My First Group

Monday October 27, 2008
The Group: Holy Spirit College (Catholic High School)
The age: Year 9
Numbers: 11 groups of 15 (about 160 campers), 12 teachers

Wow so first group all on my own. Year nine – phew. It didn’t take long to realize they were going to be a whole different ball of wax than the year three and four kids I had spent the last two weeks with.

I had to be firm, I had to be confident, I had to be consistent and not let down. My biggest challenge was just getting them to stop talking and listen to my instructions. After being in the classroom, I have come up with several strategies for getting the attention of younger kids, but all would be inappropriate with this age group. For the most part just starting to talk would work but yeah, there are always “those few.” :-P

So the day began with Monday morning breakfast and devotions before we moved into setting up for the group, which includes many various jobs. The group arrived at 10:30 (half an hour early) but by the time they had their bags set down and were all in the meeting room for their “welcome to camp talk,” we were back on schedule!

Since it is such a large group, the girls are staying up at Koolona, about a five minute walk from Waterslea, where the boys are staying, where all the meals are being held and the activities are being run from. So after the talk, given by Julie, I helped walk the girls up to Koolona to drop off their stuff and get ready for their first activity of the day.

Back to Waterslea for a hectic lunch! 170 is a lot of people!! Apparently the dinning room can by set to seat 200 but I don’t know how that would work as you can barely squeeze behind the chairs now. The first meal is always the craziest, especially with this many people! But it all worked out and activity session 1 started on time at 1:30.

My first activity was orienteering. I think I have already explained this but basically they are given a map and are set out to find different wooden markers around the site and record the name of the bird written on the marker. For the older kids, we also give them a compass; have them take a bearing when the find the marker and then record the man made object at that bearing.

Before introducing orienteering, I sat them in a circle and went through their names and had them tell me something interesting about themselves, which most of them struggled with. I didn’t actually care if they told me something interesting or not I just wanted some time to repeat their name in my head over and over!!!

I also went ahead and told them about my eyes and how they might not think I’m looking at them . . . younger kids don’t seem to have as much of an issue with it but I could tell it could be one with this group so figured I’d get that out there from the start. Kind of funny cause then one of the girl’s interesting things was “I have the same eye problem as you” huh.

So yeah, orienteering went pretty well. It’s a pretty easy activity to run once you explain it. Did a debrief at the end where they choose a word from a pile and used it in a sentence to describe their experience – some where better than others but that is to be expected. Also asked them about their team work within their groups. . .

Afternoon tea then onto activity two – canoeing. Ohhhhh if an activity could crash and burn wow yeah. Just a mess. Lots of factors contributed to this hectic, chaotic canoe session! I would say “unorganized” would sum it up pretty well.

Since there are 11 activity groups this week a lot of the activities are doubled up – meaning two groups are there at the same time. So instead of the usual one instructor out with their 15 kids + someone in the power boat, it was 2 instructors and 30 kids. It was crazy. Could have gone alright had we just split and taken our groups separate ways instead of trying to keep them together. I won’t go into too much detail now but we’ll just say it was a learning experience! Then after we got off the water and the canoes stacked away the kids pretty much headed off, leaving paddles . . . It was 5:00 so the session was technically over but that didn’t give a chance to debrief at all. I’ve decided I’m going to debrief in the morning just cause I think we need some closure on that – or maybe at least I do!! Sometimes things seem a lot worse when you are in charge, I’d like to think that’s the case but I don’t know!

Pretty hot! It was hanging around 90*F and it’s still about 85*F in our lovely, non air-conditioned home!

We have a fourth house member this week: Jess. I’ve heard about Jess every since I got here and I finally got to meet her this weekend! She worked here for nearly three years before heading over to France to work on a camp and then to England to be with her boyfriend. She is home for a month so she can get a work visa to go back to England and while she’s here she is working at Shoalhaven and staying with us! She’s really nice and is an awesome and most welcomed fourth housemate!!!