This weeks activism was working with St. Matthews Episcopal Church. On Saturday we played a lot of different activities with the children. We had children from third grade and up which meant that we had to make sure that the games would not be to hard for the youngest children. We had mostly girls in the group, but did have a few boys. Sunday was a more structured event because we were helping the children make Advent chains which would have something for them to do each day before Christmas. We also brought magazines, which we checked first to make sure there was nothing inappropriate in them, for the children to cut out what they thought was a leader and glue it onto a piece of construction paper. Everything turned out pretty great and there was not any really issues that could have been approved on. We had to leave way in the structure because the children could be leaving throughout the time with us on Saturday. The Advent chains were the most important part that had to get done on Sunday which we were able to do, so really Sunday worked out good too.
Reflection:
The activities we set up for both Saturday and Sunday need both Transactional and Transformational leadership skills to really be able to accomplish the tasks. The children all did really well at displaying these skills. The children had to really use their Transactional and Transformational leadership skills when we had them make the decision on whom was going to have what jobs in the obstacle course. Someone had to use “personal power’ to make sure that a decision was made allowing them “to move forward” (Linden and Fertman 19). At the same time we wanted the decision to be agreed on by the group which meant that “the participation and contribution of others” was very important (Linden and Fertman 18). There were many other moments which involved Transformational leadership skills, but that is usually the type of skills needed most often when doing group activities.
Reciprocity:
Both days were great learning experiences. I have worked with children in many ways, but I have not done anything that was exactly like the two days. I think my favorite part was just seeing how much fun the children were having and at the same time displaying great leadership skills. Every experience a person has is an opportunity to learn something new. It was also interesting to see the members of the group display their different leadership skills, especially when we had to move all the Church Pews back in the correct place at the end of the day on Saturday. We had to work together to try to make sure that they were all inline correctly.
Word Count: 456
Work Cited:
Linden, Josephine A. Van, and Carl I. Fertman. Youth Leadership: A Gyide to Understanding Leadership Development in Adolesents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998.
