Introduction to the Team: Nora

What is your role within MAPS and what decisions do you usually have to make in this role?:

As site coordinator, Nora is responsible for creating lesson plans. She makes decisions about the activities they’ll be doing at site, and must take into consideration how the children will respond and engage with the activities. Her job is to make the lesson plans but educational and fun at the same time. It’s important to keep the middle schoolers engaged, while making sure they are learning at the same time.

What makes it challenging?: 

The most challenging thing about her job is having to deal with students that are at different levels academically. It’s hard to think about activities that will cater to each of the students' needs, and she doesn’t know whether the activity will go well or not. For example, there was one site where Nora had a spelling relay race with the kids. She thought it’d be a good way to incorporate being outside while teaching the kids how to spell. The activity was going well, the only issue was the kids are at different levels. When they saw their peers going through the words much faster than them, they immediately got discouraged. This was an example of when an activity didn’t go as well as she thought it would. 

Create a fun, 10-minute icebreaker activity that helps new Volunteers and students feel welcome:

The activity we created was kind of a race thing where there’s a line of students/volunteers standing in a line on opposite sides of each other. The student/volunteers then has to run across to another student/volunteer and introduce themselves.