About a week
ago, I had my first experience in facilitating my school’s Writing Club. Facilitating a club was new to me, so I was
surprised of the compliments that the other club members gave to me.
Our Writing
Club was inspired and founded last year.
Paul Griffin, the author of When Friendship Followed Me Home
visited our school. He suggested us to
start a Writing Club. I was honored to
be one of the seven founding fathers. As
the founders pulled in their friends, the Writing Club grew twice as
large. Ever since, we have been sharing
ideas every Thursday during lunch.
I signed up
to be a facilitator and my original plan was to talk about science fiction for
the meeting. However, everything changed
a few days before the meeting. Two
honored members of the Club who happened to be my friends dropped by and told
me they were going to quit after I facilitate the meeting. They considered we were not exactly
productive in keeping the namesakes of Writing Club. I was concerned, and at the last moment, I
changed the topic to personal writing. I
was prepared for the moment of truth of keeping them stay in the Club.
I prepared
index cards for writing a passage about one’s personality, and for writing down
one’s worst fears. We discussed how to
analyze, accept, and resolve fears, and once everyone was done writing about
fears, I asked them to rip the fear cards into millions of pieces. We also talked about what it means to be human,
and finally, I had my clubmates write an acronym of their own name. The funny ones came out to be: Bright,
Energetic, and Nomadic.
After the
meeting, clubmates complimented me on the activities. The two friends who were planning to quit
decided to stay. With this experience, I
now see how one person’s determination can influence others and make the world
a better place.