Thursday, May 3, 2012
We have just finished our MSO Event! We have received quite a bit of positive feedback from the majority of admissions people that were in charge. However, these people did not necessarily see all that went on behind the scenes. What was the most significant thing you learned while interacting with a large group of middle school kids? What did you have to adapt? Were there aspects of your planning that were flawed or missing entirely? Did you feel that you were intentional about engaging students who seemed uninterested or not involved? How did your team do with managing your own team of volunteers? Also, who was the most awesome person on your crew and why?
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The most significant thing I learned is that middle schoolers are awesome! Normally, I connect more with high schoolers so middle schoolers were kinda outside of my comfort zone. I loved it though, and the kids were really cool. We had to adapt a lot of little things. We had to add an extra game to the end of our first block because of time. The lip sync we did in the second block wasn't very smooth, mostly because of the energy levels of the kids. I personally tried to talk to kids that were sitting or try to pump them up to get involved. Our volunteers were amazing...and I think we did well with them. I can't choose who the most awesome person was because they were all awesome in their own way! LOVE YOU GROUPIES! (Tony, Andrew, John, Kelsey, Jake) :)
ReplyDeleteThe most significant thing I learned is that middle schoolers are awesome! Normally, I connect more with high schoolers so middle schoolers were kinda outside of my comfort zone. I loved it though, and the kids were really cool. We had to adapt a lot of little things. We had to add an extra game to the end of our first block because of time. The lip sync we did in the second block wasn't very smooth, mostly because of the energy levels of the kids. I personally tried to talk to kids that were sitting or try to pump them up to get involved. Our volunteers were amazing...and I think we did well with them. I can't choose who the most awesome person was because they were all awesome in their own way! LOVE YOU GROUPIES! (Tony, Andrew, John, Kelsey, Jake) :)
ReplyDeleteI the most significant thing that I learned from MSO was the need for high energy during the whole night and just how hard that is to do. It is very easy to do that at the beginning because everyone is excited about it but by the end of the night everyone is tired but we still need to keep that energy up the whole night. One thing that my group had to adapt was during the second block we were going to play the pyramid game but we did not have enough mats to play that game safely so we decided to do a dancing game instead which was good because the teens loved it. The only game that was a bust was the pyramid game but that was only because we did not have the right number of mats to play the game safely. I felt like I was intentional about involving all of the teens in what was going on and the reason for this was because we had many different games that they could choose from. I felt like we managed most of our volunteers well. The only issue that we had was that some of the volunteers left when they got tired. I do not think that there was one single person that stood out but we could not have been as successful with the help of everyone.
ReplyDeleteThe most significant thing I learned from MSO was high energy and flexibility. It's very hard to stay up all night for me and not only to stay up but to be energetic too took a lot of work, but those middle schoolers never stopped!! THey were like machines! Even though the staff was tired, we still needed to interact and be involved in the fun. We did have to be flexible and changed our pyramid game to "organized dancing". This was fun because during that second round, we really needed something to keep us going and that seemed to do the trick. I felt like our group did a great job engaging with the students as well as the adults that were there. The only issue that we really had was the water table kept getting hit by the basketballs and creating a large mess... I recommend having those somewhere else next year. And, I don't think there was one person who stood out the most... we all worked together and couldn't have done it without the help of everyone, including our volunteers.
ReplyDeleteI learned that improvising is key at an event like MSO. Although we had a detailed plan on what the night was gonna look like, we still had to change some things up and slightly go a different direction than we originally planned. Finally, I must say that my group (586 area), had the absolute best volunteers! They honestly blew me away.
ReplyDeleteI learned that you must be able to adapt to whatever happens, some of the groups were very varied in size, and adjustments had to be made for those times. As our team did the relay I noticed that some things weren't going as smoothly as we would like, so I tried to change it up so it would yield a better outcome. One of the things our group could have improved on was the time schedule, but overall, I think our whole team did a good job at participating during the various parts of the night.
ReplyDeleteI learned that planning and practice and thinking through events step by step is very important. I feel like volunteers needed a better idea of what to do and when to do things.I also learned that being adaptable is also very good because as different things went wrong with one group we were able to make them even better for the next group of kids.I feel as though my group did a really really good job but I know that when I need to begin running events I will have to plan better and come up with better contingency plans. Also to walk through events multiple times before hand and think of what needs done and what could possibly go wrong.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I learned is you need energy and need to be able to think on your toes. We had to adapt our one game to walking instead of running because kids were breaking the care kits. Then we had to change some games around due to energy of the kids. None of our planning was flawed we did a really good job if anything we just changed it around a little bit to adjust to the kids that were coming in. We could have done better with interacting with students who were not participating. Our volunteers we not very apt to helping with different things than what they originally started with, that was a little frustrating. Everyone did a really decent job we were all awesome.
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