2 - Job Description

Jake Weissfeld

Professor Hansen

WRIT 340

1 June 2021

2 - Job Description

Background

Every summer from my Sophomore to Senior Year of High School, I have worked as a counselor at the Chaminade Center for Excellence Summer Program. The program is located at Chaminade College Preparatory High School, which is where I attended all four years of high school. The program is designed for students in elementary school.

 

The summer program has two sectors: one is academic and the other is for athletics. I spent most of my time as a counselor working for the academic program and specifically in the STEAM department. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. The purpose of the academic program is for students to continue to learn after the school year is over and help students discover their academic passions. The program allows students to get more in-depth knowledge that they would not have the chance to get inside the classroom.

 

Responsibilities

As a counselor I had 3 main responsibilities

·       Teach

·       Counsel

·       Assist

 

Teach

As a teacher, my responsibility was to help the students in all their classwork. The subject matter to the kids was often new and challenging, so they often got discouraged. I had to be patient, encouraging, and methodical in the way I helped the students to get the most out of them. The better I did my job, the more excited they would get about STEAM and continue exploring their passion after the program is over.

 

An example of this job is when I helped teach a robotics class. This class period, the students had to program lego cars to go through an obstacle course. After they completed the obstacle course, they could move onto the next one and each level went up in difficulty. In the class, there was a specific student who was way behind the other students in the class and was struggling mightily. He began to get very discouraged and started to cry. As the counselor, I tried to boost his confidence and worked him through the problems he was having and was able to eventually catch him up to the rest of the class.

 

Counsel

The counsel part of the job was one of the most difficult parts. The elementary school students were constantly fighting and getting their feelings hurt. It was my job to resolve all these conflicts and make every happy and get along.

 

One instance of this is when one of the kids got a pizza at lunch and another student hit the pizza down and made the student drop it and start crying. The first thing I did was approach the student who dropped the pizza and made her feel better. Then, I got her a new pizza and told her everything would be alright. Next, I confronted the student who hit the pizza out of the other student’s hands. I asked him why he did it and let him know that it is not okay to do that. Lastly, I made him apologize to her and promise he would never do it again.

 

Assist

The last part of being a camp counselor was assisting the students in whatever they needed and wherever they needed to go. I was given a schedule of all the students' classes, so it was my job to walk all the kids to their classes and make sure they were at the right place at the right time. Additionally, I had to provide the students' breakfast, lunch, and snacks throughout the day. Lastly, I had to work the carpool lane and make sure all the kids got home safely.

 

Working the carpool lane could occasionally be difficult. Usually, the parents have picked up all the kids 30 minutes after the day of camp was over. However, there was one time where there were twins whose parents did not come after waiting almost an hour. I had to inform the head of the program and get a list from the camp of their parent's phone numbers and make a call to have their kids picked up. It turned out there was a mix-up between the mom and dad of who was picking their kids up that day, and eventually, the mom came and picked them up.