Summer student ‘actively’ involved

It’s a success story for 21-year-old Amy Lee, who has been working at the Sportsplex since May 21 as the summer program supervisor.
“This year, our number of participants have almost doubled,” enthused the Fort Frances native. “We had to hire a couple more after starting with our initial staff.
“This year has been awesome for this [recreation] program.”
With different activities happening around the community for children of various age groups during the summer, Lee has the responsibility of maintaining order among the leaders helping to run the programs, as well as informing children of the activities planned.
Children have had the chance to attend different playground themes each week, such as the fire and police stations during “Safety Week,” as well as meeting new people and places during “Culture Week” and “Olympic Week.”
Lee also has helped operate the Wilderness Camps for children aged four to 12.
Lee came into the position with confidence after working at the Sportsplex last summer as a program leader, and the year before that as a lifeguard.
In fact, this job pertains to the field she’s studying. Lee already has completed one year at Mount Royal College in Calgary in the two-year program of Recreation Management.
“When you think of ‘recreation,’ you don’t think of planning and the programs,” Lee said. “It’s not as easy as people think it is. We go to school and have to learn like everybody else.”
But Lee still faces challenges with her position as supervisor over eight leaders and two other team members working with her.
“I have a hard time keeping that line between being a supervisor for the leaders because we are all here to have a good time,” she admitted.
“And on the same note, we want it to run smoothly and have worked hard to reach this point.”
Lee recalled some of the tasks she had to do at the beginning of her job with co-worker Andrea Bell.
“When I started in May, Andrea and I put together packages and went to elementary schools giving a brief overview of the things we would be doing,” she said.
And Lee’s tasks have progressed quite a bit since then.
“My responsibilities would be making sure everything runs smoothly, buying supplies, and seeing to the leaders,” she noted. “They may have problems with kids or be stuck [for] ideas.”
Lee also said she has the duties of administration work, which includes newsletters and calling the children who are coming to events the following week to tell them what they need.
Meanwhile, Lee said the success of the recreation program this year can be attributed to the many activities it offered.
“We run the [recreation program] if kids are interested in being active and want to do something structured that will be fun,” she explained.
“We want to keep them busy and active.”
During the course of the summer, Lee said she has gained quite a bit of knowledge about the position of recreation management, and looks forward to continuing her education come fall.