Volunteer CIT Spotlight: Celeste Caseria

Written by Himani Parekh

Meet Celeste Caseria (Hi, Celeste!). She is sweet and friendly, creative and empathetic, and definitely a dog person. She has a golden doodle (part golden retriever, part poodle), and at 14 years old, she is looking forward to starting her freshman year of high school this fall. This past summer, she spent her weekdays volunteering as a Counselor in Training (CIT) at Umbrella Community Arts Center’s Summer Arts Under the Umbrella.

“For most of the summer, I worked with the youngest kids, so they were, like, K through, like, second grade… In some classes, like ceramics for example, we would help them because the little kids couldn’t do everything…sometimes I would sit next to some kids and do the same project…to kind of lead them.” Her work as a CIT revolved around assisting the art teachers. Sometimes, that involved leading the students in projects. Other times, that involved helping to keep the students engaged between activities or at the start or end of the day.

Celeste, reflecting back on the summer, learned the most from these moments of creatively occupying the art camp students. When filling time with younger students, she spoke to them like they were just people. “I remember when I was, like, five years old thinking oh, I’m so mature now.” Her ability to empathize with the students helped her connect to them and engage them during down times. In turn, she learned more about working with children. She told me about one week where she started her days with “the scribble game,” in which she would draw a line scribble, and one of the campers, a younger girl, would create a drawing from it. While Celeste would be inclined to add to the outside of the line scribble, the camper would often “find shapes inside the scribble.” These kinds of interactions revealed to Celeste the unbounded creativity of the youth.

Not that Celeste herself is any stranger to creativity. She loves that through art she can create “something out of nothing.” “In eighth grade, I was only supposed to take [art class] once, but then, I asked if I could take it again…I also sing and act in plays.”

Her favorite medium explored in the art camps involves acting. As a CIT, she assisted students in a range of mediums: “there was ceramics and mixed media, workshop and drawing and painting…and film… I like film; that was probably my favorite.” The students working with film would develop a story as a group and act out the scenes, which the teacher would film and edit together as a little video. The process could be a hectic one, especially if the students were indecisive or could not all agree on a plot. Celeste enjoyed the energy and even the messiness of facilitating students in putting together a cohesive short film in a week’s time. 

Celeste the camp counselor is a person in learning, a person not too far removed from the eldest of the campers, a person who can still understand and empathize with the youngest of the campers. Celeste the person is looking next at the adventures that await in high school. The most highly anticipated classes? History and German. Celeste enjoys learning languages and is excited to be taking a class in European history, since it is a topic she has not yet covered in much detail in school. The most notable disappointment is merely an inability to indulge in all her creative passions simultaneously; her enrollment in Chorus means she cannot also take art classes.

Outside of school, her creativity is unrestricted. Celeste enjoys doing art projects with her sister, and recently, she taught herself the ukelele. “Yeah, I’ll work on a song for a week, and then I’ll record it.” She already knows how to play piano and violin and is looking to teach herself guitar next.

Beyond all this, who knows? Celeste speculates about joining her high school newspaper and pursuing acting and musical theater further. Her summer as a CIT at Umbrella has been fun and helped her learn and grow.