Sarakasi Trust Revisited

On Tuesday, while I was walking into Sarakasi Trust for the first real day of work at my internship, I had no idea what I was going to do and how I would bring to the table. The only thing that I did know is that I really think I want to work for an organization like Sarakasi Trust for a career and I am excited to be with them. Walking out of the Sarakasi Dome I had the feeling that I could not have possibly had a more fun or better first day of actual work at my internship.

Sarakasi just began working on this community outreach program in which their best acrobats will go out into informal settlements and teach kids there acrobatics as a way to provide outlets to these children to deter them from crime and to see positives in their lives. Today was the very beginning of a training workshop to train the teachers how to teach the classes. When I joined in with the workshop, there were 5 groups of 5 or 6 people in each group, and everyone had 5 minutes or so to be a leader and teach different various basic exercises, and then after each short session there would be evaluation time within each group(what did the teacher do well, what didn't he do well, how could the teacher improve and then the groups would switch teachers and continue until everyone in the group was a teacher. I would bounce around the different groups for each session and participate in the activities and the evaluations. The mini-lesson was entirely up to the teacher for that five minutes, and I participated in everything from introductions to pre-exercise warm up stretching and calisthenics to even basic yoga moves. I also contributed with the evaluations for the different sessions I was in.

After lunch a world-class acrobat (and Sarakasi acrobat instructor at that) began to teach how to teach basic acrobatic moves step by step. These included somersaults, backwards somersaults, cartwheels, one-handed cartwheels, round-outs head-stands, and 2 person hand stands. The trained acrobats made a line and had to do each one of these as the instructor looked on and critiqued each basic move. I abstained from this participating in this because I thought it was not my place because I would not in the real program. As this was going on one of the acrobats (I forgot to say all of these acrobats who are being trained as teachers are about my age, I would guess between 16-22)said to me "Why don't you try it Ryan?" I was nervous to try it, but I knew that I would regret it later if I didn't participate.

I saw my chance as all the people broke up into small groups for sessions like in the morning, only this time it was to practice teaching these basic acrobatic moves. I figured why not participate now as I would be perfect as a person who has no experience in any of this. I served as the perfect model of the kids that they would be teaching who would be complete beginners. I did very poorly with form but I kept trying to do everything and was semi-successful (with a lot of help) And the kids seemed to really want to help me learn how to do the different moves. They were really into it and it made me excited to see this. I hope they feel the same way when they are actually out in the field and have with the laughing and joking and having the fun that they had teaching me to do these things.

It really was a new experience for me Tuesday and I had a lot of fun with what will most likely be one of if not the most fun and unique first day of an internship or job of my life. I am going to have an amazing experience interning at Sarakasi Trust this Semester!!!