The week of Aug. 1-7 will be the 20th anniversary of my first Adults In Ministry experience, which was my first Mountain T.O.P. experience. I was at Camp Overton, in Warren County, in 1993 doing Summer Plus. I had signed up hoping to teach creative writing, and I've taught creative writing at Summer Plus many times since. But I didn't get to do it that first year, at least not in a regular, daily workshop. I assisted Paige Wadford (now Smith) in a volleyball workshop and, on short notice, co-taught a drama workshop with Mark Sellers.
We struggled with the drama workshop the first two days, until Carolyn Greenwood offered to loan us her video camera. The kids began producing a video newscast reporting on all of the other afternoon workshops. They wrote it themselves – and the teen who'd been most disruptive on Monday and Tuesday was the most active in making sure the script was worded the way a real newscast would be.
The experience I had that week was enough to hook me on Summer Plus, and Mountain T.O.P., for life.
By the way, I did get to teach a very short session on writing with a different group of kids each day that week. But it was nothing like my intended workshop.
I got to teach a real writing workshop the next year, and I've done so on numerous occasions since.
Creative writing at Summer Plus can be an iffy situation. I try my hardest to make the workshop as little like school as possible, and if the teens are at all interested in writing things usually work out. But sometimes you'll get someone who got their first choice of workshops in the morning but ended up having to take creative writing in the afternoon, and they really don't want to be there because it reminds them of English class. I'm a writer, not an educator; a devoted uncle, not a parent; and I don't have as many tools in my tool kit as some of my fellow volunteers have for engaging the reluctant.
There have been several times that by Tuesday afternoon, I was pulling my hair out, cursing my own lack of ability, and swearing to myself that I'd never sign up for Summer Plus, ever again.
But God has a way of turning things around. I remember one year when I made it through four days thinking I had failed the kids as an instructor, and then, as I was taking my transportation route home on Thursday, one of the girls from my writing workshop gave me a little bead bracelet she'd made in her other workshop and told me how much she enjoyed the writing class.
I tried not to start crying until she was out of the car and headed up the steps to her house.
There were two years in a row when I ended up teaching not only creative writing but also the cooking workshop. In both cases, another volunteer had signed up to teach cooking but had to drop out at the last minute.
One of those two years, my assistant (whose name now escapes me) had two of our students – precious young women – on his van route through Jasper or Whitwell. He couldn't believe the conditions in which they lived, and wasn't sure they were getting enough to eat. He'd already agreed to be in charge of the menu for one day, since I'd had to put everything together at the last minute. He decided, and I agreed, that he would bring enough ingredients to make two casseroles instead of one, and that we'd casually offer the girls the chance to take the extra casserole home with them that night.
His plan seemed to work like a charm – until we found out the next morning that the girls' uncles had come over and eaten every last drop of the casserole. The girls hadn't gotten any of it.
This year, I wasn't able to make plans for Summer Plus until the last minute, and so -- for the first time -- I was a Summer Plus volunteer but not a workshop leader. I'm used to being an assistant when I come to Kaleidoscope, and of course I usually only teach one session of creative writing, meaning that I'm an assistant during the other half of the day. But this was my first time to be an all-day assistant in the Summer Plus program. In some ways, it was a nice change of pace to be able to play that support role without any responsibility for providing content. I missed teaching my creative writing workshop, but I had fun playing in Jan Lloyd-Gohl's printing workshop. I wasn't so much of an assistant as I was an additional student, participating in the activities right alongside the teenagers. (Jan put up with me, and I did at least help clean up afterward.)
Sometimes, there are only one or two male instructors in Summer Plus, and that bothers me. While you mustn't overgeneralize about any specific aspect of mountain culture, I think there are teens I've met, and households I've seen, that demonstrate a need among some of these kids for loving, Christian male role models. I'm in awe of Robert Matthews and the way he works so hard on two different workshops -- photography and juggling. He's a great example to the kids, and they show it in the way they respond to the content he provides. I know he was disappointed that a conflict kept him away from Summer Plus this year.
I think relationships are the key to Summer Plus. As much fun as we have with the content, you have to understand that it's about ministry -- about relationships, and having fun, and trying to make a connection. The kids will remember that you cared even if they forget what you taught.
John I. Carney is city editor of the Shelbyville (Tenn.) Times-Gazette and a certified United Methodist lay speaker (now known as lay servant). He served 12 years on the Mountain T.O.P. board over a 14-year period and was the editor of “Getting Hooked: Stories From Mountain T.O.P.'s Twenty Years of Ministry,” published by the ministry in 1995.
