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Jun 11, 2004
Head is spinning
Man it's been a crazy week. I've actually had too much to write about. First of all, Sun/Monday at camp were awesome, and I still haven't written that up. I've been wanting to write about the death of Ronald Regan, and haven't gotten to that. Now a bunch of friends are posting deep discussion threads on their blogs. I can't get to it all. It's cause I can't write at work. So yeah, enough excuses. I'm gonna try and do camp and Regan today, and maybe a trip to the library tomorrow to addressJuliet's post on single women. camp Children. Not my strong point at all. About 3 years ago, I had never worked with kids under Jr. High age. To that point, I had taught VBS to Jr. Highers twice, and had logged two weeks of Jr. High church camp. It was hard, but it was good. But, in 2002, I volunteered to help out with VBS at UCC. But, most of my time was spent in the balcony or on cream of tarter runs, so no big deal. The following winter, I happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and got drafted to help out with Frizdaze, which was a monthly outreach to elementary school kids. I really enjoyed it, and ended up happily volunteering for future Fridaze's. So yeah, it was good. So I have camp expirence. And I have expirence with elementary kids. So, when Shannon asks me (if not for Shannon Wentz, I don't think I would ever have gotten involved with children's ministry) if I would help out with Starter camp, I was glad to do so. And the point of all that was . . . in spite of my previous expirence, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. Playing with kids for 2 hours on a Friday night is easy. Supervising them for an entire 24 hour period is very difficult. It's really one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I really have new respect for teachers, daycare workers, and others who work with children on a daily basis. I can also see why they really enjoy it. I never realized how tiring answering questions and giving permission was. With Jr. Highers, you kinda know when they are messing with you. For example, bathroom runs. You kinda know when a someone in Jr High really needs to go or if they are trying to get out of a session or trying to stay up a little later. With first and second graders, I really wasn't sure. And I didn't want to take a chance because you hear of all of those horror stories where a teach won't let them go and they really have to so they end up wetting themselves and are emotionaly scarred for the rest of their lives. Transitions are really hard with this group too. I found with this group that the hard part isn't so much keeping attention, like it is with older people, but with getting thier attention. Even harder was lights out and wakeup time. Getting them to go to sleep was hard. Getting them up was easy, but getting them ready for breakfast was CHAOS!!!!! I was pretty tired after that. But the hardest, most stressful point of the weekend came after breakfast. For the entire weekend, I was responsible for a group of 5 boys. After breakfast, we took a nature walk with out groups. Simple, right. HA! I remember back in college I when I was directing a drama team I directed a monologue called "The Substitute Sunday School Teacher." It was just one person on stage, acting like they are subbing for sunday school for a really young group. She's in over her head, and most of the skit is lines right on top of each other, such as "Johnny, get off of that chair, Timmy stop pulling Jenny's hair, no Bobby, those cookies are for later." Anyway, that's kinda how I felt during the walk. My transcript would go something like, "No, we aren't going swimming till after lunch. You don't have to worry about bees unless you scare them. Guys, we need to stay together. No, it's not lunch time yet, we just had breakfast. I promise you we will let you know when it's time to go swimming. C'mon guys, lets stay together. Don't throw rocks towards each other. Maybe we can go on the playground later on . . . " and so on. Just constant. Then, one kid was scared to go into the woods, so we had to go somewhere else, but the other 4 didn't understand why. Eventually, we ended up at the pond and just threw rocks in the water. After we went back in, I was so tired. From wakeup to that point, I just felt like I was in over my head. After that point though, things kinda calmed down for me. As clueless as I felt, they kids were very encouraging. Throughout the day they would say some very nice things, would give me hugs and that kinda stuff. If there is one thing that I learned, or I guess more accurately relearned, is that you don't really have to have a clue as to whats going on for God to use you. Even as I knew nothing about working with kids, I was able to have an impact on them. Really, I guess I had no impact on them, but God was working on them. I was more of a prop than anything. As much as I learned, I still know nothing about kids. It's good though. I hope I can go back. posted
by Unknown @ 12:39:00 PM |
