We joined our IMPACT club as leaders in early March 2014. At the time, the club -- which had traditionally been a club for high school students -- was trying to recruit new members, as its numbers had dwindled. But somehow they got confused and ended up promoting their club to a class full of fifth graders, who then all showed up. We started helping as leaders just two weeks before the fifth graders arrived, and the leader who we had come to replace left shortly thereafter -- and so it was chaos, this crazy time of transition in which most of the older members left, exasperated at having their club overrun by a bunch of 12-year-olds. (And understandably so... some days we felt the same!)
Thankfully, three fabulous junior leaders stuck it out and stayed with us through the painful transition. The kids, hyper and dysfunctional as they were, did a project that we were really proud of. And by the time we took a break for the summer, I was almost sorry to see them go.
So in September we had our kickoff, after two months of quiet, and it was wild and fun and encouraging and discouraging, all wrapped into one. Now we've settled into the regular weekly rhythm of meetings -- every Wednesday from 7 to 9, some Mondays too when we need them -- and it's about the same. It's almost all the same kids, and we know them better, and they know us. I care about them more than I thought would be possible... it's just fun to be with them, and I am thankful for that.
And we're better leaders, too. We have fallen into a better rhythm of meeting ahead of time with our junior leaders, face-to-face instead of just planning over Facebook messages, and that works better and lets us feel more prepared. Last week the kids made maps of Lupeni representing all the things they thing are strengths and weaknesses of the community. Tonight they'll do skits acting out the things they think are problems as a way to try and analyze the problems' causes and effects. After that we'll choose one of the problems and build a service-learning project off of it -- we'll keep you posted on how it goes! And on Saturday we're heading up to the ropes course, with fingers crossed for good weather, to spend a day bonding as a group. Or that's what we're hoping for at least.
It just feels less frantic this year. We still make mistakes in Romanian, and Jack and I still debrief every meeting all the way home, including a lot of, "Um, let's not do that again." The kids still have attention spans of about 3 minutes before one of them punches another or interrupts or makes a rude joke. But we're making progress, slowly but surely, and I don't fear going anymore... in fact, I actually look forward to it.
So here's to IMPACT... and to us growing into it as we enter this second year.
A few pictures from the first meetings of the year:
No comments:
Post a Comment