Dealing with kids at the Eastlake YMCA

To: Chris Chatman, chairman of Eastlake YMCA of Oakland

From: Gladys

Re: The non-profit organization’s structures and rules for kids to behave better

Taking care of ruthless kids at Eastlake YMCA in Oakland was beyond of my job description. I was hired as a volunteer for first two weeks of summer and as a paid camp counselor for rest of the summer camp at Eastlake YMCA. My job was to take care of 50-80 kids per day between the ages 4-12 in rotating schedules for each age group and provide kids with recreational activities. However, the problem is their behaviors to listen to staffs and lack of structure in the YMCA faculty that causes kids to misbehave. Therefore, I suggest on organizing more facility rules on kids to make Eastlake YMCA more structured.

I’ve observed so many youth organizations and daycare centers in the past, I find Eastlake YMCA not structure enough to help kids learn the proper way to act fairly upon peers and other than peers such as YMCA staffs. Eastlake YMCA has very few rules and most rules are too lean on kids because they think and act like they can roam around YMCA faculty as they please. If Eastlake YMCA has much stricter facility rules, kids can learn to act properly such as respecting staffs and other fellow campers. On one occasion, I was the only staff dealing with 20 of 4-6 year olds because my other co-worker on \ a break and I tried to give them directions with loud sterner voice to go inside the building to do some arts and crafts but kids ignored my command. In this situation, I think Eastlake YMCA should add this rule of "taking away free times if not listening to YMCA staffs" to be stern and stricter on the kids so they can learn to listen.

My best solution is to add and change into stricter rules to help kids learn to act appropriately among peers and others aside from peers with respect at Eastlake YMCA faculty. If faculty rules being more effective and stricter, the YMCA staffs don’t always have to rely on Floresa, our supervisor, to help command the kids whenever we have troubles managing them because she has superior power over us as YMCA staffs. In addition, I also want to suggest changing a rule on time-outs because giving kids two time-outs and a call home to every kid whenever they disobey staffs' directions or said rude comments to other doesn’t help kids learn from their mistakes. I've been to my school's daycare center at San Francisco State University on a class field trip, I've learned that you can't always tell a kid to do “time-out” every time they've behave impropriate because they will eventually try to learn how to escape from time-outs without a staff watching him/or her.

Our facility should not contain too much rules but at a manageable numbers so kids could remember the basic rules of behaving appropriately. We, YMCA staffs, do realize that parents pay for their kids to participate in the YMCA day camp so it our responsibility to help them have fun with recreational activities and also learn to interact with peers and YMCA staffs with our strict rules. However, Eastlake YMCA should keep numbers of rules at manageable or average size so rules don’t cause confusion or difficulty for kids to remember all facility rules.

Eastlake YMCA contain stricter rules on kids help them learn interaction, getting along with others, following directions, and learning about good teamwork. As long as Eastlake YMCA continue to exist, our company continues to earn so much money from parents for their kids to enjoy recreational activities with Eastlake's YMCA day but parents never realize their kids aren't learning anything out of day camp such teamwork and corporation. Kids won’t work well among peers and other people aside from their peers due to lack of rules unless East YMCA encourage kids to interact with others with stricter rules.