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Nov 15, 2007

Elementary, my dear Watson

I spent the afternoon today with a group of elementary school kids as a part of a program through the med school to try to teach healthy choices and good health habits to "at-risk" kids. We spend the hour after school doing 15 minutes stations that are either a form of exercise (today: soccer! Yay!) or talking about health. One of the stations was a "Wellness" talk by a Child Psych resident, who taught the kids the concept of "Strong Work", which he defines as good choices. The project for today was for the kids to work as a team and come up with three decisions that they are thankful that they made.

Here are the results of today's session:

1. We are thankful that we decided to eat lunch because we would be hungrier than we already are.
2. We are thankful that we decided to come to school today because we learned about frogs in Science and frogs are cool.
3. We are thankful that we decided to put on clothes today because we would have been cold and embarrassed.

The last time I went, my ego got totally destroyed and I wanted to drop out of the program and never go back. Damn kids. But I decided that that was childish of me and, since I'm playing the role of the adult in this production, I should suck it up, remember that it's not all about me, and keep my once-a-month commitment to these kids.

This is an example of Strong Work.

1 Readers rock!:

Anonymous said...

Those kids! I had some in my after school group answer the following questions:
Q: What animal would you be?
A: A girl dear with a baby in my belly so I could run and bounce it...

Q: What one thing would you take w/ you to a deserted island?
A: A boat so I could get the hello off the island...

Out of the mouths of babes...