Almost time to head back

Tomorrow is the first day of February which also happens to be the month that I return to my beloved outdoor ed job. In roughly two weeks I will be painstakingly packing my car yet again and driving two and half hours, unpacking, moving into (at this point an unknown) staff housing, and beginning yet another spring semester.

Spring semester is tough. It is a lot of fun and it flies by but it is challenging for many reasons.
1) Transition days. We have this way of jam packing six days of work into the typical Monday to Friday work week. This leads to days where, as a group leader, I may drop of my Mon-Wed group at an activity, run (though no running is allowed on camp...so only running the kiddos can't see me) to be in position to greet the Wed-Fri school that is arriving, play games with the new school, unload their luggage, orient them to cabin life, and then sneak back in to greet my original school, while furiously (but appearing to be calmly) flipping through my medical forms of the new school, eating a chicken finger (the obligatory two-lunch day meal) and loading luggage of the original school on the right bus, and running (again out of sight of the kiddos) up to the gift shop to sell some swag and wave goodbye to the bus, before hustling to the deck to meet my new field group and walk them into lunch. Once second lunch is over, things usually calm down quite a bit, but the transition is nothing less than a well-orchestrated dance, and that's assuming the buses arrive and depart on time (which lets be honest, happens more often than you might think). And then you spend the rest of the week asking the kids "Did I teach you this already?"

2)Younger students: As a whole, it is my perception that we typically have more 4th and 5th grade students during the spring semester than in the fall. We also have a couple of schools that bring a range of ages or some older kids. There are some great schools with some awesome kids. I just have to be ready to switch from fourth grade mode to ninth grade mode to parent mode in a very short amount of time.

3)MD Weekend: Those of you that have been on camp during MD weekend know what I'm talking about. Hopefully the weather will cooperate this year.

Once the season gets going, we are in full swing and busy busy busy until the end of the semester. One day it is February and shortly thereafter it's May and it's time for me to return to camp.

All that being said, the spring also provides great opportunities to improve. There are weeks when I look at my schedule and it makes me tired just thinking about everything that is packed into my days, and yet, at the end of the week, I can be proud of the work that I have done.

I do hope to continue to improve and grow as an instructor, as a return staff member, and as a friend. Here's to spring 2011.