This week was my first week working at Camp Harbor View. It’s certainly very different than my previous site, the Boston Children’s Museum. It is also a whole lot of fun. I mean, how cool is it that I get to work on a Boston Harbor Island for a month? And given that it is a summer camp, there are fun activities that we sometimes get to engage in.
As enjoyable as this job is, there have definitely been times when communicating with kids has been challenging. Because I am aware that they experience the world differently than an older person, I haven’t always been exactly sure what to say to them. I want to make sure that they understand me and are receiving what I’m telling them well. However, that can be a little difficult when they are strangers and I have no idea what’s going on in their heads. Despite this, I've found that talking to kids can be a lot easier than I expected. It's pretty similar to having a conversation with someone my age--I just have to make sure to adjust my language so it's less complex. And if a kid is excited enough, they'll be perfectly happy to carry the conversation.
It isn’t just kids that I interact with at our sites, but entire families as well. One interaction from this summer that sticks out to me was when we taught a family who was visiting from Ireland how to fish. They were incredibly excited about free fishing being available to them, and it was clear that they had a lot of fun. While I don’t recall any of them catching any crabs or fish, one of them did pull up a discarded, muck-covered bag of peanuts. They found it quite funny, and jokingly referred to it as the “catch of the day.” Their enthusiasm was infectious, and I am really glad that we were able to make their visit to Boston just that much better. Not only that, but we were able to spread word of Save the Harbor and our work to another country!
Talk to you next week,
Arryn
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