It is now the end of week 3 of my fellowship at Community for New Direction. This week was spent getting everything ready for camp on Monday. All of the counselors came in for training 9-3 every day. My jobs for the week included conducting ice-breakers, printing and organizing folders, creating a van inspection checklist for all drivers, and assisting with background checks and CPR/First-Aid training. I have also started collecting baseline ADAMH quizzes from other agencies to enter into the AOD-V quiz excel sheet.

On top of all of the work I was helping with this week, everyone else was responsible for learning bus routes, planning curriculum and extra field trips, organizing data, printing and filing forms, calling parents, picking up supplies, prepping the vans, and much more. The office got full and loud very quickly as everyone was hard at work on their assignments. It was important for everyone to remain attentive and motivated throughout this entire week to ensure nothing is left out or forgotten, risking a smooth start to camp next week.

There were times that I observed the full time staff giving specific instructions to the temporary Summer Day Camp staff and the temporary staff would still be confused or do the wrong thing. For instance, all staff were told to work on their curriculum from 9:00am to noon and then were to report back to the elementary school at 1:00 for a meeting. Half of the staff were a half hour late to the meeting at 1:00 and a few others failed to go to the correct meeting place.

It was very puzzling to me that those in charge would say one thing and then the group would do something different because they were confused or weren’t asking questions. In my studies, almost every class talked about the importance of communication when working in the social-profit sector. I had a conversation about this issue with my bosses and I mentioned it might be best to change the way communication happens between permanent and temporary staff. I will keep working on this idea to come up with a solution that the organization can use in the future.