Prep Week, Overnight 1 & 2, Evaluation Week 4

Summer Program 2018 has come to a close. My coworkers still have two days of evaluation left to do, but my job at WALES starts tomorrow so I'm cutting out a couple days early.
 

Because I had to announce my new job as well as pay my respects to someone I worked with who passed, I was unable to update for prep week, both weeks of Overnight, and I guess this post will cover evaluation week too. Basically a month, wow.

Prep week involved developing a meal plan, programming activities, grocery shopping, organizing our equipment, and going over participant files. It was only a three day week. Buying groceries for 25 people for two weeks is fun. We put different staff members in charge of different food categories. When you're in charge of meat, you feel like such a man, pushing a cart full of bacon, pepperoni, ground beef, deli meats etc. When you're in charge of produce you feel so healthy. But when you're in charge of grains, you just feel like a weird bread guy. This year I got produce and grains. Last year they were stretched pretty thin financially, I guess because cost of living has gone up and our budget didn't, but this year we had a budget increase so we were able to spend a bit more on food. They actually let me make my signature stirfry with fresh vegetables and vermicelli noodles instead of frozen vegetables and rice like in years previous. First week we spent about $750 on groceries, second week I think we spent a bit less because we were able to buy some stuff for week two in our first week.

This year we were stationed in Camp Everton, which was a new location. Compared to Impeesa and Kimbercote, Everton was enormous. The kitchen space was on an entirely different scale. At the other locations, you could barely fit two people for meal prep, at Everton you might be able to fit the entire camp. We had an on site pool which neither of the previous spots had, and their hiking trail had an obstacle course that included balance beams, rope ladders, a rock climbing wall, hurdles, and a few wobbly bridges that went over an actual river at kind of a high height. They had an archery station and I got to shoot a bow and arrow for the first time as well.

On the negative side, rooming accommodations were pretty awkward and the place wasn't maintained as well as Impeesa. Halfway through our first week we were visited by some people who told us that they had been testing for bedbugs and the tests came back positive. They said it was only for a twenty foot radius and only upstairs. But all the girls had their rooms upstairs, so they had to move into our section. Our section didn't have rooms with doors, we had “pods” of bunk beds, and we attempted to build privacy by tying shower curtains in front of the pods. The results were less than ideal.

We had to bag everyone's luggage going home, and everybody had to treat all their stuff as soon as they got back. Heat kills bed bugs, so I was instructed to put my stuff through a dryer. I've only got the tiny laundromat at my complex, and somebody took all my stuff out while my clothes were still sopping wet from being washed so they could put their stuff in instead. I really hope that whoever did that got bedbugs.

Besides the bedbugs, we had a bunkbed break and the water pressure died on us several times. At Impeesa, we had sort of a lounge area with couches and armchairs. At Everton, our common area was all hard benches and tables. Everton was like sacrificing quality for quantity.

Every year, we hold dances on Overnight Thursdays. On these days, the male staff members usually get their nails painted by female participants. By some weird coincidence, even though I've attended six weeks of Overnight previous to this year, I've only been to one dance. The reason for that is, my weekly break has been coincidentally scheduled for Thursday night every week except once. Because of this, I have refused each year to get my nails painted, as I would be about to spend four hours in the city. The one time I was able to attend the dance, I relented to get painted, but we couldn't find the nail polish.

This year we took a bus to the Overnight, and because most of us were without vehicles, we took daily one hour breaks instead of weekly four hour ones. That means no one got to leave camp, and that meant I was available to get my nails painted. Had it done each week, and funnily enough, despite my anxiety to wear nail polish in public, I forgot to get it removed in my second week and spent several days with my nails painted before I could get my hands on some remover. Had a lot of conversations with people, and nobody brought it up. I guess the moral of the story is, even if you're a man, you can get your nails painted and nobody will care.

I also let them give me a facial mask. Here's a pic.

