Monday, August 10, 2015

Week 3 Training + Sources

This week we are in Summer Leadership Academy. It's a summer school run by City Year for kids from Kindergarten to 9th grade. We are one of 2 sites that does this summer camp to train corps members. We got our first uniform piece - red shirts!

Today was a lot of games and pushing the students to think about what they are good at, what makes them special, and what they enjoy doing. Our "teacher" was one of the team leaders and my entire team was in the classroom with about ten 5th-9th graders. Mostly 5th/6th grade. There weren't many of them so there was a lot of 1-on-1 time. The teacher would do a game or two, teach about an activity, then we'd sit with the kids and encourage them to do the activity. We broke out into small groups twice. In the afternoon, it was my turn to lead my small group. I think it went pretty well. It was like riding a bike - except remembering how to tutor and present a small activity. We made flags that represented our personalities.

So far the camp hasn't been super well-organized which has been slightly annoying. Once the day got going though, it was fine. I think I was just anxious about how the kids would act and how the dynamic of so many leaders in one room would be coordinated. Otherwise, it has been fun. The kids were quiet at first but then they really started enjoying themselves. There were a few times when they said some weird stuff but none of us really knew what to say or how to approach the situation. But that's the point of this week - to not shy away from the hard conversations and figure out how to instigate them. We all struggled with that but I think now that we finally have kids to apply our training to, it will go better.

We were cooling down after an activity and the teacher said, "Now we're going to do a debate. does anyone know what a 'debate' is?" One student raised his his hand and said, "yeah! that's the fish!"
We had to clarify it was a "DEbate" not "da bait."

 Here are some helpful sources if you want to read up on the education situation.

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