At the beginning of the school year, everything is new. New classes, new teachers, new people and, oh, that new girl in the music suite.

“Who is that?” you may ask yourself. “Is that a new student?” Nope. She’s Danielle Quinn, a homeschooler who decided to try something new and participate in the Albert Lea High School fall musical, “Footloose”.

“If high schoolers can do it, then why can’t I?” she said.

Quinn has a passion for theater, so she decided to try out for the school musical. Her father, Matthew Quinn, first introduced her to theater when he was an actor in theater productions and later when his career path switched to directing and taking care of the lights for plays and musicals. She said she has enjoyed acting since she was a little girl, and her dad influenced her with his jobs.

“I’ve been around theater all my life,” Quinn said.

She started working backstage at plays and musicals, helping the actors and keeping the show going. As a child, she auditioned for parts in theater productions, but she never got one. Instead, she used her acting skills to participate in skits and plays at her church. That is, until she tried out for the musical “Happy Days” that played at the Marion Ross Theater this summer and was cast as Joanie Cunningham, the sister of the original TV show’s Richie Cunningham. There, Diane Heaney, choir teacher at Albert Lea High School, who played her mother in the musical, told her she should try out for this year’s school musical, “Footloose”.

“She’s a lot of fun,” Heaney said. “She has lots of energy.”

So Quinn decided to go for it and audition, even though auditioning for a school play is sometimes unnerving. But being in a high school activity as a homeschooler comes with its own difficulties, and she knows this full well.

“It’s really nerve-wracking at first because you don’t know if people will like you or not,” Quinn said.

She first experienced this a couple years ago when she joined volleyball. She joined because one of her friends did, and she knew she could do it but it was scary anyway. Quinn feared she’d be made fun of and left out because she was a homeschooler.

“(A homeschooler) could be viewed as an outsider,” said Chris Chalmers, the activities director at Albert Lea High School.

As someone who isn’t involved in the day-to-day lives of other students, a homeschooler could have difficulty fitting in with a certain group. This wasn’t so with Quinn, though.

“You make friends so easy, especially during the play,” she stated.

Chalmers encourages homeschoolers to participate in high school activities. It’s beneficial for all students and is a great way to get involved.

“They should just come and be themselves,” Chalmers said about homeschoolers.

For Quinn, being herself as a homeschooler in a group means acting crazy because people don’t know her. She said it’s just something fun to do, and she can do that during this musical season because she is a homeschooler who got a part in the school musical. Though Quinn didn’t get the part she wanted in “Footloose”, she still has a place there with all the other high schoolers to participate.

“Everybody’s important in the show,” Heaney said.

Quinn is the first homeschooler to participate in the musical, though that won’t give her any special treatment. As a participant in the musical, she has to work hard like everyone else to put on the best musical possible.

“I’m glad she’s involved,” Heaney said.

So when you see someone in the music suite who you’ve never seen in the hallways at school, just remember she’s Danielle Quinn, a homeschooler who leaped right into Albert Lea High School’s musical, and she only has one thing to say:

“Homeschoolers are cool,” she said.