 

While we're on the topic of skin care, is my skin... nice? I was hanging out with the female staff one night and they were going over their nightly skin care routine. They asked me if I had a routine which I took as a joke. They kept pressing and I kept taking it as a joke but they were weirdly insistent, saying things like, “You have better skin than any guy I know”, “It's so strong and clear”, “You have to be doing something” etc. and I kept saying things like “You're obviously joking. Nobody has ever said that to me before” They were persistent enough though that I eventually said “Well, I have a... tin of shea butter”. Then I went on my shea butter rant and they were all into it. And then they asked me if I drink a lot of water because apparently that's good for your skin. I told them I drink more than twice the recommended water intake per day easily, which they thought made sense. Then I spent evenings applying skin care products with the girls for the remainder of the program.
 

Every Summer Program, I drop one F-bomb, and it always happens at the Overnight. One year, the girls asked me to kill a spider. I went to take care of it, but when I made my move it jumped on my face and I screamed “F***!” One year, I was playing chess with another staff member. He advised me not to sacrifice my bishop as I wouldn't have any diagonal lines. I calmly said “F*** diagonal lines” before I could think twice. I was doing well this year until we were making stovetop popcorn from kernals and the people I was partnered with were hesitant and wanting to seek help from our on-site director. I responded “No, we're not calling for help. Now come on, we're F***ING DOING THIS!”
 

Cooking in bulk is fun, just like shopping in bulk is fun. I think I've mentioned it, but somewhere down the line I lost my ability to make pancakes. In Katimavik, I used to love waking up in the morning and making everyone pancakes, but where I live now, they fall apart when I try to flip them, or else they burn before I can. I think I can officially put blame on my pan or my spatula, because when I was at the griddle, I was making pancakes nine at a time, and each one was pure pillowy goodness.
 

Because our kitchen had so much space, we were able to take participants as volunteers if we wanted. I felt like a real chef allocating duties to volunteer cooks, especially because we got to use fresh ingredients this year. The participants told me that I came across as the team's “Kitchen master”, which I took to heart.
 

In the first week, I failed to start a campfire, so I kicked the metal basin it was supposed to be in and hurt my foot really bad. For some reason, it causes my calf to cramp up and so one leg always seems more tired than the other. I haven't exactly been going easy on it, as I've attended two dance parties, gone rock climbing, and played soccer with my injured foot. A go-to fun fact that I always use about myself is that I have never broken, sprained, or fractured a bone, but realistically speaking, I've probably fractured multiple bones throughout my life and just walked it off.
 

This week, I attended one day of evaluation week. We wrote up our final reviews of each staff member, we wrote an overview of how we felt the summer went, we wrote a newsletter article, we did receipts, and we inventoried our equipment. I won't be around to receive my final review tomorrow.
 

During the next two days, I'll miss out on doing some telemarketing calls to try and get parents and caregivers to review our services. I'll also miss out on a team meeting to discuss how the Summer Program should adjust itself in future years, which I'm actually kind of bummed out. The company is paying for a free lunch at The Mandarin, a Chinese All You Can Eat Buffet tomorrow, which I'll miss out on, and then the team usually goes out for lunch on the last day as well, which I'll also miss out on. Oh well. I still have to bake them all a loaf of homemade bread, as it's a tradition of mine to bake all the members bread on the last day of Summer Program.

Two Pieces of Weird News

Okay, so I'm going to have to break the Summer Program standard blogging format in favour of giving two pieces of unique news. Last week should have been "Prep Week Round Four", and it would have been, except that I received some information that I wanted to report but couldn't find the words. Since then, I've been gone for the first week of overnight camp, and there's a lot to talk about surrounding that, but honestly, I don't think I'll get around to it until after I'm back from the next overnight. So my next Summer Program-specific news will be next week, and it will cover Prep Week Round 4, Overnight Week 1 Round 4, and Overnight Week 2 Round 4.

