At the Halfway Point - Reflections on the Last Few Weeks and June

GREETINGS EVERYONE!!!

It has been a while since I last posted. You'll have to excuse my hiatus. I've been M.I.A. for quite some time now. It’s so hard to believe the month of June is over! Where does the time fly? It feels like I just got here in Mississippi and now half my time is finished. That’s okay. It is has been an unforgettable one month. I have learned SO MUCH. I’ve also had more fun than I would have ever imagined. I love this place, my job, and my friends here.

Well, a lot has happened since I personally last posted over two weeks ago. First I’ll discuss our work at St. Gabriel’s. I can strongly say that our program has evolved into quite a defined and organized structure compared to what we originally started with. Our model has worked extremely well since we experimented with drastic implementations of the first two weeks such as the divided age groups, rotations, and the card system. Slowly but surely we continue to tweak it as we strive for the closest thing to perfection we can conceive (we’re light years away, but I feel we’ve come such a far distance in one month!). By week four, Nina, Josh, and I finally decided it was time to set up a seating chart to assuage the anarchy of kids wandering aimlessly throughout the day. It is now starting to show its effectiveness quite visibly. Everything requires a growing/incubation period. Then it becomes second nature to the kids. As both Nina and Josh described in their last posts, we’ve done a lot of activities from various subjects over the last two weeks. I feel we are doing a stellar job of stressing the academic component of our program. It would have been easy to just set up our camp as a formulaic babysitting ploy. Instead we decided from the get-go to emphasize a rigorous curriculum. It didn’t take long for us to start assigning these kids homework multiple nights a week. WE MEAN BUSINESS! Nina has been doing a phenomenal job teaching them the essential writing skills these kids are going to need for the future. Although it is frustrating and repetitive at times, she is patient to explain and go over the kids work with them time and again. She is exposing vital writing techniques to them that they will be able to apply in all essay writing they do from here on out. Josh has been doing massive work attacking the kids weaknesses and their passions often simultaneously. He has been drilling multiplication with a lot of the kids. But he is also doing a lot of Spanish, especially with the youngest kids, since they seem to like that. His epic Russian Revolution Seminar with the oldest age group is a huge hit that continues to be appealing. As Josh explained in his last post, it is the perfect lesson module of history to serve as a conduit to show the kids they can learn about ANYTHING they set their minds to. My work with Karate has been going really well every Wednesday. I often try to incorporate some other form of physical activity on non-Karate days to help allow the kids to release some of their energy. I’ve done all sorts of activities with the kids outside such as kickball, tag, basketball, dodgeball, outdoor exercises, etc. With the youngest and middle kids on others days, I’ve been teaching with different activities ranging from worksheets and coloring assignments. Last week I tried to teach the kids about the 7 continents, while I’ve been doing American History/ Independence Day lessons for this week. Drawing from the roots of my experiences as a child, I’ve been singing songs with the smaller kids. As I use the lyrics with the CD sing-a-long songs, I am working with reading with the kids too. This week we’ve been going with Patriotic Songs (such as America the Beautiful and The Star Spangled Banner), but I’ve used songs from Lauren Mayer’s First Grade Rocks too. These types of activities help to bring the “fun” to our program. The goal is to make our camp as education AND as fun as possible after all. We’ve been pretty good at doing this too. For example on Father’s Day we had the kids make Father’s Day Cards for nearly half the day. A while ago we did a whole paper plane making workshop with all the kids. As Nina taught her “hamburger model” with the kids, she gave them a cute gummy hamburger treat as well. Of course Josh is always real popular when he busts out the Freeze Dance for the kids at least once a week. All these different fun activities – along with snack time – help make our camp all the more enjoyable for the kids.

This week has been really great too. Monday was a pretty stressful day for me because our planned schedule fell a little out of place, so I ended up having the 5-7 years almost the ENTIRE day. Ouch. Today Vicki Stocking, the Robertson Scholars Program Summer Coordinator, came and visited us at St. Gabriel’s. It was nice that she got a chance to see us in action. Later that night she took all the Robertsons in Mississippi to dinner. The meal was delicious!!! It was great that she took time to visit us. I’m really touched with the Robertson staff in general for actually SHOWING how much they care for us by physically visiting us in person. Wow.

Outside of work, we have been having RIDICULOUS amounts of fun. Funny thing – in Cleveland, Mississippi we were warned that there is nothing to do. Guess what, though? We are NEVER bored. I find myself always entertained. As Nina mentioned in her last post, about ten of our friends came up from New Orleans two weekends ago. We had a crazy good time, and I can’t wait to visit them in New Orleans this upcoming July 4th weekend. The next day we went on a tour of the Mississippi Delta that our mentor here, Dr. Luther Brown (who is the director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State) took us on. This past weekend was a ton of fun too. On Friday, Nina, Michael, and I made Quiche for dinner. It turned out AMAZING!!! People were raving that this was the best meal we had prepared yet. Ha ha, thanks for the recipe Mrs. Woolley! I can’t believe some of the dishes we make turn out so darn good. Either we are cooking prodigies or just super lucky with all the meals we cook (probably the latter…Ha ha). The same routine feelings of clueless uncertainty, at least for me, always mark the beginning of the cooking process as I assist Nina to prepare our meals. But they always turn out to be a GREAT success in the end!! I love it. On Saturday we had our Clarksdale tour. Lee Aylward, who works with Luther Brown at the Delta Center for Culture and Learning, took us on the trip. As Josh mentioned in his last post, we made some really cool stops such as the Delta Blues Museum, the historic Riverside Hotel, Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero, and Cat Head’s Delta Blues and Folk Art store. Later that night we had a wonderful barbeque for our Robertson family + other friends/neighbors. Michael and Hilary were responsible for organizing the barbeque, but Nina and I helped. About 10-20 people were invited other than our Robertson family of 11 people here already. The actual turnout was about 5 other people. But it was still a totally fun night. The next day after attending a church service in Mound Bayou, we went to the Mississippi River and took a nice walk.

Finally I would like to end with a poem that was read at one of the Senior Devotionals that we attend on Fridays.

Be Thankful
By Lola Neff Merritt

Don’t ever forget to be thankful
For every blessing you find on your way;
Each small happiness is a measure
That weighs in for you day after day.
Hold on to the blessings you gather;
Fill your mind with the joy that they give.
Your whole life will take on new meaning…
Build on love and you truly will live.

This was read by one of the seniors that we spend time with on Fridays. It touched me so deeply. With all the difficulties of life, how easy it is for us to forget about how blessed we are. It took this simple message from this dearest elder to remind me just one more time…

-Braveen