Internship

For my internship, I worked at the Harbor Bay Club as an after school day care counselor.  I was given the task of coming up with sport weeks.  Every week I worked for four weeks, I had to come up with a sport for the kids to play and we would play that sport all week.  Sharing my love for al sports was something I was very interested in doing and I thought that it would be fun for these kids to try play games they may have never played before.  This was a very interesting task because getting all the elementary school kids to get excited about playing an organized sport was very difficult.  Using enthusiasm and jokes, the sport weeks were a great success and I learned a lot from my experience.  


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The first week was a week geared towards Football.  With the Superbowl close approaching, I though that it’d be fun to have a Superbowl week where kids would play on the two Superbowl-bound teams, The Saints and The Colts.  Watching kids and playing with the kids was so much fun as they gave each other nicknames and called out fake plays and had a blast playing football was definitely a really fun experience.


After football week, we had Kickball.  Kickball was so much fun because the kids got to make up their own team names and team colors.  The kids really embraced it and had some very close games.  This time though, some kids got very upset about their ability to play and as a counselor, I had to try and make sure that they felt like they were being fairly treated.  So amendments to the rules were made and everyone carried on having a good time


We had Capture the Flag for week three and that was awesome!  All the kids came up with strategies to go and get the flag and defend the flag.  watching them huddle up and perform trick plays and distractions was hilarious.  It was so fun, that some of the counselors just had to join in.  When the kids got to play with the counselors, that was a really great time because they got to play an organized game with them on their team.  The kids were really happy with the week and a bunch of kids said they wanted to do it again next week. 


For the last week, I decided to have the sport be basketball.  One of the favorite games that the kids have is knockout.  The kids were anxious to have this be the focus because they wanted an individual game.  With the help of two more counselors, we split the kids up into four different levels, each with their own tournament.  This way, the really good kids were able to compete against each other without the distractions of the less experienced kids.  The tournaments were a great success with hi-fives all around and so much laughter.  


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This was a great experience for me because I was given the freedom to plan out certain activities for the kids to work on and to share with them my love for sports and teamwork.  I got many complements from my boss and the other counselors for putting this whole thing together.  The parents of the kids were especially grateful because their kids were so wiped out when they got home.  I’m so glad I had this opportunity.