Rural Health Camp

For the last couple days, I was in DeKalb, IL (another one of those MON places--but more along of the lines of the rural university town) for a Rural Health Camp put on by Northern Illinois University. I helped out as a camp counselor for a group of kids the included 39 and 7 high school girls and boys respectively. The students are nominated by counselors/teachers in their communities to participate in this two day event which exposes them to different health care fields including speech/hearing, nursing, physical therapy, clinical microbiology, and a few other fields. It's really a neat camp that I wish I would have gone to when I was in high school.

Many of the kids participating in these programs come from poorer areas of Illinois where the expectations educationally are rather low. In addition, these are areas where higher education is often viewed in a negative light. It isn't surprising, then, that many of these kids came bearing family/social-related problems that extended far beyond the classroom. This camp reminded me of my friends who are currently teaching in underprivileged settings, both rural and urban and also reminded me of how these children are desperately searching for positive role models in places where they are scarce. And, of course, seeing the limitless potential in some of these children made the temporality of these last couple days that much more difficult to handle.

Coming back to Dixon this morning brought back memories of those afternoons after getting home from one of those youth group church retreats. It's a strange feeling to be around so many kids at one point and then come back to silence. On one hand it's refreshing and relaxing, but, on the otherhand, it also produces a lonely effect that hopefully blows away at the start of a new week.