Diving In - The First Hands-on Sessions
Smiling faces, excited chattering and a loud chorus of “Good
Evening, Ma’am!”. That’s how we were met for our first academic session. After
a week of observations, we were to conduct sessions ourselves and our debut
began with an energetic response, to say the least. I had been nervous,
stressed out and completely overwhelmed with the number of things to keep in
mind, what to say and the words we used. I was ready to improvise and adapt to
whatever comes our way and was just hoping I would be able to live up to the
task. As the session began, however, most of my stress was put to ease.
Our group of interns had been divided into teams to conduct
the sessions, so there was some reassurance of support in case any of us
fumbled or needed assistance. For our first session, my partner and I decided
to interact equally, just so the kids would be comfortable with both of us. So
off started our session, beginning with a quick rapport building activity.
Honestly, the minute I started introducing, most of my stress vanished. It was
natural and easy to talk to them, being exaggerating and comical and energetic.
I wouldn’t say it was perfect by any means, but it was enough to make me more
confident about the coming hour.
The session was about 3-letter words - cat, dog, tap and the
like. It was fun to get the kids to interact and answer our questions. I took
care to write down all the names of the kids so I could make sure none of them
were left out during the hour. This proved to be useful in understanding who
was more receptive, who needed more prompting and explaining. Zoom’s screen
sharing feature turned out to be very useful in engaging the children with
images and videos. The hour went by faster than I imagined and by the end of
it, my throat was dry, my blood rushing with adrenaline and I was feeling more
fresh than I had in the morning.
Truthfully, as a first session, it was very tiring. I
realised how difficult it could be to keep our energy levels up for an hour,
pulling the group back up if there were any dips in enthusiasm. It was our
responsibility to keep all the groups occupied for the entirety of the hour,
improvising by the minute, whenever and however necessary. However, it was
definitely an enriching experience and left me feeling successful.
During our SEL session later that week, we divided
responsibilities so that I would observe while my partner conducted the
session. I got to pay more attention to how different groups interacted with
each other and with us during the activities. I could watch individual
children’s behaviour and was supposed to not down anything that struck out as
relevant. In one instance, one of the boys started showing off others’ artwork
as his own, enthusiastically coming closer to the camera to show us all the
drawings. Our mentors pointed out that this could be a need for validation and
acknowledgement - something most of the kids were deprived of in their
environment.
Needless to say, taking sessions is hard work, needing
constant thinking, improvising, action and observations. The experience was
exhilarating - to be putting whatever we had been taught to practice.
Interacting with the kids was rejuvenating, allowing us to push past a wall we
had put up where we held back our childlike enthusiasm. It felt amazing to let
go a little and laugh and dance and just be excited over every little thing.
For the first week, it was definitely a huge learning experience, full of
revelations and surprises, but I cannot wait to have more sessions, just to
hear the kids greeting us with a loud “Good evening, ma’am!”
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