2025 Quality Programs Level 1
Date
Location
Dallas, TX 75207
Cost
Member: $200
Nonmember: $400
Additional person from the same camp
Member: $150
Nonmember: $350
CECs
4.00Quality Programs Level I is engaging and immersive in-depth training focusing on the safe and supportive staff practices that help children thrive.
We will explore promoting social-emotional learning for youth and develop plans for integrating these supports into staff training.
This training will culminate with tangible skills including the ability to effectively use and score the Social Emotional Learning Program Quality Assessment for Camp tool.
Because of the robust nature of quality assessment and continuous improvement, we recommend that each organization enroll at least two participants to realize the full potential of the training and the impact Quality Programs Level 1 can have on your program.
There will also be a Quality Programs Level 2 workshop on February 18. Participants must complete Quality Programs Level I to participate in this training.
Steph Love, MS Experiential Education, has spent her career at camp, working in almost every role imaginable from CIT to camp director. In 2004, Steph co-founded her own camp, Positive Energy Outdoors, providing access to unique outdoor programming, including dog sledding and driving draft horses, kayaking, rock climbing, and her community’s first nature play-based after-school childcare program. Through camps and program partnerships, she has created safe and supportive outdoor experiences for thousands of children and adults of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds. Steph uses her camp expertise to design and facilitate workshops on social emotional learning, equity, character, and quality. She has coached camps and out of school time programs in 35 states and around the world through her work with the Forum for Youth Investment’s Weikart Center, and her current work with ACA and the SeriousFun Children’s Network. Steph lives in Duluth, MN with her teenage son, sled dogs, and rescue black lab. She is a volunteer adaptive alpine skiing and kayak instructor, and is slowly transforming her lawn into a pollinator garden.
Jessie Dickerson serves as ACA's Manager of Program Quality Systems. In this role, she supports camps in continuously improving the quality of their programs through trainings, coaching, and a community of practice. Ensuring that camp is truly for all kids is what fuels Jessie's work. She's dedicated to supporting camps in striving for equity—for camps to be a safe and supportive space for all youth, which is a critical piece of program quality.
Part 1 (3 hours) 1:00–4:00 p.m.
- Welcome and Introductions: Prepare for Continuous Program Quality Improvement
- Central Ideas:
- What is continuous program quality improvement?
- Prepare to Assess the Quality of Programs
- Observation Practice: Safe and Support Environment Scale Review
- Implementation: Planning your assessment process
Part 2 (2 hours) 4:00–6:00 p.m.
- Central Ideas: Safe and Supportive Staff Practices: Emotion Coaching
- Practice: Creating Safe and Supportive Environments at Camp
- Implementation: Planning your staff training
- Closing Reflection and Next Steps
