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« on: August 02, 2005, 03:20:00 PM »
THis post will be short - I have to go paint a garage. Both programs had their good and bad points. Im not the most compliant person so I wasnt always a "model" employee. I guess you could say I was fired by Soltreks. I refused to do a trip ALONE with just one student. There are very valid reasons why most, if not all programs EXCEPT Soltreks requires an instructor to NEVER be alone with a student. For the safety of both student and instructor. THe student was a young man, 16, a high school wrestler that had a history of steroid use. Big frustrated kid with a learning disability and low self esteem. Short fuse. The situation was discussed at length and concluded that they would just pull me out of the field at resupply and find some inexperienced yahoo to agree to work with this kid. Not the best choice but I will also say that there are some parts of the Soltreks program that I found beneficial. They have a strong emphasis on improving communication skills for both student and parents. I believe they will also do customized trips for whole families. They believe in treating the family, not just the child. But they dont have a licensed MSW on staff and for part of the year the therapist never even sees the kids - she does everything over the phone because the kids are hiking in southern New Mexico and shes living near Dallas, Texas. They also so low that they have very high turnover. Soltreks is one the programs that takes advantage of college students having to put in internship time to get different degrees eg: outdoor rec, physical therapy etc. They pay these interns $35 for a sixteen hour workday. Criminal if you ask me. SUWS pays a living wage, runs lots LOTS of kids through their program, at least they do in the summer. Since SUWS is a pretty big program and part of a pretty big corporation I felt they were dialed in with their logistics and I knew I could get more help quick if I needed it. I never did. Never had to restrain anyone and it was rare that anyone did. Because of the size of SUWS you covered quite a range of instructor abilities and behaviors. I felt there were times that the instructors should have shown more respect for the students and other times where the instructor had no business letting themselves be walked all over. Ask questions and I will try to be objective in my answers.
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