Week 5 Writing Assignment

I've been unable to write extra blogs...though I have many more thing to.

I climbed Mt. Jimba (between Tokyo and Kanagawa pref.) with 14 children and some adults, as a leader of those children, so I'm gonna write about it as I respond to chp.5.

I'm a counselor (teacher) of Pathfinder Club, a church Boy/Girl Scout, and I was a leader of the 14 children as we climbed up Mt. Jimba, for the first time.

Of course, children causes many many unpredictable problems.
So what I tried to emphasize the most was to tell them to go slowly, never walking fast.

I used to think that the team message is basically useless, just the words all of which all of the team members know such as "be careful, don't get hurt."
But as I had to select words as the leader, I realized that team messages are the extract of what the most important thing is for the whole group.
(just like when Ken introduces some books.)

Of course, the children climbed with very diverse paces.
I was stopping the boy in the lead all the time (though I let him start in the back at first lol).
Keeping having a contact with another counselor in the back with transceiver, I was struggling to stop him all the time, saying "You're not walking alone. You walk fast (and that's a great thing), so you need to think of slow people when you are in a team" over and over again.

It was lucky that he was the only boy who tried to go fast.
but I had difficulty to think of the whole team as I focused on the boy.(the counselor helped me a lot)

I had many many other lessons through the hiking yesterday. To focus on "team message", I had those lessons.
I came to know that what the leader says in front of the whole team is often obvious, but never trivial.