Unit director wants to help youngsters
Shawn Sawyer is passionate about providing a safe, fun and educational place for children after school. That zeal comes from knowing what it is like to be left on his own. Director of the Pea Ridge Boys and Girls Club, Sawyer said he was the son of a single mom and the male role models in his life were not a good influence.
Sawyer said people are more aware of mental health issues today and he realized that negative mental health issues were a direct result of situations in his childhood.
His job includes “a little bit of everything … meeting with donors, talking with families, handling any discipline from little to major, out on floor with staff running groups — anything and everything that I can to support my kids and team.”
He currently has four employees and hopes to hire more before the summer.
The student to staff ratio for the club is 20 students to one staff member and he’s currently running about 20 students.
There is a separate space for the teens so they “can have a little bit more freedom, play video games, hang out,” Sawyer said.
One of the teens, a seventh-grader, said he had done some self reflecting and realized he wasn’t as involved as he wanted to be and has begun helping with the kindergarten through second-grade children.
The Pea Ridge club meets in the gym behind the Intermediate School. Students from the Primary School ride school buses to the gym and are there until their parents or guardians pick them up, usually from 6 to 6:30 p.m.
Sawyer said there is a white board at the entrance to the center where the children are greeted by the attendance tracker, hang up their backpacks and check the white board for where their group is currently meeting. Options include a learning center, a Lego challenge space, working on math worksheets, having a snack and coloring by number, just to name a few.
“Growing up, my mom was a very young mom, and I had male figures in and out of life, none super positive role models, not a lot of good adult direction,” he said. “I’ve always been a very empathetic person.
“Straight out of high school, I got a job doing maintenance job on golf course. Then, I left and started at a club to give kids what I didn’t have … I didn’t want to see coming generations struggle as much as I did.”
Sawyer has worked with the Boys and Girls Clubs for nine years. He started at the McKinney site in Bentonville in 2015, was an assistant in Bella Vista and later become the unit director in Pea Ridge.
“I realized that my passion was coaching staff and mentoring kids,” he said.
Sawyer is married and he and his wife have an 8-year-old son. They live in Centerton.