the SCICON i want to share

i've been doing a lot of thinking about SCICON since the pizza man song incident...and watching the video...so now i'm thinking about what about SCICON i want my children to experience...

lets start from the beginning of a typical 6th grader's experience of SCICON...mondays...

lets see...arrive via bus at SCICON and an intern takes your class on an orientation walk around the grounds...showing you the villages you'll be staying in (and not), and the lodge and just walking you around to show you the immediate facilities (no trails yet)...this is all a nice opening to the week at SCICON...sounds good so far...i envision this to be groups of families instead of classes of kids (since we're homeschoolers).

lunchtime...the lodge is now about double the size it was when i worked there...so probably kids are less crammed into the space...eating at tables with new friends and old...eating as much as they can eat of the great food the kitchen staff cooks for them. (YUM!) yup, that would be great for my kiddos as well...i envision homeschool families sitting at tables with other homeschool families and getting to know one another. won't need the high school counselors since parents will be along to supervise. probably still a good idea to follow most of the rules of the lodge, though...the walking one way and waiting for announcements and such. or maybe not. maybe with families we'd be more casual.

trail time...12 kids per trail guide with a high school counselor or 2...out in nature, walking the trails, learning science concepts hands-on in a beautiful natural setting...LOVE IT!! i envision whole families going on trails...but in some instances perhaps those with little ones that would just be disruptive on trails could have an age appropriate activity somewhere else on the grounds that they could be taken by one parent to and their older sibs could go on the trails with the other parent, or maybe they go with a friend that has a parent to supervise them so both parents can do something else...up to the families to determine as long as there are enough grown ups on any given trail that are consciously helping the trail guide as needed. :)

afternoon teacher time...each teacher did different things with their kids...trails or activities or just free play...i think this would be a great family free time to do the same.

dinner time...same as lunch...group meals...YUM

evening campfire...trailguides lead the whole group in lots of fun songs and skits...REALLY FUN!! this would be great for our groups of families!!! especially the audience participation!

then to bed...in cabins...where families would share cabins (normally its kids with a high school counselor or 2)

tues, wed, thurs --starts with bfast, same as other meals...then morning trail, teacher time, lunch, cabin time, afternoon trail, teacher time, dinner, cabin time and evening activities...the only difference each day is the evening activity and there are some afternoon activities on certain days i can't remember which days is which but there is "new games" time with cooperative team building games by cabin, and a scavenger hunt, and the intern volleyball game (which could be parent volleyball game)...

tuesday nite: nite hikes (SOOOO cool to have special trails that are specific to darkness and nite!)
wed nite: folk dancing (oh my i LOVED these! the electric slide and amos moses and the hokey pokey and the chicken dance and SOOO much fun and lots of laughing!)
thurs nite: challenge nite (cabins are given a challenge and props to solve the challenges and work on it all week and this is the week they showcase what they came up with, complete with all the creativity they can come up with...this could be done similarly with families or maybe turn it into a skit nite/talent show.)

fridays...half day...breakfast and then closing trail to round out the week and a goodbye activity (i always did a group puzzle which they created and a story) and lunch and goodbyes with autographs at the lodge deck and off to the buses. with families we can modify this somewhat but still do a closing trail and goodbye activities to tie everything together.

anyway, i worked at SCICON for a whole school year. so i had a LOT of experience with all this and really want to share the joy and fun and education of SCICON with my family and with other families. if i wait and send maeven as a 6th grader (and that will only happen if i sign her up with a homeschool charter that year that goes to SCICON just specifically so she can go), then i'm going to miss all this!!!

there's sure to be an argument that part of the SCICON experience is the experience of being away from home. well sure. but the thing with most of the kids that are at SCICON is that their lives revolve around peers. that is how public and private school works. one of the reasons many of us homeschool is because we want the family to continue to be the focus of our children's lives. so of course, i want to share this experience with my children. not just send them to it. and its extra special to me because i already know what that experience will be like and i don't want to miss it!! :) i have no problem sending her on trails and to activities without me and my hubby...i just want to be at SCICON that week too so i can have fun too!!!

so now my job is to go and figure out how to make that happen! first i need to have liability insurance so i can book out SCICON for our group. that's coming soon, i hope! i have someone that is getting back to me on it very soon!

