I had the most glamorous job over the summer. Okay, so maybe not the most glamorous job, but it was definitely one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever been hired for: I was a Summer Leadership Adventure Program facilitator.
I loved every minute of SLAP, and I still consider myself a facilitator. For me, the best part of having been a facilitator is how popular I felt when I got back to campus. That’s a joke, but honestly, not only do you have new relationships with your SLAP students, but you also have them with the facilitating team and the professional CNU staff. Now five weeks – over an entire month – into the semester, and I’m ready to reflect on the most fabulous three weeks of my summer, and even more so about how those three weeks impacted the remainder of my summer and the month being back at school.
After returning home from SLAP I immediately got to work on the goodies for my students. I remember one of the regrets some facilitation returners had was not keeping in touch with their students… Boy, was I determined to not let that happen! I ran to Target and grabbed a couple pre-planned cheap objects and some goodie bags (I apologize to any of my SLAP students that are currently reading this, but let’s face it we’re all broke). I wrote a letter to each of my 28 students with a personalized message and a few words about what was in their goodie bags, all hand written.
I had all of them send me their room numbers. I labeled every bag and delivered every bag to every room, leaving each bag on their doors. I got countless thank you texts and it made me happy that I truly was being intentional about my relationship with my students. Then, two weeks ago my co-facilitator and I planned dinner with our week one group, and it was awesome catching up with them. We loved hearing how well their first semesters were going. In a week we’ll have brunch with our week two students, and I’m excited for the outcome.
One of the coolest parts of being a SLAP facilitator is having a class with your students; I had class last semester with my own SLAP facilitator. Being the SLAP facilitator as opposed to the student is different, though. In class, I sometimes still fill the SLAP facilitator role. We have guest speakers in my public speaking class all the time, and I’ll turn to Matthew (my previous SLAP student) to explain something or second it. I even still have my “proud mom moments”: for his introductory speech, Matthew killed it! I mean, he even did magic in his speech! The rest of the day I was texting and telling people what a great job he did. It’s the same when my students get an interview for a job, like Tyler, or desire to be a future SLAP facilitators, like Cameron and Bianca. I’m proud of all of them!
I’ll send some notes and goodies hopefully periodically, but I wanted to save the biggest impact for last. And if you were my SLAP student **SPOILER ALERT**. If you don’t want to know what the contents of your final letter will be, stop here!
At the first meeting with our students, my co-facilitator and I played an icebreaker with paint chips in which on each color they wrote, their name, their hometown, their major, and something they wanted to learn in college (I bet you can see where I’m going with this). At the end of the year, I plan on sending all of them a final note asking them if they learned what they wanted to, or if they didn’t, what they did learn.
I loved every minute of SLAP. I assumed I would do it for one summer and then find an internship for the next summer, but I’m not sure I could do anything else with my summer. I loved every minute of SLAP, but I think I love seeing my SLAP babies grow up even more.
Your friendly neighborhood SLAP facilitator,
Jenna Lowrance