Just sayin'

In composing this post it started as, and was meant to be, about divining my career path for the relatively near future.  As I got further in, however, I found that it was becoming less about my potential careers and more about what I have learned and experienced with iD Tech Camps.  So, I cut out the career stuff to save for later, and we'll get right in to iD.

Through iDTech I have found a love of teaching and being involved in child development though, notably, in a short term setting (I honestly just can't see myself standing in front of a classroom of the same 30 kids for 180 days).  I love the culture of camp, the silly games we get to play, that moment when your students finally start getting what you've been teaching them and begin to understand the possibilities suddenly available to them.  But I think what really appeals to me is that sense you get that you're making a potentially positive contribution to who that kid's going to be one day.  Because camp isn't just classes and curricula-it's this great big social experience, perhaps even more so at iD.

All of iD's camps are held at Universities across the country; it's one of their big selling points.  The kids sleep in university dorms.  We wake up early in the morning and stroll over to the closest dining hall and eat university food.  We greet the day campers, lessons are had.  The instructors are teaching, but sometimes so are the students.  A kid will forget how to perform a function and his neighbor will lean over and say, "Oh, listen, you just do this, this, and this," followed by the obligatory, "Oh, that's right.  Thanks!"

We all eat lunch together, socialize together, and go out to play capture the flag, or have giant rock-paper-scissors tournaments.  And before the day campers go home for the day, we have an entire period where people can say thanks or good job to other students for being awesome.  We play games, we hang out, we watch awesome old 80s movies (I'm still floored by the fact that 20 kids can sit around completely and quietly immersed in WarGames).

It's amazing.  And I get to witness moments like the following.

Every week, the preteens have an Armagetron tournament (essentially the light bikes from Tron; the game is free and awesome).  I had this kid, no older than 12 but definitely intelligent, clever as a fox and really good at this game.  Half way through he was clear in the lead and it was obvious no one could beat him if he was even vaguely trying (myself included).  In this situation, most kids would be hamming it up, boasting, etc.  This kid, though, he reigned himself in, started giving absolutely non-condescending advice to the other children, and actively and heartily cheered his friends when they won a round.

Sometimes, especially with the older teens, there come moments where you just sit down and have a perfectly serious conversation.  I've talked to kids about what they want to do for careers, where they're thinking of going to college, how they feel about the climate in the mobile phone services market.  Sometimes the conversation is about how they wish they'd known about iD years ago because they're 17 and they won't get to come back as a camper and how they'd like to work for iD one day.  And in those situations I get the pleasure of encouraging them to come work at iD, and I get to tell them that camp is still awesome as an instructor.

I'll wrap this up lest it get long winded, but I think I've made my point.  Camp is just this amazing experience, and I'd like to keep it in my life as long as possible.