SCICON memories

i recently was singing the song "pizza man" to maeven and tyren and it made me get out the SCICON video (the video which brought adam and i together...we met because he came to SCICON while i was working there, to make this video) to show them their mommy on stage at campfire, singing that song with my friends for a group of like 200 kids. so fun to watch!!

unfortunately my memories of scicon are extremely tainted by my memories of the DEEP pain (i still feel it to this day) of being NOT part of the group. that year the interns were so tightly cliqued and i felt seriously rejected because of not being included in that clique. and i felt it deeply regularly. i thoroughly enjoyed my teaching time and nature and all that but when i remember back to that time i just can't help but feel a tightness in my heart over all the social pain i also experienced there. there was no malice by the other interns...it was just kinda like high school...they just didn't consider some of us as part of their inner circle and as such we got left out a lot. me, tamara and beckie z felt this a lot i'm sure because they all got treated the same way i did. but unfortunately amongst the 3 of us, we just couldn't really click ourselves...which is sad, but the reality of that time. we were all 3 very different.

i feel very angry sometimes when i think of how i felt during that year there. because it was so juvenile. it could have been such a wonderful time in all ways if the others had just been a little more mature and included the rest of us in their fun.

i can remember night after night after night of going down to the intern house lounge and hanging out and waiting for someone to include me in the conversation. there were times i would time it. i would pay attention to if anyone even said hi when i walked in (they rarely, if ever, did), and then see how long it took for someone to include me in their silly conversations and fun games (they rarely did). there were nights i would not be noticed at all. it was like i wasn't even there! that hurt SOOOO friggin bad. there were times i would hang out there for over an hour and not one person would even look at me, much less include me in their conversations.

i remember one time in particular that hurt like HELL and really brought it all to a head that i wasn't even considered when they were doing stuff. the whole gang piled into a car and were heading up to the scicon gate to do a "naked run"...(it was a drunken nite)...and i didn't want to do any naked running but i thought i'd go along to watch everyone else be dumb. when i got to the car, there was no room and they just looked at me like, "what are you thinking? we have no room for you, go away!" no one attempted to move over or make room or even say "sorry". they just drove off and ignored me. that night i could have killed myself because i was so dejected that i went for a walk on a trail that was pretty treacherous...and i did it when it was pouring down rain and i was pretty dang drunk. i walked all the way out to the rainbow bridge to sit under a tree and cry and feel sorry for myself. i could have slipped and died easily. luckily i didn't. no one even noticed i was gone. no one cared. when i got back i went and checked in with ron and he was mad that i had taken that chance, but he was in bed asleep and hadn't noticed i was gone either. :( (ron was my best friend at SCICON)

you know what, it makes me want to talk to the current interns and just give them a heads up about what a wonderful opportunity they have to be able to connect with ALL the interns they are working with. even if they don't hit it off with them all...that they could at least attempt to get to know them. i just really feel scarred from that aspect of my time at SCICON. :(

but i digress...i need to stop dwelling on the negative memories. i just have wanted to blog about that for awhile and now i have. watching that video yesterday reminded me of it all. i wonder if rick (the director of SCICON) would allow me to include a letter from a past intern to give to new interns and maybe even meet with them during their orientation and training and just give them a heads up to at least TRY to connect with all of them. i don't know if my year was unique in this or if i'm just a big baby or what. but i hadn't been rejected like that ever before that i can think of...was really used to be right in the middle of the gangs of friends...so it came as a huge shock and huge pain to me. i tend to think that if someone had just pointed out to the others how their actions were making me feel, that they might have changed their behavior because i think they were honestly just oblivious. so maybe i could just plant the seed into the minds of the new interns. i dunno, maybe.

anyway...back to the current times and the reality of now. :) got family time to do!

postscript: i just reread this and i sound pretty pathetic. well i was pretty pathetic at the time...and that's how i remember it. i know i could have just shrugged it off but the thing is that i had really looked at this opportunity as another chance to have the great experience of community and group fun that i had when i lived in teh dorms in college. what i got was so completely opposite. like i said, the work experience was GREAT! and i was the happiest i ever was in regards to that. i still think so fondly of the permanent staff and the naturalists especially and how wonderful they were and how great to get a chance to get to know people like briz and paul and bill the birdman and marcia marcia marcia...GREAT people! and i did have fun with the other interns at times...but the deep hurt i felt from being so completely ignored during social time cut so deep that to this day i remember it vividly. bleh, get over it tina. its not the end of the world but i sure would love to be able to just plant a seed into the minds of those that have experiences where they can choose to include or exclude people and help them think about always including because even as adults we can experience this sort of hurt. we were all in our 20s for pete's sake! you'd think we were mature enough to know this. guess not. still happens to me these days even sometimes...but i'm ok, i have my family and i am no longer alone when i go home and so there's not time or place to dwell on this sort of thing these days! :)