My First Year as a Summer Camp Teacher

Summer camp is over! It started July 7 and ran until August 29; a total of 8 weeks.

If I've learned anything from my first year as a summer camp teacher, it's that, while I can successfully plan and run an 8 week long summer camp, there were definitely some learning curves in a few areas.

Let's talk about it!

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Parents

Probably the biggest challenge of summer camp was dealing with parents. As an evening teacher and university T.A., I have next to no interaction with my students' parents, but as a summer camp teacher, I had a lot more than I was expecting. Some moments were nice like when I got to chat in German to one of the dads, but there were other moments however, that were...new territory for me.

As an evening teacher and T.A., I have absolutely nothing to do with meal times, but as a summer camp teacher I do in the sense that I set the start and end times for it.

As the schedule I made laid out, there was a 15 minute long snack time (often ran longer) and a 30 minute long lunch time (was a hour long on Fridays). This means in a 6 hour day, the students had about 45 minutes in total to munch away, which played out to be enough time for them.

There were also days where the activities centered around food, food science week specifically but not exclusively, and so they ate more snacks and goodies throughout some lessons.

I wasn't expecting to be any more involved beyond that, especially since their lunch time was also my lunch time/prep period as it is for many teachers. There were some challenges however, with parents who wanted me to be more involved in their child's eating habits such as reminding them to eat, telling them what to eat, how much to eat, etc. This, eventually, resulted in me writing a daily note of what their child ate while at camp every single day for the whole summer.

While this was something I was open to doing for them, it was hard to get feedback like "My child ate nothing yesterday" when I know they did, especially because there were days when I was hand feeding some of the little ones to make sure they were eating enough for their parents' standards.

I got in my feelings about it some days, thinking "Why do they think would I let their child eat nothing for an entire day?".

In hindsight, I know it wasn't personal towards me, but rather simply out of concern for their child as they entrust them to the care of someone that's not them. It's a challenging experience for parents too.

I've said this time and time again though, I never quite enjoy when the teacher-parent boundary is crossed, especially since I'm pretty sure I don't want my own children. These eating related challenges were definitely crossing over into parent territory for me, and I much prefer to simply be an educator. With the littles though, I understand that there has to be overlap in some cases.

That said however, there was a moment when the teacher-parent boundary was crossed and it made my heart swell. One morning, one of my kiddos came in with her hair down when it's usually all done up in an adorable style. Her mom explained to me that she wouldn't let her do her hair this morning because she said that she wanted Miss Hannah to do her hair with the accessories she brought in. I nearly died from the cuteness overload in that moment. I, of course, did her hair in these adorable braided pigtails with the cutest ever hair ties that had pink fluffy pom-poms on them. We also added some sparkly pink hair clips to hold her baby hairs back. In this moment, I was a hypocrite, but can you blame me?

I had another parent interaction over the summer that stood out to me. There was a moment when a parent picked up their child early, with no prior notice, as we were walking back to the centre from the park. They decided to just park on the side of the road, collect their kid, and leave all of their belongings at the centre over the weekend even though we were a 5 minute walk away. That was definitely a new experience for me.

Navigating the parent-teacher relationship was definitely a challenge for me this summer and, honestly, it's one I'm glad I don't need to engage in in the same way as when I'm a, evening teacher and university T.A.

Science

We had 2 weeks of S.T.E.A.M and I, for sure, learned that teaching science is definitely not a strong suit for me.

When I was planning these weeks back in April, I remember being at a complete loss until I remembered Bill Nye from my school years. I thought I would centre the lessons for these weeks around a topic of a Bill Nye episode. As an example, I thought we could watch the episode about the solar system, then doing an activity where they needed to paint a depiction of the solar system with the planets in order.

Bill Nye episodes however, are quite outdated since they were made back in the 90's and early 2000's, and so while the information is mostly still relevant, the editing can be considered strange in today's media standards. Many of the students did not enjoy watching Bill Nye as a result.

