This happened a couple of weeks ago while I was at an interview to be an After School Leader for a youth program..

It was a program where several leaders travel to different elementary schools and help out the students there while they stay after school. The program itself in a way makes me shudder when I think about it because there’s a sense of… sterility… to it. The kind of sterility you get when you walk into a doctor’s office and feel nauseous from the smell of rubbing alcohol and latex gloves.

In that program there are four main components: homework time, quiet learning time, exercise time, and snack time.

Homework time is intuitive. It’s time for kids to do their homework. Makes sense because they’re after school for four hours until parents can pick them up.

Quiet learning time is when the kids can do “quiet” activities that is “learning in disguise” where they do crafts and what not - but everything has to have a meaning to it. You can’t just give them crayola crayons and let their imaginations go wild.

Exercise time is when the kids do some physical activity - they can’t just go to the blacktop and go wild and have fun. Everything has to be structured.

Quiet learning time and Exercise time was enough to make me shudder. I remember After School programs when I was eight - I’m in college now - and those programs had homework time. “Quiet learning” was when the kids are given board games, paper and markers, books to read, and are allowed to do as we please. And Exercise time was essentially running around outside and going on our own adventures with our imaginations.

Eventually the interview got to snack time and I was like “Oh, so we for snack time we just hand out cookies and apple juice, and a fruit and have a chat with them right?” Because that was how snack time was when I did After School Programs.

Nope.

Snack time made me ill to my stomach.

“No, there’s no cookies at snack time. Some juice is okay, but we like to use snack time as a way for the kids to learn about nutrition. We want to be proactive and teach kids how to eat healthy and get their proper nutrition.”

Okay… fair enough, I guess… We want kids to eat healthy… Because teaching them good eating habits now means they will be healthy later on.

“So during snack time, what we do is have the snacks and we talk about how many calories are in each snack and then teach them what is the better option. We show them how to count calories and… blah blah blah”

Counting calories. In elementary school. At an After School Program. Kids as young as elementary school aged are being *taught* how to count calories as if it’s a good thing. I honestly felt uncomfortable with the whole situation. Worse part is, the guy who was interviewing me was rather fat himself. Not obese but he is rather hefty. And he seemed perfectly fine with the idea of little kids counting calories.

LITTLE KIDS.

Needless to say I didn’t take the job.