A Summer Series of Events
Growing up in the American school system the concept of summer is strange. For 12-16 years of elementary, Jr. High, High School, and maybe College, we have been taught that summers are for rest, relaxation, and forgetting. An advertisement may read:
Summer – a time to regroup and forget everything that filled your head during the past year.
While in High School I learned that summer was a great time to earn some extra money through part-time work. My high school coaches thought it was the perfect time to get a jump start on practice for next year. Plus this was the time when church retreats and summer camps went full-force. Through it all only once do I remember thinking, “So what happens to Summer when I am not in school anymore?”; but this thought went as easily as it came.
Today I am still in school and I do take my summer break but it’s for a whole different reason than I used to. Starting in week and a half I will be beginning the summer push with my Church’s ‘promotion/graduation Sunday’. It will be a great weekend of honoring those kids who are moving into new classes and honoring our Graduating Seniors in High School and College. The morning will be capped off with a BBQ which always includes way too many homemade desserts.
Following our promotion Sunday I hit the road. First it will be to Encounter which is held on Lubbock Christian University’s campus. Encounter is a great time for High School students to grow together as a group and individually through the various interactive classes, evening keynotes, and planned events. The following week I will home to catch up on ‘stuff’.
Then it’s off to Copper Basin Bible Camp in Prescott, AZ. Copper Basin Bible Camp is a locally supported Bible camp located on a beautiful property in the pines of Prescott (yes, Arizona has a forest in the northern regions). Through all of this I will be home every weekend to teach and spend time with my family. After the camps we have a week to finish organizing our Jr. High room remodel and then finishing the summer with our youth group trip to Six Flags.
Overall there is little time to breath and this happens every summer (give or take a few details). So what happened to the relaxing summers of my youth? Well they have given way to a more important and God focused time with the teenagers at my church. I have dismissed forgetting about book knowledge, because a week with teenagers will remind me how little I really know. But in their know-it-all ways they show me Christ in themselves and that’s what keeps me going.
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Summer’s are just as amazing when there’s no school to bookend them. The weather, activities, and more make it just as enjoyable
Brad, you are doing a great job, inculcating religion in a positive way in children at a young age is a passport to the path towards becoming good human beings.
The human race keeps crossing limits as time goes by. It is in a state of constant transition and more evidently in this century.
I can’t keep reminiscing about my past when I had no worries during my summer vacations. I did what I loved to. Kids of the current generation need to be involved in activities which would further enhance their interests and help them gain skills which would help them in their later part of their lives when on the career path.
I seek help and guidance from various people and groups to develop an interest amongst kids for subjects like science and math through a more interesting subjects like astronomy. We recently sent our students to a summer camp organized by Mad Science and NASA. The kids got a hands on experience of building their own rockets and launching them. They could got a chance of becoming a master of their own robot. It seems that the children are more attentive now probably because they are determined to avoid a Matrix like scenario and they want to be the masters of the evolving Artificial Intelligence.
Vilmer,
Thank you for the kind words. It’s hectic times like these that those words mean more than you’ll ever know.
My findings completely concur with yours that the more hands on and experience oriented we are able to make things for our kids, the more they seem to engage. The camp organized by Mad Science and NASA sounds like an amazing experience, I wish I would have had the opportunity as a kid to attend it!
God Bless,
Brad