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By Sara Westhead

While it would seem that after so many years of running Aqua Camp, it would be a walk in the park for those involved, it actually requires a great deal of time and planning to get ready for it each year. This includes ensuring that there are enough people involved to make sure it runs safely, as well as being fun and educational for each child that attends.

In fact, there are at least three full-time staff members for every age group, as well as our camp director and an interpreter/coordinator’s assistant. That means, when there are six different camps running at the same time, we need 20 full-time staff to make sure that everything runs smoothly, not including the numerous part-time staff that are employed as swim assistants to make sure that the children are safe in the water.

“We have a lead teacher for each camp age group and two assistants,” explained BZS Education Officer, Dr. Jamie Bacon, who also serves as Aqua Camp Director. “The teacher is either a qualified educator or an exceptional naturalist, and is the one who teaches the academic portion of the camp, while the assistants are extremely important for assisting with swimming, field trips, crafts and ushering campers wherever they need to go. The interpreter will organize animal encounters and give presentations on the animals to the camp groups – we try to have each camp have at least two animal encounters each week.”

Students enjoying swimming with their camp teacher.
Photo by C. Anderson

Although Aqua Camp is designed as an academic natural history camp, fun and safety are very important.

“We try to have a very creative curriculum for each camp age group, and that requires supervision along with a caring staff who are great at ensuring the campers are engaged and having fun. But we are also very conscious about safety, so we make sure to have adequate staff to keep the children safe no matter what the activity,” Dr. Bacon added.

All staff, whether full-time or part-time, undergo an orientation, which prepares them for the summer, outlining what is expected of them, camp rules, as well as camp crafts, as appropriate. Over the last few years, the lifeguards have also given a water safety lecture as well. All staff are required to have CPR and First Aid certification.

“It is important because the staff needs to know what is expected of them and to be reminded of how important water safety is. Also, I do try to pair any new assistants with a seasoned assistant, so they have guidance while the camps are running. Many of the assistants, as well as teachers, work for more than one year, which greatly helps maintain the continuity and excellence of our camps.”