In the summer of 2018 from July 9-August 10, I spent 4-8 hours every weekday at STEM Cafe Tech in Columbia, Maryland. This summer camp was for students in grades 2-10 and provided an opportunity to teach/strengthen problem solving, engineering design, and coding skills through platforms such as Minecraft and Code.org as presented on their website. I found this Practicum site through Indeed, as it was listed as a job opening. They did not have an immediate formal application, so I was intrigued and decided to apply through the textbox that just had one question: Why do you want to work here? Even though this application was not traditional, I still do recommend Indeed to find other sites, including and beyond summer camp counselor jobs.
At STEM Cafe Tech, I presented myself as a student pursuing a mechanical engineering degree, but they were interestingly more impressed by the number coding languages (5 including HTML) I had put on my resume and mentioned during the interview. As a result, they put me as a head of the coding portion of the camp. It was an immediate challenge, as by the third day, the previous head of code was relocated to another site and I was the only person teaching code. There was also the fact that after the first week, instead of telling me what I was going to teach, they actually asked me what I had planned. This forced me to come up with ideas on the spot that were critiqued in the moment, and then going home to revise them or come up with new ideas. At the end of the five weeks I was at the camp, I had taught my students coding through Scratch, Code.org., HTML Javascript, and Java. I also took charge when the other camp counselor was sick or needed to leave, guiding projects that had to do with engineering design and assisting with math. There was one whole week where I was in a one-counselor-band, making plans for all three portions (math, engineering, and coding) of the camp, coming up with worksheets and teaching concepts all by myself.
Since I was the one teaching students who were younger than me, I did not necessarily learn as much as them, material-wise. However, I was always able to observe how quickly or slowly the students caught onto the concepts we were working on. Sometimes, it was obvious that if a student was being rowdy or not paying attention, they would not grasp what to do the first time (or even the fifth time). But sometimes it was not as obvious, as two equally quiet brothers around the same age were on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to learning new material. When working in partners the first time, I found out which students were more proactive and which were more passive. After this observation I would pair people with the same personality up so that each person would want to have a say in the activity we were doing. Honestly, I learned more about people than science, although maybe that can be considered the science I learned.
Although working at STEM Cafe Tech has not altered my future plans at UMCP, nor has it affected my post-bachelor/career plans, I am still grateful that I came across this opportunity to work here, as it gave me more experience in working with children of varying ages, especially since I was required to cater to all the students at once. I have also learned to take initiative, something I used to shy away from because of my fear of having my ideas rejected. I do admit that the camp probably took my ideas because of a lack in definite teaching plans, but going over my plans with the camp supervisor did help me learn how to break down a goal to create structured plans over a time period.
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