Scott Swanson
Since taking over as director of the Sweet Home Boys and Girls Club last fall, Andrea “Andi” Casteel has been working to “raise the bar” for the organization.
She also has dedicated herself to changing the perception that the club’s purpose is to care for latchkey kids and provide opportunities for youth sports. It’s a lot more, she said.
“We run a full day of programs,” she said. “From the moment the kids walk in the door after school they have age-appropriate activity choices.”
Casteel was named director in October after coming to the club from Hawthorne School, where she worked a a Title I reading teacher’s assistant. She decided to take a job at the club in September as homework room teacher.
“I was really excited because I could extend what we were teaching them at school,” she said. A few weeks after she started, the director’s position became available and she applied.
Leadership at the Sweet Home branch of the Boys and Girls Club of the Greater Santiam has been, admittedly, “sporatic” in recent years and the Sweet Home staff has undergone a number of adjustments, Casteel said. But she’s been working to stabilize the operation and has reorganized the staff, which currently numbers three full-timers and eight part-time employees: two who supervise the Game Room, two kitchen and two gym staffers, a Homework Room teacher, a Teen Room supervisor, and two who supervise athletic programs.
Casteel said the assumption that the Boys and Girls Club is just a place for kids who can’t go home in the afternoon is one that is too common.
“It’s not just a daycare,” she said. “I did not know that when I came here. I didn’t realize that we had all these character-building programs.”
Character has become her biggest emphasis since taking the director’s role, she said.
Coming from Hawthorne, where Principal Ryan Beck has placed great emphasis on the school’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports program, which uses participation in monthly events as an incentive to help students maintain safe, responsible and respectful behavior, Casteel said it made sense to her to extend the same PBIS standards for safe, responsible and respectful behavior into the club.
“What I saw as a need, when I first came, was positive interaction,” she said. “I want the kids to behave respectfully. When they go out into the community I want people to wonder if they’r club kids because they’re so respectful.
“My thing is, if you can do it at school, you can do it here. I believe if you have respect, everything else will follow.”
That even extends to the junior high clients, who have increased in numbers in the last few months to about 50 – overflowing the Teen Room. The club has 170 members, who pay a $20 annual fee to participate. Casteel said she’s not sure why more youngsters have joined, but she said the club keeps them active with table games, gym time, computer time, art lessons, training in job and personal-finance skills, homework help and two Teen Nights a week – Saturdays and either Monday Night Football, in the fall, or Thursday Night Basketball in the winter and spring, when participants watch a Univeristy of Oregon or Oregon State University game, depending on who’s on TV.
Casteel said she’s made behavior a high-priority emphasis for the teenagers, in partiucular.
“The junior high kids are expected to be good role models for other kids,” she said. “The expectations when they come out of the Teen Room are the same as for the other kids. If you have drama, you have to check it at the door. Respect is my big thing. Everything follows respect.”
She said that she’s seen progress.
“It’s still chaos but it’s controlled chaos, with the expectation of behaving respectfully.”
Casteel said she has an “awesome” staff, “who are so here for the kids.”
She said art teacher Carolyn Owen is “incredible” and homework room teacher Vanessa Conrad, also a Title I assistant at Hawthorne is “one of the best teachers I’ve ever met. She’s fantastic. She’s not just in there helping kids with their homework. She’s in there challenging kids. They’re excited.
“The kids are really growing in those rooms. There’s a lot of new focus.
Casteel and her husband Don have three children, their boys Jackson, 12, and Noah, 8, and her stepdaughter, Kayla Rosa, and three grandchildren. Both she and Don have coached at the club and their boys are involved in football and baseball, as well as wrestling with the Sweet Home Mat Club.
Casteel said her goal is to strengthen the Boys and Girls Club’s relationship with local schools and with the community.
“We are here to help the community grow,” she said. “I want to make the kids the best they can be.
“This is a positive place for kids. There are high expectations for kids here.”
To reach Casteel, call (541) 367-6421.