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Asset Builder of the Month

staff report

In the past year, I have observed Jennifer Cox grow into a passionate, resourceful and confident educator for Summit Day Camp’s before-and after- school program at Summit Cove Elementary. The combination of her degree in wildlife biology and her desire to work with children provides a fun and enriching learning environment. Jenn is always looking for new ideas to broaden the curriculum of the program and continuously offers new activities.

Having attended various school-age workshops, Jenn has implemented many activities on conflict resolution, gender learning differences, assets and team building. Jenn currently uses positive incentive programs, such as stickers and marbles, to motivate positive behavior in students.

The children also participated in an activity that required them to create a “peaceable being.” As a group, the children drew a large silhouette of the person and filled it in with positive action/behavior words such as caring, listening, happy, and so on. Negative attributes such a name-calling, interrupting, fighting and the like would be written on the outside of the silhouette. After the peaceable being was completed and hung on the wall, the students used it as a standard or contract to discuss camp rules, how to behave in conflict situations and how to respond in friendly interactions. As a result, this visual exercise cultivates and empowers children to adapt a philosophy that they can choose to use in their world around them. 



In addition to promoting a conflict-free environment, Jenn also enriches the program by inviting guest presenters to the after-school program.  Just recently, she coordinated a ski patroller and avalanche rescue dog to visit the program. Children were taught about the responsibilities of ski patrol, the equipment and techniques they use and how they perform rescues with dogs. The children flooded the presenter with questions and were fascinated by the avalanche demonstration. Making integral community members such as ski patrollers, firefighters, and police accessible and tangible to children creates awareness and respect for the work these individuals do.

Day camp is very fortunate to have an educator of this caliber. 



– Nominated by Simone Belz

assistant director,

Summit Day Camps


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