"Be Open to Opportunity and Go Along for the Ride"

Julie Green with Interviewer Eric Hodell

Picture Credit: Juliet Tunberg

Many Years, Many Facets

My current title is program director of the Golden Eagle program. I started in ‘94. Wow… (laughs). Yep, I was interim for probably six months ‘cause I was chicken and didn’t take it (laughs) and then my boss at the time said, “You either need to make up your mind, I’m not gonna give you an extension or, you know, we’re gonna have to put the job out there” and I said “Okay, I’ll do my best.” Yeah. What my job is… many many things. From making sure the program runs smooth, making sure the kids are safe, making sure staff are doing what they’re doing, and also making sure that they are safe and they have an environment that is, you know, healthy and productive, and they’re getting what they need for to do their job well. I do the hiring, marketing… there are many, many facets of the job. Reports, we have quarterly reports that we have to do. We get funded through United Way, we get state money for youth intervention (clears throat), and there’s other money that’s called Title I and it has to do with keeping kids out of trouble, you know, try to keep them on the right path, and so they have quarterly reports. They want ages, genders, how many times have they come for the three months, you know, so it’s just a lot of collecting data. Let me see, what else do I do? Plan, we plan a lot. We have weekly planning meetings, daily planning meetings, every other week all staff within the whole Indian Center have a staff meeting, so it’s a lot of meetings also. Networking, we have to make partnerships, you know, we have the partnerships with the different colleges for volunteers. We have partners with different libraries. I’m sure I could say more but I think that’s kind of the jist of my job.

Golden Eagles

Golden Eagles Facility 

Picture Credit: Eric Hodell & Juliet Tunberg

Golden Eagle is an after-school youth program, culturally specific, that serves five to eighteen year old kids. We do the tutoring, we have a curriculum that the staff developed, we have a theme that we do, we have the volunteers come in and do the Indian Youth Study Time, so they help with homework and make them read, or offer them to read, but we try to force ‘em because sometimes they don’t want to, we have gym time, arts and crafts, outings, and then we provide transportation and a meal for them. We have the the FAN program downstairs, it’s the Fitness and Nutrition program, and they’ll come and do activities with the kids too.

Pulling Me In

Um, I think this career chose me (smiles). Before I was a volunteer I did some work at a school and it was just part-time to finish raising my son, or I shouldn’t say finish, but he was going to school and I was a single-parent so I was just going to work part-time. I had applied at a private school and I just fell in love with it. It’s really strange how it all happened. It wasn’t something that I was like, “Oh I wanna go work with kids” you know, I always loved kids and have a lot of family, but it just kinda fell into my hands. They needed me more and more, like they needed a coach, they needed a tutor, they needed someone to help with the lunchroom, so I ended up doing full-time and did some coaching. Then I got an opportunity to work in the Native community and that was doing some homeschooling for young kids to get ready for kindergarten, so I started that and again they kept pulling me in and pulling me in. I think ‘cause I was available and love kids they just kept saying “Julie, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this?” and I was like, “Okay I’ll try” and then I tried and then I liked it and now look at me twenty some years later (laughs). It’s interesting because a lot of people who have come through the program and are working now say that’s kind of how it happened with them too. It’s just like a magnet or something (laughs). Wow, I haven’t talked about this for awhile this is kind of cool.

Never Doing Enough

I think one of the hardest things for me is when we can’t help the child more than what we want because we are just an after-school program, and I shouldn’t say just an after-school program, but, you know, we don’t see ‘em everyday. We see them twice a week, if even that, and it just seems like we can never do enough. So, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges. Then when we know families are struggling, I just think it’s so hard on the kids. You know, we see them when they come back and they’re so happy here, then we know they have to go back home, and I don’t know, I think that’s one of my biggest challenges. I had to learn to separate.

Rollin’ with the Punches

What life lessons have I learned… well, boundaries, you really have to have good boundaries. I was young and I took everything home. I wanted to take the kids home, you know, I just felt so bad for ‘em all the time and I couldn’t separate. I got that taken care of, I mean to a point.

Also, I think to be flexible, you know, nothing runs smooth. When you work here or you come volunteer it’s just like in the drop of a hat we can have everything set up and the van will die, so then we have to call the parents or make two trips or whatever it might be. It’s stressful and if you can’t roll with the punches I would stay far away from working with a youth program. I think that’s life too. You know, being flexible. If you can’t roll with the punches, good luck (laughs). I think I try to tell people that right when they come on board with the staff or if they come volunteer and are part-time/full-time, you know they’ll ask “what’s the hardest part of this job” and it’s that you have to be flexible.

Words of Wisdom

My advice is to volunteer, you know, in different things that you think you might like. Like I never thought that I was gonna work with kids all my life, most of my life I should say. I think go check it out and talk to people like you guys are talking to me, you know, and you’ll get your feel for it. Don’t do something you don’t like ‘cause a lot of us get stuck and all of a sudden it’s retirement time and you realize you were unhappy this whole time. I have family members that have shared that with me when they came to the beginning of their retirement and they’re like “how have you stayed in that job so long?” and I’m like “I don’t know, you know, this happened and that happened, and I really like it and I feel good when I go home at night.” I just think really look at something that you like to do and just keep looking even if it takes you twenty years.

Picture Credit: http://www.maicnet.org/programs/ginewgolden-eagle/

Interviewed by: Eric Hodell, Gillian Dahl, and Juliet Tunberg