Work with kids they said. It will be fun they said.
I would never have thought that traveling around Illinois and Wisconsin to different cities every week and working with a new group of kids every time would have impacted me the way it did. This summer I became a member of a vacation bible school team which consisted of five other college aged students and myself. Our job was to travel to a new church every week to do our program for a few hours a day. While every week was very different, the list of things I was learning was constantly growing as the months passed.
1. Three hours is a long time.
Let's just start by saying that the game duck-duck-goose only lasts about five minutes with a group of four-year-old through six-year-old kids and when those five minutes run out, you have to be prepared with numerous backup games. The few hours I spend with the kids sometimes felt like an eternity but somehow, the time was filled.
2. Food is the only thing that matters.
Kids at this age care about one thing and one thing only, food. I should not have been surprised that by the end of the week most kids stated that their absolute favorite with us was snack or dinner time.
3. You're not always right.
While I may have been much older than the kids I worked with, I was definitely not always right. These kids all have different needs and they know themselves more than I ever could, so sometimes I had to give them the power to decide. I do not know everything and something that is hard to grasp in a leadership position.
4. You have to be overly excited.
Kids very rarely love dancing to cheesy songs and listening to stories every day. Most of the time kids just want to run around and never stop. I found myself smiling until my face hurt and acting four times as excited as I wanted the kids to be.
5. This upcoming generation is full of geniuses.
The kids I was able to work with this summer outsmarted me on several occasions. I believe the most embarrassing of them all was when the preschoolers knew how to work the CD-player when I had no clue where the power button was located or when I forgot a story that i had been teaching all summer but the kids remembered it.
6. I found out who I am.
Aside from all of the funny things I learned about how to work with kids, I learned how I work in very stressful situations and manage my interactions with others. For example, I learned patience when every ten minutes a different kid had to use the restroom or how to cooperate well when plans were changed five minutes before the program began. I learned my limits when dealing with other simple mishaps and taught myself how to be calm through a storm of an upset kid. Finally, I learned that kids are the best way to test yourself within interactions with others.
At the end of it all, it is amazing how such a simple interaction can change your life forever and I would not trade this summer for anything in the world.
