People City Mission
While studying at Concordia University our education program included a class that dove straight into the issue of diversity. This class allowed me to think in greater depth how I plan to teach diverse students in my future classroom. Diversity is a rising topic in schools and I know that at some point in my career I will be faced with an extremely diverse classroom. In order to prepare for this I have attempted to place myself in settings that have challenged me to critically think about teaching diverse students. My experiences include working at People City Mission where I helped educate and facilitate the children living in the homeless shelter with their families. This experience allowed me to connect the lives of my students which was vastly diverse. It was a challenging experience that I am very proud to have shared with these wonderful children.
Along with People City Mission I have had experiences in my field experiences, my summer career where I teach swim lessons and coach swim team, as well as His Kids Camp which I explain in further depth below.
His Kids Camp
His kid’s camp was one of the most memorable and eye opening experiences I have participated in my educational program. Prior to this experience I did not have much first hand experience with working with exceptional persons. I have had limited experiences in my prior education and activities were I was able to share small amounts of times with exceptional people, but never shared the entire weekend. During my time at this camp I was paired with a camper whose name was Frank. I shared many experiences with him while we took part in the many camp activities. Spending the weekend at camp with him helped me to better understand the lives of exceptional people.
When we first arrived at camp on Friday evening we all met with each other for a debriefing and training. We discussed many of the things that we covered in class including the behaviors and actions that we would expect. Each of us were designated a camper and given their files which explained their personalities along with medical information. Past buddies of this camper also left valuable information about activities and other things that the campers liked to do. This served as very useful information to allow us to become better acquainted with our campers. Along with this we were told to be excited and remain positive with our campers. There were going to be a large number of campers, somewhere close to 30. This advice was a very helpful tip and allowed for our positivity to spread and to help the campers enjoy their experience.
When Frank first arrived I immediately introduced myself to him and we became acquainted very quickly. There were some things that I could immediately see and understand about his behavior when we first met. One thing was that he was very limited with his speech and mostly nodded or smiled. He was very friendly and was up to participate in many activities with me. Once all of the campers arrived we started to take part in different activities including archery, scavenger hunts, singing, campfires, kickball, and carving pumpkins. Each camper was different; some were very active while others were more reserved. Our encouragement to engage in activities was a very helpful and motivated many to do things they would not do otherwise. Throughout the day we grew much closer with our campers and learned much more about them.
Each day was full of activities that both the buddies and campers enjoyed. As we grew tired from all of our activities we returned back to our bunks. There was a large number of male campers and only a few male buddies to help prepare for bed. We remained very busy before bed and got every camper situated. My own buddy had a breathing machine that he was able to set up while I helped out other campers get ready for bed. It took a little while but every camper got good sleep, judging from the snores. When we woke up the campers were ready to get moving and do some more activities.
After participating in many more activities we had to say goodbye to our campers. Many did not want to leave yet but we remained positive and told them to come back soon. We exchange some memories before we left and gave a couple hugs and pictures. It was a great experience to meet Frank and find that he was such a fun and caring guy. Spending this weekend with all of these exceptional people really gave me an experience that I would never have imagined. I hope that this experience will be very useful as I continue to work with exceptional persons as a teacher.
