This week was by far the busiest and most rewarding week we have had during this program! We had Monday off after the 4th of July, but Tuesday marked the beginning of camp. It was so exciting to meet all of the students and get to know them over the 4 days of camp we’ve had so far! We had at least two synchronous meetings each day this week, with STEM sessions in the morning and Life Skills sessions in the afternoon. These sessions were all full of exciting and useful new information, ranging from cybersecurity to the importance of advocacy. During our training, Girls Inc. constantly promoted a message of kindness and support, and it was amazing to see how it actually played out during camp. All of the students are so thoughtful and knowledgeable for their age, and are constantly uplifting each other in the comment section of each zoom. This kind of environment is something I would have loved as a shy middle-schooler, and I am so glad that this camp exists and that I get to be a part of it this year.
This week was also the week that my partner and I co-facilitated our lesson on Encoding/Decoding and Cryptology. It was an amazing experience to share all of the hard work we had done on this lesson and to see the campers actually learning from it, whether through enjoying solving the puzzles in our cryptology game, participating in answering questions, or playing the kahoot we made. I was so relieved that the meeting went smoothly, and it was such an amazing opportunity to learn so much about a topic I had fairly superficial knowledge on beforehand. I have already gained so many wonderful relationships and knowledge from working with this camp, and cannot wait to continue learning next week!