“One of my favorite parts of my school day is working with my Junior Coach team out at recess. Monday through Thursday, two Junior Coaches join me throughout recess to help lead games and play with students in Kindergarten, 1st and 3rd grades. My team has been working really hard at all of the challenges I give them as Junior Coaches, especially the students who are on the shyer side of things. One of my Junior Coaches in particular, D., was very soft spoken at the beginning of the year, and was really nervous about leading a game on his own. I worked with D., and the other Junior Coaches during a training session, coaching them on how to lead games and how to get and keep the attention of the younger students.”
“The week after our training session, when I asked D. if he could lead a game of Magic Tag (our game of the week) at the beginning of recess, he agreed with only a little hesitation due to nerves. I asked him if he still needed me on the field to get things started, but D. wanted to try it on his own. I assured him that he would be great and that I would be close by if he needed me. I checked in on his game a few minutes after recess started and saw him playing and laughing with a large number of Kindergarteners. After recess D. ran up to me with a huge smile to tell me how things went. “Coach Abigail! They weren’t listening to me tell about Magic Tag, so I played ‘Match Me’ and they did it! Then they listened and we got to play!”
It has been wonderful watching D.’s leadership skills grow so much in such a short period of time. He is now quite confident leading games at his JC recesses and I’ve even seen him taking a bit more of a leadership role in games at his own class recess. If this is what two months of leading a Junior Coach program can do, I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year will hold in store for us all!”
Abigail Maclaren – AmeriCorps Member; World Cultures Magnet / American Indian Magnet
