I am Elizabeth, an undergraduate student at the
University of North Texas. I am majoring in Psychology and will be graduating this
December. I was inspired to volunteer with youth after taking a Play Therapy
course at school. I was very fortunate to stumble upon Girls Inc. via a job
shadowing program that UNT held this spring.
After that experience, I was eager to sign up for more
volunteering. For two weeks I worked alongside Girls Inc. staff, volunteers,
and some of the high school-aged girls at the “Geek Girls” SMART camp held at
the Diamond Hill Branch Library in Fort Worth. We encouraged the girls to
pursue a greater appreciation and knowledge of the science, math and technology
fields.
I will admit I was a little apprehensive about leading the
groups of girls at first. Would they like
me? Would I be able to teach them anything? Would they have fun at all? As
the first week quickly sped by in a blur, I realized I had nothing to worry
about at all.
Throughout the week, the girls disassembled electronics to
view their inner workings. They also had
to create a “SMART Girl” which was a hypothetical career woman. This involved research on the part of the
girls.
I was amazed at how each girl shared what she had found in
her smashed electronic device and strongly voiced what she believed it did for
it. I laughed alongside the more talkative younger girls as we made aromatic,
yet delicious Rice Krispy Treats in the microwave. Silliness aside, they were
able to name the measuring utensils and follow directions.
I taught the older girls how a webpage was made using HTML codes
and even showed them how to make hyperlinks to their favorite websites. It was
quite dense material but I felt they had a good grasp of the information
presented. They had a lot of fun learning how to add pictures and links to a
page. I was proud of their perseverance.
I was deeply touched by how welcoming these two groups of
girls were of new comers. The compassion and encouragement these girls had for
each other was astounding. The girls were very eager to give a helping hand to
their friends and even the adults without specifically being asked. I remember on
the last day, one of the girls was standing alone in front of the room when the
time came to present her project. Seeing
her expression of fear, two of her friends immediately jumped up to help give
her moral support and she was able to continue on.
I was quite saddened when SMART camp came to a close. Surprisingly
I learned quite a bit about myself from these two groups of girls. I was a role
model to the younger girls. I was able to encourage them when they got stuck on
a task. I found out I can teach others what I know. Sometimes it’s okay not to
know what the answer is to everything, but to always ask questions in order to
learn. I enhanced my listening whilst helping the girls with their activities.
I learned that patience is a must and to never give up on any goal. I feel all
these characteristics are crucial to being an effective counselor. More
importantly I feel these skills are beneficial for everyone to have. I cannot
thank Girls Inc. enough for allowing me to share these experiences with these
amazing girls.
