Education should be an important part of your career. Sure, you have the college degree but recreation and youth interests are in constant flux. I know a number of directors that put very little stock in ongoing education. I know that even more board and committee members feel the same way. In my opinion we should all be growing and learning, in all aspects of our lives.
If you’re on the East Coast or in the Midwest I’m sure there are a number of training opportunities coming up, and I’d like to invite you to post upcoming trainings in the comments or email me at Curt@recreationpros.com so that I can post them on this site.
If you’re lucky enough to work for an organization that will pay for you to go to the ACA National conference in Orland, FL., Feb 17-20, I envy you. I wish I could attend. For more info on what promises to be a great week go to http://www.acacamps.org/conference.
Here on the West Coast there are a few I want you to be aware of.
March 3-6, 2009
The CPRS (California Parks and Recreation Society) Conference is happening in San Jose, CA. I’m excited about this one. Some of you may know that I have not been thrilled with the CPRS Conferences in the past. I’m keeping my fingers crossed on this one. To learn more go to http://www.cprs.org/conference-general.htm.
April 1-4, 2009
The American Camp Association CampWest Conference will again take place in Las Vegas, NV. The ACA always has fun and educational workshops. If you are involved with your summer camp I highly suggest you go. You can find more information at http://www.campwest.org
April 22-25, 2009
For after school workshops and training check out the BOOST Conference. BOOST stands for Best Out of School Time. Their conference is held in Palm Springs, CA. They have some great exhibitors and speakers. You can get more info at http://www.boostconference.org.
CalSAC (California School Age Consortium) always has some decent trainings. Keep up on there calendar of events at http://www.calsac.org.
Know of any other trainings worth attending?
January 12th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
The Tri-State Camp Conference is March 17-20, 2009. We were lucky enough to go last year, and it’s one of the best I’ve been to, regionally or nationally. Our staff splits up and some to go Tri-State, some to National. We’ve found that Tri-State is much cheaper, up to 5 people go on one registration. I think it’s much more geared towards the middle management of camp staff with a heavy focus on program development, training, behavior management, while ACA National tends to focus more on Marketing and Legal issues, suitable more for a camp director. Tri-State is also larger, I believe, than National so many more opportunities for networking.
January 12th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Hi Jack, I have heard nothing but good things about the Tri-State Camp Conference. In fact I plan on attending it next year.
The CampWest Conference is the same, in that more of the focus is geared towards programming and such. As for National, I would just like an excuse to spend a week at Disneyworld.