Winter vacation is a time for holidays, family bonding and, most importantly, no school. But with the absence of school there are also no Jumpstart sessions. After spending 6 weeks with a group of student, it felt weird not seeing any of their excited faces for a whole month. Luckily, during the break I was greeted by more familiar smiling faces of my family members. But it didn't mean that I had forgotten the little ones while at home. In my spare time, I was able to break away from the holiday cheer and spent a few hours preparing for the upcoming return to Jumpstart. It seemed as though I had more and better ideas for session this time around. And yes, I did, in fact, have many stares and I was cutting and pasting color pieces of papers together. But if that’s what it takes to ensure our group’s activities are interesting, then you can be sure that I will continue to cut and paste.
I think the toughest part of preparing session materials was not having my group members there to give advice. I didn't have access to very reliable internet and they made communication very limiting. Luckily my phone service was working just fine and I was able to get into contact with my team leader and he was able to give me such great ideas on how to improve my materials. But it still wasn't the same. Fortunately, I was able to use my better judgment. In the end, I was able to improve on the alphabet matching board. They are much more colorful then the previous boards. My idea is that the colors will hopefully help the students to be more engaged. But I guess we shall see.
But since this is the second semester for Jumpstart session for our students, we’re all hoping that sessions will go much smoothly. For the most part, corps members have a better grasp of what is expected of us and the students have become more familiar with Jumpstart. We may still have some kinks to work out, but we will get through it together.
~Ashlee Harvey
Corps member
Team Joy
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