At the end of my freshman year of college, I was on the hunt for a new summer job so I could save some money before my sophomore year started. It seems very traditional at this point for a college student to get a summer job, that was what I thought, too, but the job I was given was anything but traditional for someone my age. I worked at a creative writing camp hosted by my university where I was able to teach children how to write poetry, fiction, and any other form of creative writing they were interested in.
The thing about being an educator is that I never realized how much the children would teach me rather than focusing solely on the curriculum I teach them. My classroom was full of 6th and 7th graders and they taught me many things about life and about myself as I got to know them.
1. Never Grow Up
I remember the first thing I told all of my kids is that I loved Disney. I would do many classes just talking about Disney with these kids or writing about Disney. I also got to play games with them that I haven't played since I was their age like Concentration, Down By The Banks, Mafia, and Little Sally Walker. The feeling of being a kid again was something I haven't felt in many years and they showed me that I can still be an adult but I can also be a kid inside and it's acceptable. I think the world makes everyone grows up too quickly, I mean I got my first job at 16 and never had a summer after that that didn't require me to work every day. I haven't felt that feeling of being a kid in so many years and the fact that they played along and loved it really meant something to me.
2. Your Opinion Matters
The children I have gotten to know are crazy intelligent and are very aware of their surrounds, such as the American political climate. These kids would write the most thought provoking stories and poems containing what adults would consider sensitive material. I would read their work and start conversations with them about the world. I had many conversations with these kids over topics such as political parties, feminism, gender and sexual rights, and even sexual orientation, and these kids would always answer me in the most honest yet kind way. They showed me trough their work and their words that you can be young and have an opinion of how the world should run or what should be accepted. I think as adults it's easy to just let the people in power make all of their decisions for us, but these kids understood that if we ever want to see change in the world, we need to make these topics and issues aware and be that change we need to see, whether its through something as simple as a book or something as big as a group conversation. I mean two of my kids wrote a book on how they helped people after the devastation in Puerto Rico, these kids are changing the world.
3. Innocence
As a college student, it's easy to get caught up in the adult world. From doing laundry to studying and working my days away, it got easy to let my innocence leave me as if it was never there. Adults my age like to think that they've lost all of their innocence as they have grown up, but the truth is, we all have some innocence inside of us. It's easy to think that the world has warped us and that adulthood means leaving behind our childhood views of the world. But the truth is, the good we saw in the world as children is still there as adults. That innocence we had where we thought nothing could go wrong is still in the world. The only difference is now that we are all older, we have the ability and power to make that positive change and to show others what optimism looks like.
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