More Than Vending Machines and UNO: Lessons From Summer Camp

Last Friday as I walked to my car, hands laden with flowers and baby gifts, and heart full of gratitude for the people I’d met over the past weeks, I concluded my summer stint as a camp counselor at a local community college. Although the job was at times quite taxing on my pregnant self, I loved working with the 3^rd to 9^th graders. As they learned to fly drones, make video games, and sculpt, I learned an awful lot about patience, behavior management, and how to help kids feel needed and valued. The path leading to that simple summer job, while not a straightforward one, was nonetheless one that let me know I was exactly where I needed to be; a witness that God cares even about the seemingly insignificant aspects of our lives.

I will long remember that night some months ago when in frustration bordering on desperation, I asked God what He wanted me to do during the upcoming summer. I had much earlier been offered the perfect job for the summer: teaching Russian to college students for only a few hours each day, and getting paid handsomely for it. At the time the job was offered to me in the fall, however, I was planning on spending the summer with the newborn baby I was expecting. With barely a twinge of regret, I turned down the offer, feeling that I was making the correct decision in putting family first. Ten days after informing my potential employer of my decision, I found out I was having a miscarriage. By that point, the job had already been offered to and accepted by someone else. On top of the mourning for my lost child, I also was confused, frustrated, and disappointed that now there would be not only no perfect child, but no perfect plan B. No perfect summer job. I felt somehow let down. I had only been trying to do what was right. I had put my trust in God and put my family first. I had made what seemed to be the best and most logical decision for my family, but now I regretted having missed out on that job opportunity.

By the time I had emotionally recovered sufficiently to think about alternative summer plans instead of cuddling a newborn, I was dismayed to discover that many summer jobs had been filled months previously. I searched for potential employment, finding nothing that seemed like a good match for me. This disappointment and struggling job search culminated in that evening’s desperate prayer. As I knelt next to my bed, my face buried in my hands while I petitioned the heavens for help, a new idea suddenly came to mind. I thought of a local community college and felt impressed that I should see if they had any job openings working with kids over the summer. At the conclusion of my prayer, I acted on the prompting and googled jobs with kids at the community college. To my delight, I found a handful of perfect postings, and I resolved to apply to them the next day. And I did. God had prompted me at just the right time, as the application period was still open, and within a few days I was offered an interview. It all seemed to be lining up perfectly for me and the interview went great. Until the very end. My interviewer told me she thought I would like to know kind of where I stood in relation to the other candidates. She explained that since I had no previous paid experience working with children, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage, because other candidates had professional experience with kids. As I drove away from that interview back toward my own campus, I once again expressed my confusion to heaven. Wasn’t this job the answer? 

But then, unexpectedly, several days later, I received a phone call in which a job offer was extended. I immediately accepted, as I had felt God’s hand in directing me to this position in the first place. And thus I ended up as a counselor at a kids’ summer academic camp in central Virginia, learning to herd cats with love. And it has been a beautiful experience.

The children at the camp ranged in age from 8 to 14, and I quickly became acquainted with various behavior patterns. My experiences teaching at my church had not quite prepared me for this: at church—at least in my favored experience—the children are generally well-behaved and relatively easy to direct and manage. But here, I frequently found myself with situations where I just wasn’t sure what to do and I had to often turn to heaven for help to know how to nurture the children and diffuse difficult situations. I dealt with children yelling, crying, arguing, hitting, losing money in the vending machines, and making messes. I once spent an hour trying to calm down a young boy who pretended to be a zombie the whole time as he refused to return to class. I’m sure if anybody was watching, they would have found it hilarious to see the pregnant woman chasing down the 8-year-old as he tried to escape her time and again. He occasionally would speak a human word to me, but most of the time all the response I got to my questions and pleas were incoherent zombie grunts and hisses, accompanied by dramatic convulsions to convince me of his un-dead status. I don’t think I ever wrangled him back into class that day, and I felt somewhat defeated by the experience. The next day, however, he told another counselor he wanted to come outside and spend his break near me as I was on lunch because I was his “friend.” When I heard this, I was shocked, not realizing the belligerent little zombie thought so highly of me. And that was a common theme throughout my camp experience—for all the hardened exterior the children sometimes put forward, they were actually individuals of great depth and feeling, often concealing great sensitivity and even compassion below the surface.