I'm going to start my first piece of news chronologically. Inside the last two weeks, I have been confirmed as the new WALES In-House Facilitator! If you don't remember, WALES (Working Adults Learning Empowerment Skills) was the organization that I did my student placement with. I will be working Tuesday-Thursday. With my Direct Support contract work, I am now for all intents and purposes working full time. I've seen the two previous In-House facilitators upgraded to full-time WALES staff members, so I'll be concentrating on that going forward.

The second piece of news is that someone that I have been working with for the past five years passed away unexpectedly. I'd like to share some pieces of his story, and while I don't expect that I will violate confidentiality, I will use a pseudonym to further protect his identity.

After plugging some background information into a name generator, I got "John (Jack)". I'll call him Jack because that name is traditionally seen as heroic.

Jack was minimally verbal and didn't express himself much with words.  During my first student placement, he would pace back and forth moaning and frustrated many. One day I was assigned to teach him computer skills. He indicated that he wanted to go to lunch early, and while I desperately tried to tell him that while I wanted to let him do that, I was bound to the same rules as him, and we had to finish our computer practice. As I was telling him this, he said his first words to me, "You're one of the good guys".

After this, I was able to interpret everything he said. I was excited and my current mentor suggested that I make my student placement goal to be building a relationship with Jack, as I had seen a side of him that no one else had. I was in charge of helping him do his weekly plans after this.

At one point, a PATH and MAP session was built for him. If you don't remember, I have been trained in facilitating these sessions. They basically explore your history and future goals, and a graphic is created for the person being represented. These sessions can become very intimate. When asked who he wanted to attend, Jack said "My sister, and my friend Gryphon".

I taught Jack the secret handshake I had with the Malian children of Karadie. He was the only person I trusted with that.

He also came to most of the Summer Programs that I had a role in facilitating. The more relaxed pacing of the Summer Program did well for his reception, as opposed to the more work-focused expectations of his day program. He was relaxed at Summer Program, didn't express much agitation, and was appreciated by staff and peers.

But this year, he came to Summer Program, and things were a bit different. At the end of the day, we fill out journals. In the past, I was able to draw visual aids that he would point to, which would indicate how his day went. This year he was unable to process any visual cues.

I wound up providing personal care for him which he had never required assistance for before. This would take hours per day, but it didn't really bother me.

It became an issue though, when we were going to African Lion Safari and we needed to get him onto the bus. I was encouraging him to join the rest of the group, and he was receptive, until he decided that he required personal care. I told him that we had already been through this each day this week, that I knew he felt like he needed this care but in reality he wouldn't be able to go, and that he needed to choose whether or not he was going on the trip or going home.

He raised his fist and screamed "MOVE!" This gentle man who almost never spoke. And I told him "You can see me as a bad guy, I don't really care. More frightening people have raised their fist at me."

Those were my last words to him, and as it turns out, he was experiencing a pain that would later kill him.

As he was leaving with his sister, I turned to my On-Site Director and said "I hate that. For all we know, that's the last time we'll ever see him, and those are the words I left him with". I have never speculated on the death of someone I support before, and there were no real reasons for me to think that he would die.

It also sucks because he had, over and over, explained to me that I needed to go back to WALES. He was explaining that to me this year. And the day after I was confirmed that I would be returning to WALES, I learned that he had passed.

Wacky Water Week Round 4

Well, this past Friday marks the end of day program for this year. All that's left is a week of prep for the overnight, our two overnight weeks, and then an evaluation week.

I didn't mention it, but this year we hosted the day program at a new school. For my first two years, day program was hosted at St. Mary's high school. For my second two years, it was held at St. Dominic Savio elementary, and was also held there last year, which I didn't attend. This year, both St. Mary's and St. Dominic's were under construction, so the day program was held at St. Paul's.

St. Mary's was larger than St. Dominic's, and St. Dominic's was larger than St. Paul's, so every time we've changed location, it's been to a smaller area. St. Dominic's was the only place with an air conditioned gym.

