Apparently I am a very intimidating and terrifying person. I never yell, laugh a lot and spend a lot of time encouraging people, so I'm not sure where I got this reputation.
On the camping trip, one of the tents of boys refused to go to sleep, wouldn't listen to the counselor and so his threat had been, "when we get back you are going to talk to Director".
After lunch, I lead the boys (hanging heads, slumped shoulders, miserable looking) down to the office and said, "do you know why you are here?"
We ended up talking for a full hour about the whole week. They are good boys who were feeling frustrated, not listened to and powerless (similar feelings that their counselor was feeling). We talked a lot about communication, listening, respect and working together as a team.
Near the end of the conversation, I asked, "is there anything else we need to talk about?"
"What is our punishment?" they asked.
I explained that they didn't have a punishment because my goal had been to solve the problem with them, not beat them up over their mistakes.
Later, Program Director S told me, "well, you made quite the impression on those boys." Apparently they had a long discussion about how cool I actually am and that I wasn't scary, didn't yell at them and listened to them. I'm not sure what they'd expected, but I'm glad I could surprise them and win them over.
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