My artifact is from one of my most memorable and emotional service projects. In high school, I participated in a project called Adaptive Ascents. The project took place twice a year at my local climbing gym. The goal of Adaptive Ascents is to teach children and young adults with disabilities how to rock climb. Generally, Adaptive athletes would be paired with one or two volunteers and could climb for as long as they wanted. But one day, I had a young girl, Maddie, who didn’t find much interest in rock climbing. Instead, she wanted to show me her cheer routine and even taught me and some of the other volunteers one.
Even though the routine changed every time we practiced it and climbers are notoriously unflexible and uncoordinated, my friends and I had an absolute blast doing cheer routines with Maddie. It was so rewarding to just be goofy and laugh while doing choreography with Maddie and the other volunteers.
This experience taught me a lot. Though I had worked in this program for a full two years prior to meeting Maddie, I had always been the coach. It was super special to be able to step back and allowing a child to teach me, especially a child with a disability. Even though it sounds cheesy to say, Maddie taught me that it’s okay to be different if you’re doing something you love. I don’t know her personal situation but I know that growing up in my town, kids were sometimes made fun of for having disabilities. But whether Maddie was going through that or not, she was definitely not giving up cheerleading anytime soon.
Moving forward since this event, I have tried to step back a bit in situations where there could be a clear leader and a clear follower. I’ve found that, when leading a group, you do your best work if you hear from the group members and don’t just control their actions. Maddie helped me see that followers sometimes have an even better idea than the leaders might. 