Former Camp Counselor Takes Director Reins at Foglia YMCA

The more things change in Jenna Stanonik’s life, the more they look similar, if not the same.

After leaving Lake Zurich for four years to attend college in Indiana, she’s back where she started as a high school senior: the Foglia YMCA.

Six-and-a-half-years ago, Stanonik was a Foglia summer camp counselor. Nowadays, she heads up the YMCA’s School Age Child Care programs.

It’s the chance to work with and for children that drew her to the YMCA in the first place and that keeps drawing her back.

“I knew I wanted to do something with kids,” said Stanonik, a certified teacher who completed her bachelor’s degree in elementary education in 2009 at Indiana Wesleyan University. “Kids have always been kind of my passion and the Y is a good place to be.”

Being the School Age Child Care Director is a relatively new role for her. Stanonik was promoted in late January to the director position after working at the Y as the kindergarten coordinator, filling a vacancy created by the departure of Susan Dillon.

Dillon, who worked for the YMCA for six years, moved out of the director job there to accept a new challenge: director of adult and senior services for Ela Township.  Stanonik said her predecessor is literally just a shout away, with her office  located inside the Foglia YMCA on Old McHenry Road.

As director, Stanonik said, she oversees the kindergarten program, the after-school programs, preschool and a pre-preschool program.

She said she’s continuing work on a kindergarten enrichment program, an initiative she originally got involved with as the Y’s kindergarten coordinator. That program provides a full afternoon of programming for morning session kindergarteners. Each day’s itinerary alternate between fitness-based activities, science lessons, swimming, craft-making and rock wall-climbing adventures.

She supervisors a staff of 20 after-school counselors and two  coordinators, as well as the kindergarten staff.

The after-school program, offered at all six elementary school in Lake Zurich School District 95, serves between 180 and 200 children each year, she said. Sessions meet during weekday afternoons and during winter and spring breaks, when parents typically have to work while public school classes are closed. Before-school programs also are offered through the Y, Stanonik said, at two district schools that accept students from all six schools.

Stanonik said she is also getting involved in the presentation of special events at Foglia YMCA. She is co-chairing a prayer breakfast set for May 7 at the Y.

A graduate of Lake Zurich High School and a current Lake Zurich resident, Stanonik said she considers Foglia her home base, a place she always returned to during summer and winter breaks in college.

“It’s been a great place to be for networking and professional development,” she said. “I love the community I grew up in.”