My Summer as a river ranger- by Hailey m.

Being a River Ranger isn’t always easy, but it's SO rewarding. Halfway through my junior year of high school I found out about the greenway foundation through my schools newsletter. In the fall I participated in a virtual internship from February to May. I was sad for my internship to end but then was informed that the SPREE offered a paid internship for the summer. 
Once I applied and went through the interview process I was finally hired and excited to spend my summer at a kids camp. 
  
In order to be the best possible River Ranger it’s important to prioritize self care before every shift. I learned that getting enough sleep, hydrating, eating a good breakfast, and doing one I like everyday before my shift helped me maintain a positive attitude. Almost everyday consists of being out in 90+ weather and it’s important to take care of yourself if you want to be able to teach kids outside. Taking care of kids was new to me but the SPREE Team gave me all necessary tips to keep children safe while having fun.Before teaching lessons on my own , I got the proper training to learn how to be the best environmental educator possible. Learning the difference between educational vs advocacy or the different learning styles are some of the few things I got to learn to be an educator. With this in mind, every shift river rangers get two 30 min prep times to prepare materials, write scripts, test experiments etc.  Even if a lesson is physically prepared, it's important for river rangers to also be mentally prepared and excited to teach their lesson. Critter crawl is another structured activity that is done everyday. Critter crawl consists of river rangers taking campers down to the south platte river and catching macro-invertebrates. Some campers may be too little or just scared to flip a rock and river rangers are there to help assist campers in catching the critters. 

  An amazing part of this job is all the amount of free time in the day to allow kids to do pretty much any outdoor/indoor activity. Free time is the perfect time to have fun and get to know the campers a bit more on a more personal level. Playing on the playground, painting, bug catching are just a few popular activities.  Personally , my favorite part about being a river ranger was getting the chance to be a kid again and just play on the playground with other kids. It was amazing that I got the chance to work while having fun. Most importantly, when things get tough, I get support from my other coworkers daily. It was nice to be able to know I can work around people who genuinely care about me.
As summer was coming to an end, I was once again sad my time with SPREE was wrapping up, or so I thought. I loved my job so much and decided to ask SPREE staff if there was any way possible for me to continue to work for a foundation I truly love. Thanks to my coworkers, I was able to work during the school year and become an ambassador for the greenway foundation. Being a river ranger taught me life skills such as networking, public speaking, time management and much much more.

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