What happens when you haven’t done something for over a year? Can you just pick it up and start doing it again? What’s that like?

Last week, Shesita and I had the opportunity to figure out what it felt like to teach after everything shutdown in Guatemala 15 months ago. ASELSI’s current physical therapist asked us to come and provide training for him and the people we’ve trained there.

Once we had the topics and time frame, Shesita and I got busy planning for the course. Ideas flowed easily as we came up with some fun, creative ways to help them review activities to help children with disabilities learn to walk. We reminded them to think about their approach to working with children with disabilities and how they could apply that to West Syndrome, a genetic disorder causing epileptic seizures, intellectual disability, and varying motor control problems. Instead of just telling them what to do, we developed a plan to review things they’ve learned about normal development and methods they could use to apply those skills and ideas to some of their current patients. We had the training together in just a few hours. It felt so easy and natural.

The morning of the training we could feel the excitement in the air. Although we couldn’t see them, I’m pretty sure we all had smiles under our masks. We all commented about smiling, even though we couldn’t see them, especially when we snapped this group shot.

Our morning together went well. I think the people we had trained previously were encouraged and reminded of the things they already knew that would help them now, while also learning some new things. Everyone was able to ask questions and I believe the PT felt he had some support.

 It turns out, in this case, you can just pick it up and start doing it again.

What are you enjoying doing again that you haven’t done in a while? Or what might it be time to start doing again?