Once a year the school counseling department holds a half-day counseling summit.  This year the summit focused on "Taboo Topics," offering the kids a chance to hear information and a Christian perspective on topics not often addressed.  The counseling department asked the chaplaincy office to run the program for the middle schoolers.

Everyone started off the day with a "Pancake Breakfast" for all students, teachers, and seminar presenters.  From there the high schoolers went on to small group seminars on topics they had selected to hear about.  Our goal with the middle school students was to address some bullying and hurtful behavior that has been a recent problem.  But spending a half-day with middle schoolers means you have to get a lot more interactive than 45-minute seminars!

The students first sat through a presentation on Aspberger's Syndrome and Bullying.  The sister of one middle school student who is diagnosed with Aspberger's gave a powerful description of what it is like to interact with her sister and feel the frustration, while shedding awareness on how hard her sister tries to fit into social norms and to do every day activities that the students take for granted.

Following this seminar, the students broke up to attend various workshops.  We wanted to give the kids a chance to do something they were interested in that would involve more movement, while practicing some new sensitivity skills with their peers.  The chaplaincy team pooled our collective skills and came up with the following workshops:

Photography 

A three-on-three soccer tournament (Nate ran this)

Dodgeball

Drumline

Cupcake Decorating (Ashley & I co-led this group)

Art

While this isn't a part of our daily routine, it was a great way for all of us to get to know some of the kids better and begin to build connections with them around shared interests.