Pam called me today to tell me how her boss was looking for someone to man their writing camp, a camp designed to teach kids from nine through their tweens the basics of writing. Pam called me to laugh about how I handled it last year.
“It’s funny,” she said, “because you thought you did a
terrible job at it, and she wanted to see if you were interested in doing it
again.”
I huffed in my chair, offended. “I did a wonderful job!”
Pam stopped, suddenly more sober than before. “Yes, but you
broke down that week.”
“What are you talking about? It was a great camp!
Everyone said!”
“Well, I know, yes, but you hated it!”
“Only on Wednesday!”
Wednesday was hard.
Kids tend to think they know what they want without thinking further
into consequences. There’s
something admirable in the way they always see the world as purely
positive. They would see the glass
half full rather than half empty. They find the penny on the sidewalk. They would also think it a good idea to pretend to hit one another and pretend
react during free time. The fact
that none of them are trained stunt people doesn’t cross their minds until
someone actually hits another person for real.
Kids are also very critical. My first words when I opened camp were, “what do polar bears
do?” When many of them gave silly answers to be plain silly such as “bake
Alaska” and “dance,” I had to stop and say that they ruined my comedic
timing. They didn’t even want to
hear that they “break the ice!”
The kids didn’t really like my icebreaker, where I gave
groups an object, in which they had to figure out how it related to all of
them. Their imaginations only go
so far, and I blame smart phones* for that. I encouraged them to brainstorm. One group did brainstorm that the beanie baby I gave them
was stupid, and they thought it was stupid. This did not bode well for the week.
Kids will also complain because they think that it’s very adult
to have opinions. Yes, it is hot
in the park. It’s summer. Yes, it is unfair that we have to walk
back to the museum, but it saves gas.
Yes, we have to write, because we’re in writing camp. One of my favorite activities later was
to teach them how to write persuasively.
I made them write letters from a desert island, where they had to
convince the receiver of the message in the bottle to come save them. We had fun throwing bottles at each
other, reading the messages, and then tossing them at someone else. To be fair, they got better at trying
to persuade me to do activities when they complained.
But they grew on me.
They loved talking about Hunger
Games, we all reacted to The Sandlot,
and we played Taboo and Scattergories.
They were really excited to share plots about their stories, and I gave
as much feedback as I could. Some of them even seemed to really enjoy writing, and I loved them best of all. I let
the “educator” roll get to me I guess, because at times, I would stop and try
to force a heart-to-heart like Mr. Feeny.
“Carol!” I’d say to one of the campers as we toured a museum. She’d look at me
expectantly. “You need to write
the next great novel!” And then
she’d roll her eyes at me as if I were crazy.
At the end of the week, after I was talking to one of the
more troublesome kids, I looked at him, smiling. “Eric!” He looked at me, worried. “I’m going to hug you.” He frowned as I stretched out my hands. “Spread your wings and fly, Eric!” I
said, hugging him. He tried to
pull away as he mother laughed at us.
On the bright side, every single kid shared something to read aloud at the end of the week for the parent's showcase. They made me look pretty darn good.
*Did I mention that this was a writing camp for rich
kids? They all had smart
phones. When they finally asked me
what phone I had, they laughed at my diddly Pantech.