June 30, 2016 – We got up a little earlier than usual this morning since we had to leave at 7:40am. I was really excited to spend the entire day with the children at Maxfield Park Children’s Home (MPCH). The school consist of 4 academic groups: basic school, primary school, high school, and special needs school. It’s our first official day here to work with all of them. We were split into groups and Alonzo, Jadaica and I were working with the special needs students first.
Our original lesson plan to teach these student volleyball and basketball basics, did not work out because we did not properly accommodate to their attention span, how long they can exercise, and how well they can communicate. We ended up combining our group with the basic group at the playground. Instead of doing specific sports, we just let them do some aerobic exercises and play in the playground. Misty and Peyton, my group members who were working with the basic school children, taught several students how to swing on the swing set on their own. That inspired me to assist my team members in teaching the special needs children to swing as well because some of them did not know how to.
After our time with the kids, we moved on to the young adults in the high school group. Our original lesson plan worked with these kids because they were older and had more fixed attention spans. Alonzo played some knockout with them, taught them the basics of basketball and the history of the sport and we all played some games. Later we played volleyball. The Director of Programs saw that we were attempting to play volleyball with a soccer ball and gather a volleyball from storage and brought it to us. Jadaica and I worked as a team to teach the students the basics of volleyball. Jadaica first showed them how to bump, I taught them how to set and we all worked together to teach them how to play a full game.
We did not have a net to set up so we tied a clothesline to 2 trees to improvise. Sadly we had to take it down 10 minutes after putting it up because it was blocking the inner road of the Children’s Home. The students were still able to engage in playing volleyball. A handful of them already knew how to play which was surprising to me. I actually had one of the students correct me on my serve technique. The children at Maxfield are very bright students. They have a vast amount of potential. It was overall a relaxing and amazing day.
Steven N., Wheaton High School