Lessons learnt from leading a Kids Summer Camp program

For anyone who doesn't know, I've been involved in a summercamp being run by Gateway Alliance Church and North Pointe Community Church for the past week. Most of you will know that I'm not usually big on dealing or looking after kids, so it took a bit of arm twisting and voluntelling before I considered being involved.

Overall though, it's been a really cool experience. As an actor, I've found that kids can either be your best or worst audience. In general you get two kinds of kids:

1) Kids who act like teenagers: These kids are cynical and like to go out of their way to ruin the whole presentation. There's not much you can do with these kids than deprive them of any attention that they crave. Because once you start giving them the attention, they'll ham it up even more to ruin it for everyone else.

2) Kids who act like kids: I absolutely love these kids! This is the ideal audience that any actor could hope for. It doesn't matter how cheesy, predictable, or boring the script can be, if you get really into the script you know that they will too. They're the most excitable and the most rewarding kids to teach to by far.

I've also noticed that my teaching experience in karate has really helped me encourage the kids in the right way. One thing that carried over from karate is that all kids LOVE to be the loudest. If you encourage kids to be the loudest group of kids you've ever heard, you better brace yourself because you know they're going to deliver.

As a teacher, you get really nervous about all the things in the lesson that are easy to see through. Stuff like the stereo in the background playing voices rather than actual people who are talking, little bits of the ladder showing which are supposed to be under the tarp, or the plain sight of the person whose supposed to be secretly helping you without the kids knowing. For me, that's probably the biggest apprehension about the whole thing, the fact that most kids lessons aren't planned in the best way and that things are very easy to see through. I think it's just one of those things that you naturally worry about as an actor.

Although often times the kids are smart enough to guess what's really going to happen and the show isn't as effective as you would have liked, it's still worth it somehow. It's absolutely amazing to see those 2nd type of kids that I mentioned buying into the lesson and getting excited about the smallest things. The way they look up at you after it's done, or the way that they excited whisper to their friends about all the cool things going on, there's really nothing more you could ask for.

I'm totally glad that I volunteered for this camp, although it leaves me completely bagged when I have to work in the office right afterwards. 4 lessons to 4 different groups will do that to you I suppose. But there have been some amusing things that I learnt from these kids:

1) Whenever you ask the kids a question, they're instantly excited to be the first one with their hands up to answer it. So class participation is absolutely essential for getting kids excited.

2) Kids are amazingly stronger than I thought. We had them make this human pyramid 2 kids high and hold it for about 5 minutes or so and they did it really well.

3) It doesn't matter what's going on in the room or in the kid's life. Once you pull out the neon glow sticks, all eyes are instantly on you with the addition of some drool. Therefore I theorize that Neon Glow Sticks are to kids, as Premium Crack is to Crack addicts.