It's been a long week, to say the least. Working with the young kids has been so completely exhausting that I only made it to yoga once this week, and I clearly have been slacking off on blogging. I thought of my free time this week as one long extended child's pose (for those of you who aren't familiar with yoga, that's the restorative posture you're always invited to use during class when you need a break). Maybe I'm making excuses, but by the time I got home every night, my body was begging me for mac and cheese and episode after episode of How I Met Your Mother. And if yoga has taught me anything this summer, it's to listen to my body, so listen I did. I'm not ashamed to admit that I finished all of season one and the only thing I actually cooked all week was a quinoa salad to bring for lunch every day.
I'm not sure how to reflect on this past week. Nothing stayed consisted between the five days of camp, and it was agreed among almost all of the interns that this week was a weird one. One of my teaching artists was out for a day, so the interns had to lead the class with a different teaching artist there to make sure everything stayed on track. There were a number of times when I was asked to step out of the classroom to take care of unforeseen issues - a pale, shaky, nauseous camper curled up in the green room and two missing interns who needed to be replaced for the morning, to mention a few. Something about this week was just off, for various reasons, and I think it really contributed to my exhaustion.
Weirdness aside, I think I learned a lot this week. The four- and five-year-olds were surprisingly angelic (I talked to the teaching artist and she and I agreed that their good behavior had a lot to do with our tiny class size - only eight kids - and our two to three student-teacher ratio) and just an absolute delight to work with. We spent the week reading different countries' versions of fairytales and noticing the differences between them, and creating our own story that we transported and adapted to different countries. Of course, when we moved our story (which consisted of a flying trashcan that traveled around the town collecting garbage, assisted by a knight and his horse) to Peru, we didn't translate it into Spanish or set it in Machu Pichu. Instead, the kids decided that Peru was "backwards land," so here, the cats chased the dogs and the trashcan couldn't fly, she could only walk. And in China, we met lots of people who told lots of silly knock-knock jokes. Working with this age group took a lot of synthesizing of the kids' creative ideas, and a lot of simplifying slightly more complicated concepts. Our game of "Yes, Let's!" turned into "What do you see in your imagination?" I think my favorite moment all week was during this game, when one of our kids' imagination had us all act out being "snakes in Boston." It's amazing to be around these kids and witness what so many artists have to fight to find: completely uninhibited imagination. I don't know a single adult who, when asked what their imagination showed them, would immediately shout out, "snakes in Boston!" but I know hundreds who would kill for that level of impulsive creativity.
The K-3 camp presented much more of a struggle for me. Somehow, an afternoon with them felt longer than seven hours with 4th-6th graders. Though they were still remarkably creative and individually, really wonderful kids, the group of twenty that we worked with constantly fed off of one another's distracted energy, making it nearly impossible to keep the room in control for more than three minutes at a time. Even with five interns and a teaching artist in the room, we struggled to stay sane and to keep the kids sane, too. Their play eventually came together, and I was really proud of the sharing they had today, but the journey was rough. I think K-3 is not the right age group for me, but I'm happy I worked with them and really value a lot of the relationships I built with individual kids.
That last paragraph feels like a cop-out. Like I said, I'm not sure how to reflect on my time this week, and K-3 is a huge part of that. I hope I get to spend more time in K-3 camps, even though I wasn't in love with this week's experience. I'm still trying to process this age group, and I think, if anything, more time is all that will make them make sense to me.
Like I said, life outside of CTC has been far less exciting this week than usual. It's been a lot of hanging out at home and watching Netflix. But on Monday night (it feels so long ago, but I guess it really has been that long since I last blogged) I went to the "Fringe for All," an event hosted by the Minnesota Fringe Festival that featured three minutes each of thirty Fringe plays, twenty-eight of which were absolutely horrific. I'm not sure if I've mentioned yet that I'm volunteering at the Fringe this summer, but because I'm a volunteer, this ninety minute preview was free. And thank God it was, because I think I might have rioted if I had paid for it. The Minnesota Fringe chooses its shows by lottery, so even if you submit a terrible piece of theatre, you have as good a chance as anyone of getting produced. On one hand, I think it's great that there's an outlet here for anyone and everyone to express themselves through theatre, but on the other hand, I really struggle to find the value in producing really awful work. What, you might be wondering, could possibly be so awful? Try five middle-aged men in tank tops dancing seductively on chairs to Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious."
I'm not kidding.
On a lighter and more exciting note, my other relatively exciting non-CTC experience this week is summed up by the following photo of JJ's Coffee and Wine Bistro's cookies and cream ice cream cupcake - like ice cream cake but in cupcake form! I don't know why I've never encountered something like this before, but I have a feeling it's going to catch on in a huge way. My taste buds have never been happier.
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This week has been a week of lists for me, so I feel it's only appropriate to end this blog with a (Minneapo)list of things I'm looking forward to:
- Fringe training (even though the theatre was awful, I'm excited to see what this festival is all about)
- Spending time at the lake
- Seeing Beirut in concert tomorrow night!!!
- Pancakes at the Seward Cafe on Sunday morning (who's surprised?)
- Season two of How I Met Your Mother
- Spending next week with my favorite teaching artist (Nancy, from my first week in The Lottery)
- The Phantom Tollbooth!
- Actually making it to yoga next week
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