A Role Model for the Younger Ones: JaRon on What It Takes to Appropriately Express Emotions and Behaviors
Program: Enrichment Camps
JaRon held a stethoscope to his dog’s chest, listened for a heartbeat. The dog was showing signs of sickness. It had swallowed a spoon.
Luckily, the dog was only a stuffed animal. It was going to be all right. The exercise was from Little Vet School, an organization that had come out for the week to work with the children at Delmar DivINe, one of Unleashing Potential’s summer enrichment programs.
The instructor began to share next steps for the class. One of JaRon’s friends continued to speak. But JaRon focused his attention on the instructor, and soon his friend followed suit. This was one of the ways JaRon served as a role model for younger kids in the program – by modeling how to appropriately express emotions and behaviors.
Throughout the week, JaRon had learned that vets take care of different types of animals, from exotic zoo animals to farm animals to household pets. He’d been given a white coat and a stuffed animal that he could take home. He’d pretended to be the different types of people at a veterinarian – a vet, a vet tech, a receptionist, a client, a patient. He’d even built his own vet clinic and learned why veterinarians take X-rays.
Overall, JaRon enjoyed the experience. He has two (real) dogs at home, so it’s important that he can recognize some of the signs if one of them were to become sick.
In fact, the exposure to new career paths was one of JaRon’s favorite aspects of Unleashing Potential’s summer enrichment camp as a whole.
“I think it’s cool,” he said. “I like that different people come. I get to work on my social skills with them.”
The multiple vendors weren’t the only way JaRon got to work on his social skills. Since joining the summer enrichment camp, he had made a bunch of new friends – and gotten to reconnect with some longstanding ones as well. And, as one of the older campers, he served as a role model for the younger kids.
The best way to serve as a role model, he said, was to model what it looked like to appropriately express emotions and behaviors.
“When someone does something negative, I don’t tell them to stop,” he said. “I just do the opposite of what they’re doing, and they follow along.”
JaRon’s leadership is one of the reasons Unleashing Potential’s summer enrichment camps are so successful. According to our 2022 Impact Report, 98% of children identified, managed and appropriately expressed emotions and behaviors and 92% experienced a sense of belonging. This is not only because of our highly qualified staff, but also because of students like JaRon, who take advantage of the leadership opportunities to help younger children.
*Actual student/name has been changed to protect child’s identity
