Here are a few things that you should know since my last post:
There are a total of 10 people on my team. Molly-the team leader, Henry, Jacob, Alex, Britney, Sam, Chloe, Theda, Maria, and me. This will be my team until November. The last picture ya’ll say was my temporary team. Now it’s permanent.
We had a short project in Montour, IA during our in-service training. I wrote a poem about it in my last post. In case any of you were wondering about the last line of my poem, I said I was “still ambivalent.” I meant that I was ambivalent about the project itself. We were cutting down young trees that looked healthy. I guess these trees were invasive (!?!) I just couldn’t tell.
Currently, my team and I are cabin leaders at Sherman Lake YMCA Outdoor Center (SLYOC). Our job is to supervise the students from dinner until breakfast. This means that we sleep in the same cabin as the students and make sure they are behaving. I gotta admit. I was looking forward to doing some physical work like cutting down trees, painting buildings, or making trails. But this project is growing on me. For example, SLYOC tries to teach the campers 4 main principles: Honesty, Caring, Respect, and Responsibility. When you think about it, so many of what we all believe to be the “right” way to live and behave can stem from HCCR. I can’t wait to have more moments and opportunities to tell these young kids to be more honest, caring, respectful, or responsible. I think it can get corny sometimes, always telling kids to be more HCCR. Or when we play dodgeball—telling them that they need to be more caring and apologize to anyone they hit in the face. But it does make sense. One of my teammate put it nicely. When asked what she hoped to get out of the project, she said that she wanted to be able to use these experiences to examine HCCR in her life and to see how she can improve in these areas.
If you had to ask me what I’m hoping to get out of this project—I want to be able to communicate HCCR to the campers in an effective and interesting way that doesn’t make me sound corny. Observing all of the YMCA staff, they really do “talk down” to the students. But they don’t talk down in a bad way. It’s not like they are treating the 5th and 6th graders like they kindergarten-ers. Rather, they aren’t using big words. When they explain HCCR to students, it isn’t really long-winded. It’s more of trying to get the students to talk things out and solve situations on their own. During our training, we learned the more ideal method of dealing with conflict. When there are two kids who have beef with each other, take the two of them aside separately. Ask them what the problem is and then tell them what your problem is. Then ask them how you can help them. The point is to get the students talking and to do as much listening as possible. I’m still trying to learn this method. At times, I still feel like I’m talking to the students in sentences that are too long.
So that’s what’s up with me right now. So far, I’ve been the cabin leader for 3 different sets of students—about 8-10 students each time. I’ll be here at the SLYOC until early May. I’ll try to get some pictures in my next post.
Peace