We're at a new overnight location this year as well. Like with day program, I've been at two other locations, Camp Impeesa and Camp Kimbercote. Kimbercote was a rustic location far from the city which was a ton of fun but was eventually deemed too inaccessible for us. Impeesa was a site near the village of Ayr, which was fairly accommodating and accessible, but it's been booked by someone else this year.

So this time around, we'll be going to Camp Everton, a location just outside of Guelph. I've never been, but it looks like their cabins are far larger than what we're used to. We'll have our own outdoor pool, the kitchen looks like it could fit our whole camp into it, and the bedrooms are immense.

For some reason this year, there has been more need for physical interventions than in years past. I've had to perform three hair pull releases (AKA "The Worm"), which is a technique taught in Safe Management for helping someone else escape from a hair pull. Until this year, I have only ever had to perform physical interventions in the group home. Feels weird having to write an Unusual Incident Report at the Summer Program. At least now I know The Worm works in a real-world environment. We can add that with the J-Roll for intervention techniques tested and proved reliable in a real-world setting. I know that there have been interventions that I wasn't involved in as well.

Between the Summer Program and Direct Support, I have been so exhausted. One day, I went out to water my garden, and I fell asleep in a lawn chair! I realized this as I woke with the sun in my face. That means I slept the whole night outside completely unintentionally. Today I am enjoying my first day off for the past seven weeks. I was going to have last Saturday off but someone called me in to be a relief worker. I get tomorrow off too, since Prep Week is only three days long.

I'm spending my days off in Guelph. This would be the first time in seven weeks that I've seen my family, but last week my cousin drove me over and we had dinner with them.

The group home that I used to work at shut down. Not the organization, just the house. I don't know details.

Over the weeks, the Summer Program Coordinator has been bringing in regular treats for the rest of the staff, with little messages with puns based on the treat, such as "You all deserve extra 'BROWNIE' points!". Most of the other staff have given it a go as well, leaving me as one of the ones not to contribute, which was irritating.

All their stuff was store bought though, so I figured that the only way to make up for my late contribution was to put a bit more effort into it.

For Hidden Talents week, I baked banana bread and pumpkin bread, with the message "Sometimes you might feel like you're going 'BANANAS' but I know you 'PUMP-CAN' do it!" and this past week I made a batch of tarts, including blueberry, lemon, cherry, and pumpkin variants, along with the message "Every great day s-'TARTS' with a great team!"

Ha!

...I haven't even talked about this past themed week yet.

The weather was forecasted to have thunderstorms every day last week. It would have fit the theme of the week, as it would be pretty wacky and full of water outside, but it would also be pretty inconvenient as all the water-based activities were scheduled to be held outdoors so as not to get the gym floor wet. Luckily, the forecast was flat wrong, and all we had was a bit of rain on one of the days and it didn't even interfere with our schedule.

Our special guest was a Drum Fit instructor. We have this every year, but we used to have them for Get Your Game On week, which we now have X-Movement for. Our old water week guest used to be a clay art instructor, which we no longer have.

If you haven't heard me talk about it before, Drum Fit is where an instructor gives out exercise balls and drum sticks to people and leads them through a series of exercises based on drumming. It's surprisingly intensive. One highlight this year was when the instructor told us all to jump in the air and shout "YEAH!" and for some reason I was the only one who did it. That was pretty awkward.

Our day trip was to Bingeman's Water Park. We used to go to Wild Water Works in Hamilton, but the trip was always long and there was always something that happened to make us late coming back. One big reason we didn't go to Bingeman's in past years is because it's close enough that it doesn't feel "special". But whether or not the novelty of going somewhere far away is worth the inconvenience is up for debate.

Wild Water Works had three stations: water slides, wave pool, and a lazy river. Bingeman's also has three, but instead of having a lazy river, it has a splash pad. The waves in the wave pool at Bingeman's are also far less intensive. I hit up each station but only went down one water slide.

One stand out activity we had this week was Reverse Paintball, which is also something we do every year. The participants have the opportunity to paint us head to toe, and then they have to shoot us with water guns and throw sponges at us to knock the paint off.

Here's a pic of the team all painted up: