What a week this has been! Friday I was excited to have the opportunity to attend Papillion La Vista High School to speak to students about hearing loss before their prom.
I arrived approximately 10 minutes before the first lunch block was supposed to begin. After signing in, a few ladies helped me set up a table by the cafeteria. I stood back for a few minutes and watched the teens quickly fill the hallways before I decided my best plan of attack was to make my way around to all of the lunch tables in the cafeteria.
I very quickly decided that I really like this approach to high school visits. While it is great to get the practice standing up in front of a group of students in a formal classroom setting to speak to them about hearing loss, setting up a table and visiting over lunch time has a lot of great benefits! Walking around allowed me to address more students than if I had only visited one or two classes. It also allowed me to practice talking to people about my platform more than once and students were very forgiving if I made a mistake. Plus, if I am looking for more of a challenge, lunchtime certainly gave me that added challenge. While all of the students were respectful and kind, they were more in their natural environment rather than their controlled classroom environment where they are forced to behave well.
Overall I was very impressed with the students at the school and I hope that I made as big of an impact on the students as I felt I did.
After visiting with students for an hour and a half, I went to the counselors office to thank them for helping me set up my school visit. I asked to speak with Ms. Isenhart. The counselor sat there for a second before asking "Ms. Isenhart at PLHS?" After a brief second of thinking, I realized that I had just spent the last hour and a half speaking with the students at Papillion La Vista South High School about hearing loss, rather than the students at Papillion La Vista High School!
For those of you unfamiliar with the area, there is a Papillion La Vista High School that has been around for a long time, and a newer Papillion La Vista South High School that is fairly new.
As embarrassed as I was about the mistake, I was incredibly thankful to counselors at both schools for being so understanding and forgiving! I apologized to and thanked the Papillion La Vista South counselors for letting me visit and apologized profusely to the Papillion La Vista high school counselors, who were kind enough to allow me to reschedule the school visit.
After this quite memorable appearance, I was able to make another appearance on Saturday. Saturday afternoon I was honored to join MRP for a swimming outing. I arrived at Montclair community center expecting to mostly just walk around and supervise. I did wear a swimsuit just in case though. It's a good thing too, because I ended up spending nearly the entire time in the pool with the kids. I had the most wonderful time playing with the kids! We were able to play catch and volleyball and move around the pool as we went. I have to admit, my poor sports skills sent the kids chasing the ball quite a bit, but they were incredibly good sports about it!
At one point while waiting for the ball though, I felt water splashing consistently across my back. I turned around to find my friend Jorge from past events splashing me! I realized at this point how thankful I am to be a part of an organization that I believe in so strongly. When I joined the group, I never thought I would make such strong connections with the kids in the program, but they have truly made my year as Miss Kool-Aid Days a wonderful one and it makes me so happy knowing I get to join them once a month and have fun!
I had a great time and I could tell the kids were enjoying themselves immensely as well! It was so nice to sneak away from this persistent winter momentarily and enjoy something so fun and relaxing!
After this exciting afternoon, I had to run off to one last event for the weekend! Each year Sue's Stepperette's hosts a spaghetti dinner and auction to raise money for props and our trip to worlds. It was quite the event this year and I was so happy that I was able to spend it enjoying the company of great family and friends!
No comments:
Post a Comment