The Club

I will never want to go to the Boys and Girls club alone. I like children and have worked with them in Sunday school classes, various summer programs and camps, and countless nights of babysitting but I still don’t feel terribly comfortable around them or that they every particularly take to me. I’m a pretty shy person and I know when you’re working with children of any age that you have to be able to open up and really put yourself out there whether to just have fun with them or have a serious discussion. So, seeing as how this’ll be a bit of a stretch for me, I think going with at least one other person – even if we split up once we arrive – will still help me to feel calmer and better able to loosen up. Also, I don’t have a car so while I could bike, it would be much more convenient if I could bum a ride with someone (I apologize for that!).

Personally, I hope that working with these kids will help me to fight back more of this shyness and become more confident with myself in this sort of role. As for accomplishments, I’d just like to help somebody have a better day whenever I go in. That’d be good for me.

I have worked with kids both individually and in groups and, really, it depends almost totally on the kids on which works better for me. I’m not the most sport-oriented person in the world but I am willing to, of course, play games or at the very least referee them if my skills prove truly deplorable :p . I’d be happy to go in for up to two-ish hours on a week day but on, say, Fridays or Saturdays, I could probably go in for more if necessary. Really, the timing just depends on how lenient my professors feel like being homework-wise from week to week.

As for activities, it really doesn’t matter much to me seeing as it is all so dependent on the kids and the situation. When I worked as a camp counselor it was always necessary to have a structured plan to things or the kids would get antsy and there was always a good handful of them so if we didn’t keep to the schedule of things then chaos of who wanted to do what would break out. However, for babysitting I pretty much never went in with a game plan and would end up doing everything from pretending to be a pilgrim at a marketplace to the simple chase the kid around the couch until he gives up for another hour of mind-numbing SpongeBob DVDs. I’m willing to do what the kids need/prefer though it’ll take me a bit to really loosen up and get into whatever it is that we’re doing. This shouldn’t really be that big of a deal for me or my shyness, it’s just an annoying tendency I have and would definitely like to rid myself of (you’re not supposed to leave a dangling participle).


Till then