YMCA kids camp prepares college-age counselors for careers with children

To casual observers, the YMCA Summer Fun Club appears to offer kids lots of opportunities to exercise.

That is certainly true.

During one recent morning session at the YMCA, 9- to 12-year-olds were in the downstairs weight room, where they were going through a progression of weight machines under the watchful eyes of camp counselors Christina Thielen and Kinsey Dutoit.

In a ground-level aerobics room, 3- to 8-year-olds engaged in various activities that ranged from doing the limbo -- how low can they go? -- to performing "dance" aerobics to concluding with a series of stretching exercises.

Because of the kids' young age, there were even more counselors in the room to help guide the youngsters through those exercises. Among the camp counselors with the younger set were Jordan Ashby and Colter Bowers.

But something more than exercise is going on. Education is also taking place.

A tipoff about the education component is that two of the four counselors mentioned are recent college graduates with teaching degrees and a third is a current college student who is an education major.

Thielen graduated from the University of Nebraska at Kearney and will be teaching physical education at Stolley Park and Shoemaker Elementary schools this fall.

Kinsey Dutoit graduated from Hastings College and will be teaching third grade at Gates Elementary beginning in August.

Ashby will be a sophomore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she is an elementary and special education major.

Of this quartet, Bowers is the odd man out, both figuratively and literally. He will be a sophomore at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he is majoring in athletic training.

That makes him one of about two counselors who is not an education major. He also is the only male counselor at this year's summer fun camp.

For Thielen, leading students through weightlifting workouts and other physical exercises is great preparation the very kind of job she'll be doing this fall.

An added benefit is that summer camp counselor job has given her an opportunity to meet some of the youngsters she'll be working with at Stolley Park Elementary and Shoemaker Elementary this year.

Dutoit will be a classroom teacher, not a physical education teacher. As a result, she freely admits that she follows Thielen's lead when it comes to planning and participating in various games.

Thielen said when the kids go to the gym they play games such as four-corner kick, fitness kick and "Mr. and Mrs. McGillicudy."

For her part, Dutoit said, "I'll kind of stand back and watch so I understand the rules, then I'll join in."

Even though she is not a physical education teacher, Dutoit said her job as camp counselor had let her see that the kids are "smart and good at sports."

"The kids are a lot of fun," she said.

After taking lots of "gen ed" courses as a freshman, Ashby said, she wanted to find out whether she really wanted to make teaching her career. As a result, she jumped at the chance to be a camp counselor for the YMCA Summer Fun Club.

Her experiences this summer have Ashby convinced she has the right college major. Ashby said her work as a camp counselor is similar to a teacher's job in many ways, including the fact that she has to spend time outside her regular work day planning the next day's activities.

That's just like a teacher preparing the next day's lesson plans.

In addition to being a teacher, Ashby knows she also wants to be a volleyball coach when she begins working for a school system.

Bowers' college major is preparing him for a career in a facility such as a YMCA or perhaps a health club.

"My goal is to own my own gym," he said.

But he noted that he gets a kick out of his summer job.

"I like the kids a lot," Bowers said.

As for the education part of the YMCA Summer Fun Club, both the younger students and older students read from books each day.

Ashby noted that the Grand Island Public Library allows the YMCA to borrow books for the Summer Fun Camp program.

Older students read on their own, while counselors will read stories to the youngest students who are not yet in kindergarten.

Summer Fun Camp field trips to Stuhr Museum, Hastings Museum and Edgerton Explorit Center in Aurora definitely fall on the educational side of the ledger as well.

But even when the young kids are doing "The Hokey Pokey" aerobics, there is education going on.

The command for the preschool kids to "put your right foot in," followed by a later command to "put your left food in" teaches spatial awareness. Reading, after all, is an activity that is done from left to right and from top to bottom on the printed page.

David Calloway, himself a physical education teacher who worked as a substitute for the Grand Island school district last year, said all this is why the YMCA hires college students, not high school students, as counselors.

Calloway, who directs the program, said the counselors can take their knowledge and experience from the program back to their college classrooms because of the educational portions for the younger students who are enjoying their summer break.

When they return to school in the fall, "you won't have to reinvent the wheel," he said.