Maya Clouse-Henry gains practical expertise through internship at The Painted Turtle

Founded in 1999 by Paul Newman and Page and Lou Adler as a part of the SeriousFun Children’s Network, The Painted Turtle is a summer camp for children who are faced with life-threatening or chronic illnesses or disabilities. The camp seeks to provide campers with an extraordinary opportunity, free of charge, which may not be accessible to them in a traditional summer camp setting.

Each week of the summer, new children arrive, all with a shared disability or illness. Once there, campers can play and explore the wilderness around them while connecting with peers who relate to their experiences. A dedicated staff and leaders like Clouse-Henry are what make this unique adventure possible.

Due to the extra care and accessibility the camp is responsible for providing, The Painted Turtle has a coverage ratio of two counselors to one camper. This sparked Clouse-Henry’s interest in the job, as she hoped to grow in her abilities to handle children with different abilities and behavioral issues through a high level of hands-on supervision.

“I was just hoping to get more involved with kids and be more comfortable in a workspace with them,” Clouse-Henry said.

Over the course of the summer, Clouse-Henry did just that. She was responsible for looking over three cabins, which would host four to eight kids per cabin. Each day was long; Clouse-Henry would wake up at 6:30 a.m. to check on her cabins, facilitate activities throughout the day and then finally get to bed around midnight after the kids were fully asleep.

“It's a huge culture shock when you come into a campus like this and the coverage is so intense,” Clouse-Henry said. “We had to have eyes on our campers at all times no matter what, which is different from a few other summer camps that I've worked at.”

Alongside her supervision duties, Clouse-Henry oversaw a third of the counselors on staff, which rotated weekly, with scheduling, staff conflicts or concerns, behavior support, and coverage support. Despite the demanding work, Clouse-Henry felt great accomplishment for all she learned.

“We had muscular dystrophy week, where almost every single camper had an assistive device for walking, using the restroom, or other daily necessities,” Clouse-Henry said. “That was totally mind-blowing—seeing how the kids move, how they adapt, and what kind of things they can accomplish.”

Clouse-Henry’s thesis is concentrated on place-based learning: the way students develop a sense of place and learning through exploring their environment. Her thesis has a specific focus on K-6 early childhood and the incorporation of universal design in landscapes. Working at The Painted Turtle’s universally designed campus, Clouse-Henry got an up-close and personal look into the wide range of landscape factors that must be taken into consideration when creating accessible designs for abroad spectrum of physical and mental abilities.

“I had a lot to learn,” Clouse-Henry said. “It was really hard for me emotionally in the first few weeks, because I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I spent this long being this oblivious?’ I know I still have so much more to soak up and I'm not going to be able to do it all in one summer.”

After her internship, Clouse-Henry was excited to reflect on her notes from the summer and apply her newfound knowledge and expanded professional skill set to her studies in her master’s program.

“I'm excited to work with kids again with this new knowledge and feel so much more confident in that environment,” Clouse-Henry said.

Clouse-Henry first started working with kids during her senior year earning her B.A. in Environmental Biology, when she became a Voinovich Undergraduate Research Scholar.

“That's where I kind of where my love for working with kids originated—I did not see myself in education in undergrad,” Clouse-Henry said. “I was a lab rat. I worked in water quality, I counted macros, and I loved it.”

Working on the citizen science volunteer waterway monitoring program, My Backyard Stream, with Jennifer Bowman, director of environmental programs, Clouse-Henry conducted stream demonstrations and visited classrooms to teach children about the complexities of their environment and the issues that it faces.

Through her work at the Voinovich School during her undergraduate studies, Clouse-Henry began to consider new ideas about what her future career could look like, which shaped her decision to pursue her dual master’s degree. With the combination of environmental and parks, recreation, and leisure studies, Clouse-Henry’s love for children and education continued to blossom.

When the time came to apply to internships, she was encouraged by a multitude of faculty from both schools to find a job where she could delve deeper into her unexpected love for kids: Bowman and Dr. Nancy Stevens at the Voinovich School; Dr. Andrew Szolosi and Dr. Danielle Dani at the Patton College; and even professionals in the field, such as Christin Butler at the Solid Ground School, whom Dr. Natalie Kruse-Daniels, environemtal studies program director, connected her with.

Now, after a life-changing experience at The Painted Turtle, she is forever grateful that she had the support she did and that she utilized her internship opportunity to try something new.

“I have so much compassion for these kids and these families,” Clouse-Henry said. “This organization, SeriousFun, really impacts so many people. It's just a really cool experience—for the first time, I felt like I was a factor in changing someone's life.”