I also think that an extra element that made these weeks especially challenging was the big age gaps. Trying to plan science lessons, a complex subject, that would interest to a grade 7, but also be understandable to a PK was a feat. I'm sure many of the younger ones found Bill Nye boring because some of the information was beyond their age group. This was an oversight on my part. Art was a lot easier to do with the age gaps for obvious reason.

My math however, got better while teaching summer camp. I remember a moment when I could easily explain how to add and subtraction mixed fractions that you need to regroup without having asking another teacher or look up how to do it. I just knew already.

Definitely a proud moment for me.

As a random sort of tid-bit, since our first week was Minecraft themed, I learned a lot more about the game and how it works. I had no clue there were elements of coding involved. I always just thought it was an 8-bit building and fighting game.

Patience

I think my patience was also tested more than in the regular classes. It's not that too much of the academic or 'parenting' side of things changed all that much content wise, but rather the frequency and duration did. I was teaching and deal with behaviours more often throughout the week and for longer periods of time during the day.

When teaching school-age students, I have always struggled with being ignored and repeating myself so often. I find it really disrespectful, and so I always try to instill active listening skills and respectful behaviours into all my students. I explain to them that if I listen to them, they should show me the same respect and listen to me. That means not talking over me, stopping what they're doing and looking at me while I talk, and doing what I've asked of them the first time I ask it. Since it was a longer day and there were more kids, the act of being ignored and repeating myself was multiplied.

When I teach in the evening, I have students, typically, for an hour at a time, and have months to develop a dynamic and understanding with them. With summer camp however, I had them for 6 hours everyday and, for some students, had only a week to build a rapport with them. This is, simultaneously, a lot of time and not a lot of time. A lot during the day, compared to what I'm used to, and not a lot of time overall.

Because of this, there were definitely times when I yelled louder than I meant to in order to get their attention and/or to re-establish control. There were also times when I got overwhelmed and sound sensitive after having 7+ students shoving papers in my face or calling "Miss Hannah" simultaneously. I found myself in some moments, particularly during the busier weeks, giving up and accepting that I wasn't going to be listened to. I'm not usually the type that gives up, but everyone has their limits.

In these moments is typically when my co-teacher would step in and I'm so grateful she did. Teaching with her has definitely highlighted for me how important it is to have more than 1 parenting body, who are on the same wave length when it comes to the children. There were some days where I don't know what I would've done without her support and when she really held my sanity together. I have great deal of respect for single parents and public school teachers.

I opted not to do teacher's college for a reason. I knew I didn't want to teach in public schools and teach school-aged children. While evening teaching does involve teaching school-aged students, the centre is a private institution, so the curriculum and set up is different. Summer camp definitely more closely mirrored what it would be like to teach in a public school, just on a smaller scale. While I did, overall, enjoy my time teaching summer camp, it has also re-enforced that I made the right choice to not pursue teacher's college.

Being a university professor and teaching adult students is definitely the right path for me, in terms of personal interest. While I can, and do, a wonderful job at teaching the littles, just because I'm capable of something, doesn't mean I want to do it as a career, at least not forever.

That's not to sound negative, I love my job and love what I do, I'm just recognizing that this won't be my forever career.

When I got back to teaching in the evening in September, I realized just how much I missed it. I missed the structure of classes only being 1 hour, I missed teaching some of my students who I had already built a dynamic and rapport with that I hadn't seen in 2 months, and I missed my co-workers since I only really saw 3 of them during the whole summer as not many of us teach during the day.

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Overall, do I think I'm the right person in terms of personal interest to teach a summer camp? Probably not. In terms of skills though, absolutely! I think I am a wonderfully skilled teacher who is capable of successfully navigating any and all challenges that come with teaching.

Would I do it again? Surprisingly, yes. I'd love to challenge myself again through lesson planning, longer periods of teaching, and navigating parents. I'm always looking to improve as a person and as an educator, and I think the experience of summer camp definitely helped me do just that. I also think I am now better equipped to teach summer camp since I now have first hand experience under my belt.

I'd definitely teach it again next year if I wasn't going to be in Germany. Maybe the year after if they'll have me back?