Even the most obnoxious of teenagers also displayed this capacity for great depth. On one particular day, an exasperated teacher approached me and told me he had simply had enough of a certain teenager and I needed to take him out for a breather. I had been somewhat intimidated by this particular boy, having watched him interact with his peers and teacher throughout the week, and I was unsure if he would respect me. Just the day before I had been yelling at him not to climb up some poles outside the observatory where we’d taken a field trip. And he definitely hadn’t wanted to listen to me then. So I took a deep breath and resigned myself to spending a few one-on-one minutes with this difficult young man. We sat down at a picnic table outside, and I engaged him in conversation. As we chatted about life, his career goals, where he’d lived, and how he was fascinated by the economy, I was impressed. This boy who I had thought was simply insecure and trying to overcompensate for his struggles by being obnoxious was actually incredibly deep, intelligent, funny, and human. He knew much more than I did about economics and he shared his thoughts on the collapse of the housing market as I marveled that so many complicated thoughts could be running through his mind. The time passed quickly, and after about 10 or 15 minutes, he felt he was ready to return to class. Perhaps that conversation helped him to calm down and reign in some of his loud behavior (and it certainly gave his instructor a needed reprieve from constant badgering), but I think it was me who benefitted most from that short conversation. I was grateful this teenager had allowed me to see the depth of humanity he concealed under the surface.

I could recount numerous moments of frustration, disbelief that so-and-so could be doing the same thing again that I specifically told him not to do, and surprise that children could be so creative in their misbehavior. But more meaningful to me were the beautiful moments where I witnessed true human kindness between the children. I admired the teenage boy who stood up to another teenager and tried to help him be kinder to the younger kids. This same teenager shared some of his cards with a younger student who wasn’t as successful at the game. I was touched with how this boy did not care what any of his peers thought—he was just doing what was right and standing up for those who were younger than himself.

One of my favorite moments of kindness came as I was watching a group of students working on a filming project. One particular boy did not actually belong to the group, and I had asked him multiple times what he was doing, or if he wanted to go back to his own group. He always informed me that he was “watching” and that no, he did not want to go help his own group. The dynamic of this group suddenly became clear as I listened to some of the kids engage in conversation about this particular boy.

Child A--“He’s not supposed to be in our group!”

Child B--“Yeah. His group didn’t want him.”

Child in question--“No! I didn’t want to be with them.”

Child B--“Well, and they didn’t want you either.”

Child A--“But do we want him?”

(At this point I cringed inwardly, feeling bad for the boy whom nobody wanted in their group. Suddenly the boy’s friend spoke up.)

“I want him. I just don’t want him to blow up or anything.”

I was touched by this. This young man realized that his friend had a propensity for blowing things out of proportion and for not always helping the group go in the right direction. Yet he was unafraid to stand up to a group of his peers and affirm that he would indeed welcome this other boy into their group. That comment must have ended the matter, because the boy was allowed to remain in the group as they continued working on their project. I couldn’t help but feel that this is how the Savior sees each of us. He wants us near Him. He will take us as we are with our imperfections and our tendencies for certain weaknesses. He is not blind to the reasons others may reject us, but He loves us despite, beyond, and through those weaknesses. I want to be like that little boy who boldly told his classmates that he would welcome into their group someone who is different.

There was another beautiful moment where I once again found myself in the hall with a student who needed a breather. He had gotten upset and was being unkind. I had witnessed him blame his partner for the bridge’s failure to pass the structural integrity test imposed by the teacher, as well as angrily break a previous group’s bridge. As I sat in the hall with this boy who had given into his anger, I asked him what was wrong. I eventually got out of him that he didn’t know if he or his partner would be the one to keep the bridge they had made together, and I realized that he took a lot of pride in their creation, despite its structural shortcomings. Almost immediately, the boy’s partner walked out of the classroom, haphazard popsicle-stick and duct tape bridge in hand and said simply, “You can have this.” The boy in time-out immediately brightened and was soon calm enough to return to class. I was impressed with the maturity of the partner who not only recognized that the upset child wanted to keep their project, but also had the selflessness to give it to him. [As if to display the depth of character I mentioned earlier, that same boy who gave his partner the bridge, a few minutes later found someone’s forgotten money on the table and without compunction used it to buy himself a snack, and then spent break teasing his friends. Instead of detracting from the beauty of the moment of his gesture of kindness to his upset partner, these questionable behaviors seemed to deepen my perception of the young man. He was human—he had the capacity for good and for bad. Just like all the children—and all of us who have already ceased being children—he was not entirely consistent in either goodness or bad behavior. Humans are complicated.]

