Week 6 at the internship

This past week at my internship was probably one of the less hectic weeks I have had since working here, it also was a some what shorter week for me because I took off Friday. I was asked a few weeks ago if I would facilitate a leadership workshop for the city's teen leaders apprenticeship program, so on Monday I ran that workshop for 50+ teens. This was such a fun experience mainly because I like to facilitate workshops and I am so passionate about working with teens, so the combination of the two made this a great workshop. I had them do a few icebreakers before getting into the programming portion of the workshop, for the program I had them do a program that is called the Leadership Continuum, basically what the purpose of this program is to have the teens recognize that leaders come from all different backgrounds, fields, and walks of life and to help them recognize their personal leadership qualities and what qualities they want to continue to develop. I ended the workshop with a little group challenge to sort of test what they learned that day, I split them into 3 teams and by using only toothpicks and spice drops they had to work together to built the most creative, strong and tall structure in 20 minutes. The teens had a great time working together during this portion of the workshop. This was such a fun opportunity and I am glad the program coordinator ask me to facilitate.
I spent the day on Wednesday at the Tumbleweed Recreation Center that is located off of McQueen and German Rd. The TRC is the city's new state of the art recreation center that will be celebrating its one year opening next month. I spent the day sitting down with the different recreation coordinators and learning about their different duties and what they oversee to help keep the TRC running. This facility is amazing it is two stories with a 6,000 square foot fitness area with two indoor racket ball courts, an in door track and a couple of fitness classrooms. Down stairs they have a kids drop in center, adult lounge, teen game pod zone, a few multi-purpose rooms and gymnasium. I sure every member that comes to the TRC has no complaints because this facility is not only aesthetically pleasing but the staff that keep the facility up and operating are just as amazing as well. I finished off my week by spending my Thursday morning at the city's tennis center and observing the different program that are ran as well as sitting down with the tennis center coordinator. Everyday I leave work wondering how did I get so lucky!!!

Week 5 at the Internship

The trust the Recreation Coordinators have in me is impeccable, this past week one of the recreation coordinators (Mike) who is charge of the Teen Adventure Summer Day Camp at Santan Junior High, went on vacation to Hawaii and he asked me if I would oversee his sight. My responsibilities would include making sure the staff at the site has all the supplies they need for the week, collect their time sheets, take all payments back to the community center so they could be processed, make sure all rosters for the classes and field trip were printed and up to date, and to hang out with the staff and teens. This was my opportunity to take on the role of a coordinator and test out my skills. All that I have trained and prepared myself for was leading up to this moment where I got my opportunity to take the lead. The other exciting thing about this week was it was the week of my birthday (July 1), so as you can tell this was looking out to be a very exciting week. On Monday I got to the office early so I could print out the camp roster's and take them down to the teen camp site before the campers started to arrive, I also met with the staff and got their list of items they were going to need for the week. I spent the remainder of the day picking up their items and checking in on the site. Tuesday I spent the day preparing for a workshop I had been asked to facilitate on July 6 to a group of teen leaders in a Chandler apprenticeship program. Wednesday was my birthday and my supervisor and co-workers treated me to a great lunch at Olive Garden this was really exciting and delicious. Thursday was the day that made me appreciate and realize how much I love my field of work, we took the teens from our day camp on a fun in the sun day at Big Surf, but not everything went as smooth as planned and would be a true test of how to handle situations that can occur when you are in a leadership position. The school bus that we had set up to pick us up was late, and I mean like an hour late, then the bus driver did not know how to get to the park and informed that information to us after she had gone 10 miles out of the way. But thankfully I knew what to do about each issue that arose and we eventually got to Big Surf, made it in time for lunch and had a wonderful time. This was a great end to an exciting week, I truly believe that this is the field of work for me.