Cam and Kayleigh met on the shores of Damariscotta Lake. Nine years later, they are living along those same shorelines at Southover.
Cam grew up in Orem, Utah and attended Snow College. He learned about KWE through his sister who was also a TLS member in 2010. Kayleigh grew up in Duxbury, Massachusetts and attended Elmira College earning a B.S. in Biology-Chemistry and then earned her MEd in Psychology and School Counseling at Springfield College. Kayleigh found TLS when searching for the next step in her journey.
Cam is Kieve Wavus Education’s Challenge Course Manager and Full Time Educator. Kayleigh is an elementary school counselor at three schools in the mid coast Maine region.
Cam recalls hearing about this spitfire of a Wavus Counselor, “Kayleigh and I were both fortunate enough to do the Allagash Wilderness Waterways trip. Kayleigh was an HBC for Wavus that crossed paths frequently with a Kieve group that would become my Maine Trails Cabin. My boys would recall stories of a small yet strong stalwart counselor who soloed a canoe at the infamous mud pond portage. That counselor was Kayleigh.”
Both Cam and Kayleigh, two of the first Educators In Residence at Nobleboro School, learned through their TLS and Summer Camp Experience that they enjoyed working with young learners. They both looked forwarded to getting up in the morning and seeing the kids and they both wanted to do that every day. Kayleigh shares, “I learned that I love working with students, and it gave me a direction. It developed my style of working with groups and how to shift and adapt. TLS taught me how to work collaboratively, living and working with colleagues and most importantly, to ask for help or at least get better at asking for help.”
“Many of the messages carry through all of our experiences we’ve shared at KWE. Kindness, respect, challenge by choice, being a role model, empowering students to be leaders, working collaboratively and making sure to take care of each other as a staff in addition to helping the youth we are working with. It’s always about the relationship more than any activity or curriculum or strategy.”
Kieve Wavus is near and dear to many including Cam and Kayleigh, as Cam shares, “My fondest memory of KWE was being married at Kieve in 2016. It was the year before attending my best friends’ wedding at the same place. All four of us met at KWE and all are very important in each other’s lives.”
Cam and Kayleigh both felt that saying “See you later” to the students they met through the TLS Program was one of the harder aspects of the job, but as it turned out it’s not goodbye as the connection to KWE is lifelong and for many in the KWE community it ends up coming full circle, as it did for them.
