What a busy two months it has been! I am not used to working a job where summer is the busy season. The past few years my summers have been for traveling, relaxing, and rejuvenating after a long school year. This summer has been jam packed and so much fun! I have really gotten to explore taking on a leadership role in my team and office. 

Our seven high school aged youth employees have been wonderful to engage with. I am getting to work with youth on a whole new level, really embracing them as colleagues while also trying to help run and guide their program. We are on week five of an eight-week program, and they have seamlessly transitioned from feeling like a group of strangers to working together as a tight team. It’s been exciting to see them learn skills through planned workshops such as financial literacy, public speaking, resume building, and lesson run throughs. They provide fantastic feedback in our daily debriefs after each of our camp lessons with the local YMCAs and have embraced the challenge of stepping up to facilitate whole parts of a lesson. 

I was quite nervous about being a lead supervisor and taking on the role this summer, but they’re a fabulous group who have made it easy. I’ve learned a lot about myself, for instance that I need to work on handling confrontation better and being direct with my feedback. It’s been great to see the connections they're making with young campers and other youth in their city as they develop their own leadership skills. 

Taking a step back from facilitating camp programs with young kids has been a tough transition and I definitely miss interacting on a personal level with the younger campers but enjoy still being able to bop around the island or the Charlestown navy Yard and check in on each of our three groups to see everyone’s work and make sure things are going well. Overall, it’s been a busy and successful summer so far and I can’t wait to see where our last three weeks together as a team lead us.