In addition to learning much about children and human nature, I also acquired a few interesting facts during my months as a counselor. Facts such as the reality that vending machines have a strange magnetic power that lures in children, whether or not their parents entrusted them that morning with a handful of change to buy a snack. And it takes not just one child to buy a treat, but it is important that the buddy system is always in force, so that the decision-making can be a team effort and in case the buyer is feeling particularly charitable, there will be someone there to share the bounty. Those electronic dispensers of diabetes, while delighting the children, were a source of endless distress to the staff. Despite repeated warnings from us that vending machines frequently break and do not return money, the children continued to try their luck at getting the nefarious machines to dispense their tooth-decaying wares. And believe me, there were plenty of upset children when the machines failed to give them food or return their money. I was surprised at the intense despair that could be caused by the loss of a few ounces of chocolate or caffeine. During one particular instance when a girl had either lost her money to the greedy machine or was denied service by it, she came to the table where I was sitting with some other children and despondently shared her fate. Having neither money nor extra food on me—not to mention having already lost my patience with the vending machines over the past several weeks—I expressed my condolences but was able to offer no practical solution. Suddenly, one of the girls sitting opposite me held out her recently acquired pack of donuts and asked the sad girl if she would like one. That simple act of kindness—even though it was ultimately rejected—brightened my day. Kids have compassion.

Another fun fact I learned was the addictive power UNO and Connect 4 hold over children. I don’t know how many games of each I played this summer during lunch and snack breaks with the kids, but it was a lot. The kids loved those simple games, never seeming to tire of the apparent thrill they got from lining up four colored disks or being the first to shout the only Spanish word they knew. As for me, however, I quickly grew tired of these perennial favorites and wondered how the children could gravitate to them, day after day, and week after week when there were obviously so many more interesting games to be played. At least now I know what games to get my elementary school children someday. It was always a delight when some child wanted to play a different game than the stale classics. I remember playing Trivial Pursuit with a couple teenage boys. We definitely struggled with the media section, as the game had been created in the 70s and we were woefully ignorant of our old school bands and movie stars. And I learned some new card games and was able to introduce the children to some games that I like. But somehow it seemed like we always ended up back at UNO and Connect 4. . .

I may not miss break times full of UNO and Connect 4, but I am going to miss those kids and the energy that they always brought. I’ll miss their dynamic personalities and how they constantly surprised me with the depth of their natures.

I’ll miss my coworkers and the laughter we shared. I’ll miss their kindness and their examples to me. I’ll miss the conversations we had about God directing our lives.

I don’t think I’ll miss the back-up alarms of the semi-trucks that were always driving in the parking lot outside the building. The students of the CDL driving school always impressed me, and I would often watch them parallel park their big rigs. I have to say, they all did much better than I could have. I can barely park a 4-door car. Forget the 18-wheeler.

I’ll miss the silent moments when I could simply breathe in between parents signing in or out their children. As I sat at that desk, waiting for more people to come through the door at any moment, I would stare out at the rolling hills covered with verdant trees. Gazing in the direction of Jefferson’s Monticello just down the road over a hill or two, I had to agree with the Founding Father that this region of the world is indeed gorgeous. Not that either he or I is biased, you know.

Now, at the completion of my little summer job, I can see why God directed me there. The confusion and wondering and the disappointment make more sense now as I realize all the incredible opportunities I would have missed had I not trusted God’s plan. I’ve learned that God always puts us in good places if only we seek His hand and learn to rely on Him.