Okay, I don’t really know what to write but I’ve been having a pretty great past two weeks so I’ll talk about that. Last Thursday at DFA, we started orientation for the summer program. During said orientation, we ran through all of the expectations for the students for the summer. Each staff member had a portion where they introduced the part they would play in the students’ summer within DFA. This went on for about two days. During these days, I got to know the students pretty well through activities, laid back breaks, and lunches. My part within orientation largely consisted of supervision and reflection (which is what I will be leading the students through this summer). The reflection sessions will consist of a question that they will write about for a short period of time which will then be followed by an activity. While the students reflect and do the activity I will be pulling them out one by one and interviewing them (which is my main objective for the summer). So far, I’ve done two reflections so far with the students and will begin interviews next Tuesday.
This week we started the actual summer program which is less rule centered than orientation. We’ve been having a lot of fun and trying a lot of food lately. For example, today the students had a cook off which was sort of like the show Chopped in the sense that they had certain ingredients that they had to use and a pantry full of food that they could choose to use in their dish, following this some of the coordinators judged the food and picked a winner for the day. This was so much fun for me and a little stressful for students. They said that they feel the pressure but know that this in many ways prepares them for real cooking in a restaurant experience that many of them want to have in the future.
Anyway, I’m really excited for the rest of the program especially for when I get to start interviews. This time outside of the Green Garage has been a really nice and needed interruption but I think when I go back I will have a good balance of student interaction and office work.
