Session 4 so far!

I'm a day into the next session and it's already looking pretty good! Not quite what I expected though, which is definitely keeping me on my toes.

I've been placed with the second oldest girls this week, so I have ages 14 and 15.  I'm also doing both Journalism AND Archery for the week.

I only had 2 campers sign up for Journalism, so for the second activity I'm helping out at Archery for 45 minutes, and then getting planning work done for the last 45 minutes.  It's hectic but I'm enjoying the change in scenery.  I'm also liking having only two campers, despite it throwing off my entire lesson plan (!), since I can focus much more on their development.  One of them has so many amazing ideas for what we can put in the newspaper, I can't possible fit it all in!  Plus I had her brother earlier in the summer, so it's great to see her and know that she joined Journalism because her brother loved it so much.

My girls this week are absolutely wonderful (well, my girls are wonderful every week, obviously).  I feel like we can have such deeper conversations which is lovely, even if I am having trouble adjusting to all the conversations about boyfriends.  My 8 year olds didn't really have boyfriends!  Some of the conversations are a little difficult to deal with, since some of these girls have been through things I can never even imagine, so that's definitely pushing me out of my comfort zone.  At the moment I'm just facilitating these conversations, letting them talk and hoping they know they can come to me.  Not sure what else to do!  I'll post more on this at the end of the week, by which point I hope I'll have figured it out...

There are a few issues with cattiness and other things that you find much more with teenagers, but I had a taste of that last session with the 13 year olds at least.  My approach is that I simply won't tolerate it.  I don't care if it was "just jokes, J.K! J.K!", it's not acceptable to say those things.

I had the lovely experience today of giving one of my campers her first Orange Bead (Social Competencies - only bead she didn't have).  She's been to camp several times, and is part of our youth leadership programme, but has never in that time been given a bead for her Social Competencies!  After we awarded all of today's beads she came running over to tell me.  I'm so pleased to have been able to give her the joy she felt at finally completing the "set".

A few funny moments from the day -

Youth Leader : "Oh, you're from the UK?  I thought you were from England?"

Camper : "You are so cool because you were born in England!  Do you know how cool it is to be born in England?!"

Camper : "When the super-bowl was on, I supported England."

Also, there is now another counsellor from England, so there's three of us!  Yay!  So good to hear another English accent around the place.

All the best,
Charli