A splashful afternoon

Apparently we raised $1,000. At the start of the event, we had raised about $500 so the final number came to me by surprise.

The donations collected from the charity event, called Mustang Splash!--named after our school mascot--was for Dr. Tadashi Hattori, who devotes his time and money in providing eye surgeries and care for those without the funds to do so in Vietnam. Apparently he was also awarded an appreciation letter from the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam not too long ago. The 5th grade classes in the elementary school headed a project called the "Global Responsibility Prize," in which they chose someone in the world who lived by the school vision: Developing compassionate, inquisitive learners prepared for global responsibility. Dr. Hattori was the chosen candidate.

The event went well. A few hiccups at the beginning, because there was quite a large mass of elementary school kids running around, and it was the first time that these high school kids who were working with me would experience moving masses of people through a system, but all in all I think it was a great experience for them and most of them enjoyed doing it. We had to get some Varsity swimmers to swim for teams as they were lacking swimmers, and some of them really didn't like that, but I guess that's the nature of high school kids; Al put it well enough: "That's what they do. They don't enjoy themselves in any school setting." I will upload some photos from the event as soon as I can on my flickr site.

**Postscript**
I suppose I could've made the event a simpler set-up. I could've advertised, "Open Donations for Open Swim Time. Pool's open until 5pm." Or even, "Diving Contest!! Bet for the biggest Cannonball!!" But, alas, no. The event was a full-fledged relay party complete with heats and race times and registration tables and even marshal areas. I had 6 high school students working with me, putting together promotion efforts and creating signage and on the day of, managing a huge mass of people--kids, to be perfectly accurate. At the end of it all, when I finally arrived home and sat down to reflect, the first question on my mind was, "Was that really necessary?"

When I worked for REC at U of BC, this question was never asked because I was hired by an organization to do the work. But here and now, the logistics of Mustang Splash!! was something I just came up with, and no one--well, save the head coach who did not (and does not) know how to trust others to do their work--really stopped me or the kids from pursuing our 'big plan'. What really triggered me into questioning the event's necessity was the attitude of some adults present at the event that this was their doing because it was their idea and they just adored themselves in the spotlight of things. At that moment a certain skepticism came over me, and I questioned the 100+ hours of preparation work that went into putting the thing together, and whether this emotional distress from knowing that certain people considered the event to be their--and wholly their--achievement was worth it. I have yet to arrive at a satifactory answer.

Additionally, I felt like doing something upsetting or destructive like spilling coffee over a white, freshly-ironed shirt (that is quite truly upsetting on Tuesday mornings) when I read an email that thanked all the faculty and staff involved in the preparation and/or participated in the event. I was sick to the stomach to see that, in this mass school email, there was no mention of the kids who helped put it all together--no, that would apparently take place during practice today and I was to "[h]elp [her] think of good word choices tomorrow to put a positive spin on everything they did today." And how many faculty and staff were out there who helped put this together? There can't be that many because I never saw a single adult face in any of my planning meetings. Support, yes; energy, yes--and we were totally grateful for that. But planning and execution? Absolutely not. Those were the kids and they deserve a mention, and definitely something more than in a mass-email.

Some people make me sick.