at the non-profit PACE school in Sunnyvale. (Susanna Frohman / Mercury News)

But after a year of teaching dance at PACE, a school for autistic kids in Sunnyvale, even he has been amazed at how these particular students have blossomed under the the soundtrack of the "Lion King'' or the rhythmic pounding of "Who Let the Dogs Out.''

Music and dance are working miracles. A boy who has difficulty walking straight becomes magically coordinated on the dance floor. A teenager who has trouble forming sentences somehow sings with ease.

"It's just been amazing,'' says Marcia Goldman, director of the non-profit school that has an enrollment of about 50 students. "Sometimes when I'm watching my jaw just drops.''

No one really understands how it works, says Goldman. They just know it does. And all you have to do to see it is to look at the kids' faces.

Faces like Trevor's, an 11-year-old dance student who bounds into class one school day at PACE, grinning widely, as he races to join Krauss and his classmates swinging to the musical notes of a children's song about peanut butter and jelly. To his right, 14-year-old James bounces so high with pure glee that he doesn't need a pogo stick. To his left, Alec, 8, gets so excited that he switches from laughter to tears and back again -- all within the first stanza of the song.

Even with all this exuberance, teaching dance to autistic kids isn't easy. You've got to keep on your toes. Limbs fly, moods swing, heads butt. It's a tough group to reach. But somehow Krauss does it.

"I like to teach kids hungry for dance,'' says Krauss. ""And these kids are hungry for dance.''

The school hopes to have Krauss come more often and start working with a new population of children under 6 years old. The cost of a single dance class for a PACE student is $3.50. Donors can provide for a year's worth of dance/movement classes for one child for $178.