Disgusting!

Jumpstart has definitely involved a lot more work than I originally anticipated, but material creation has also evolved into my weekly therapy time. There is just something, oh so relaxing and de-stressful about siting on the floor of you room and cutting things out of construction paper. However the stress might return when it comes time to laminate and you keep getting the laminating paper stuck in your hair. But jumpstart is not only about the material creation, actually being in the classroom has taught me a lot about myself, and the way I react to situations. In the beginning, keeping the level of enthusiasm for learning high in the classroom was a struggle. The children were either too enthusiastic, wanting to hold and grab everything, or completely uninterested in the totally awesome thing I was trying to demonstrate.  As time went on however I began to understand the children a lot better and I could tell what was going to become a huge distraction and what was going to work.

Probably the proudest moment of my time in Jumpstart (and probably also the most Disgusting!), was when we read Max’s Dragon Shirt.  Disgusting was one of the key terms that we were supposed to introduce to the children and my group member Amalia showed us the eww way of saying disgusting, so that the children would pick up on the word better. Suffice to say, it worked, or I thought it did, I couldn’t be sure because I had yet to hear them put the word into action. Later that day, during my CAT hours, I was lining the children up for the bathroom. Although I never help them go to the bathroom, it was my job to make sure they stood in a line outside of the bathroom until there were stalls available. From against the wall I heard an outcry of squeaky voices screaming, “DISGUISTING! DISGUISTING! DISGUISTING!” When they came out of the bathroom and told me what they were screaming about I had never felt more proud and disgusted than at that time. What was important to me about this experience was the fact that the children had learned a vocabulary word and understood it to the point of being able to use it accurately in a real-life situation. It is for moments like this that I feel all the work and time that I put into Jumpstart is worth it, because they are actually learning.


~Sinead Brennan
Corps Member
Team Inspiration