Coming Of Age Draft

I stared at the questionnaire with a blank mind. It seemed as if the questions on the form were some different language or something. I continued to stare and stare…and stare even more. After what seemed to be an eternity of staring, I say to myself, “I’m not well suited for this kind of position. I can’t even answer one question”. I was stuck on one question of the questionnaire—the first one. Who knew a question like “Why do you want to become a Junior Leader” could be so difficult. I thought to myself again, “If I cannot even do the simplest thing of filling out a questionnaire about myself and my contributions, how can I be the authority figure I want to be?” After minutes of reflecting on my qualities, I finally find a way to answer the first question with truth. After answering the first question, I broke my clueless mind habit and answered the rest of the questions with ease.

Time passed by quickly, and it was my first day on the job. Well, not really a job, considering I was not getting paid. But it seemed like a job because I was an authority figure. So I entered the park’s pavilion with my older sister, who was my senior leader, along with that “junior-leader-look”, I called my walk. I had an anxious feeling inside of me. There were many rooms that served its own purpose. There was a game room for video games, a Big Room that held board games and a foosball table, and another room that had lots of Arts and Crafts tables along with a pool table. When I decided to “explore” the park, I walked out of the pavilion and saw a stretch of tennis courts and basketball courts. There was also a playground also. I saw many of the kids playing tag with each other, going up and down the red slide that swirled, swinging on the monkey bars, and running over the bridge that connected the playground together. As I walked around, I glared with a smile at the other junior leaders and said in my head “Hey, I’m one of them”. At the same time I felt completely oblivious on what I was suppose to do. I felt this way because I was starting my junior leader position after 3 weeks summer fun started. So while all the other junior leaders knew what was going, knew what to do, knew the schedule, and knew everything else in between, I was the only one who was absent-minded. I felt like I was the “new kid on the block” and didn’t know what to do as a junior leader. Then Mr. Erin, one of the administrators for the summer fun program came up to me. He told me “Make sure you take care of your group. Don’t let them do anything bad. When they get hurt make sure you help them. Just make sure you take responsibility, okay?” I answered, “Yeah…” with a bit of confidence.

Assembly started at 9:00 am in the Big Room. I heard the song, “Heart and Soul” being played on the piano when I entered the room. There was an upright piano that laid in the back of the room where two girls were playing the song. The room smelled like the outdoors to me. I looked at the all the kids as they were getting ready to line up. I never thought that kids could be so hyper and loud. They were all bundled up with scarves, jackets, long-sleeves, and socks. They were all hyped up because they, along with the senior and junior leaders, were all going to Ice Palace. Then I heard my first task I had to do, “Ms. Traci, make sure all the kids are in a single-file line and make sure they have a partner to sit on the bus,” my senior leader ordered me. It seemed so easy when my leader said it to me, but I thought it would be difficult to do. Then I realized what Mr. Erin meant when he said “take responsibility”.

So I asked the group two students if they all had partners to ride with on the bus in an animated voice. Right then and there, the chaos started. One girl was complaining, “I’m sitting with Anela,” while the another insisted, “Noooooo! I’m sitting with Anela.” It was a bunch of complaining and insisting going back and forth, and back and forth. For some reason, at an instant, I knew what to do to resolve the argument.

I immediately said to both girls in somewhat of an animated voice, “It doesn’t matter who sits with who. It is just a bus ride that won’t take long. Just learn to get a long.” In my mind, I was proud of myself because I took control and responsibility like what Mr. Erin told me to do.

So we all jumped into the bus and after a good twenty minutes, we arrived at Ice Palace. When I got inside of Ice Palace, its cold air struck me. I smelt the melting cheese from the nachos at the snack bar. I was more hungry than eager to skate because of the aroma. Although the aroma was good, chaos started again from the kids. When my group, group two, got all there skates, I had to tie each skate for them. It was very time-consuming. But what can you expect? Most seven-year olds can’t tie shoes. After I applied my own skates, I went onto the ice rink to help watch some kids if they were struggling or if they got hurt. Many of the kids did not know how to skate. I ended up helping a lot of kids skate. I held their hand and skated with them. When kids fell on their butt and were crying, I helped them up and stopped their crying (sort-of). Everywhere I looked, there was something that I needed to do to help another kid—whether they wanted me to skate with them or help them up.

I got the hang of being a junior leader after a few minutes. Every time something went wrong or someone needed something, I automatically knew what to do. It was like this every single day. Each day, I learned new and better ways in being a junior leader. Overtime, I learned not to be so soft on the kids. I didn’t allow them to take advantage of my niceness. On certain days of summer fun, I had to raise my voice because someone was not cooperating. For example, there was this one girl who was the sassiest girl on the planet, I would describe. She didn’t like playing the summer fun games that my senior leader planned for the group. But she liked going on the playground. One time she told me, “I can’t play the game because I can’t go under the sun because I’m gonna get sick. That’s what my mom said.”

I replied with doubt, “Are you sure? Cause if you can’t go under the sun, then I expect that you will not play on the playground…right?”

She said back to me in a sassy and semi-yelling way, “Yeeeeeesssssss. Yeah…Yeah…Yeah.” So I watch her throughout the whole time the other kids where playing what I thought was such a fun game. Surprisingly, she stayed in the shade. When the game was all done, it was playground time. What did the sassy girl do? She ran in line and said, “Yay! Playground!”

I looked back at her and pointed out, “I thought you said you couldn’t go under the sun. And the playground is right under the sun!”

She said, “I didn’t say that”

I replied, “So you lied to me. You lied to me?”

She didn’t say a word. From that, I suspected that she was lying. I kept in mind that I couldn’t show my soft side. I was not supposed to let her take the easy way out by not punishing her. It was my responsibility to teach her a lesson and let her learn from her mistake. Because I was authority, I gave her a time-out during lunch time.

Way before I started as a junior leader in summer fun, I didn’t know have a lot of responsibility roles. Usually when I saw kids doing something inappropriate, I would just let it go because I would feel bad for them if I were to tell them “what you are doing is wrong”. When summer fun officially ended, I had a sense of humility. I learned better ways of responsibility, thought about the better of the kids, and disciplined the kids in some way. Now, I have a glimpse on what to expect in my future career as a teacher. I had a sense of accomplishment in me by developing in the authority figure I’m striving to become.