Adventure-Programming Debriefs
Do these three things to go from standard to superb
By Chris Thurber
There is no single recipe for building a successful camp, but there is one key ingredient that must be included—an exceptional staff. After spending almost 30 years immersed in camp culture, most recently as the Executive Director of Camp Operations, I have seen firsthand the impact of exceptional training on a camp’s success. A robust training program should serve as a launching pad for staff members as they prepare to step into the nonstop action of summer camp.
Will Dutton, unsplash
People love telling stories. Sharing narratives about experiences—especially bold, risky, tragic, and heroic ones—deepen social bonds and self-understanding. Whether the stories are accurate or embellished, recounting personal adventures is so powerful it has become instinctive. Leveraging this story-telling instinct to enhance the benefits of adventure programming is, as you know, called debriefing.
History Minute
Sometime between the primordial tradition of telling stories about our origins, hunts, and close calls around the fire and our contemporary tradition of posting video clips on Tik-Tok, ancient Greek philosophers recognized the moral and physical benefits of adventures. In the last millennium, organizations such as Outward Bound began formalizing what is now called adventure programming, including the post-adventure processing of what participants had lived through and learned. Debriefing is now a cornerstone of this type of programming, yet debriefs often fall flat with young participants. As a remedy, here are three fresh strategies to vault debriefs from standard to superb.
Set aside your grown-up agenda.
As adult designers of adventures for young people, we begin with enticing ideas about the expected outcomes. As adults. Of course, the way young people experience an activity we design can be quite different from how we imagine they will experience it. Even adventure programs they design don’t always have the intended effect.
For example, gathering 20 kids together to play Blob Tag will not only give them great exercise, but may also open their eyes to the joys of goal-directed games that don’t have a winner or a loser. Heck, they might even lapse into some philosophical musings on the distinction between healthy and harmful competition. By contrast, some kids might think the game is inane, not because they can’t fathom games without winners and losers, or aren’t sophisticated enough to self-reflect, but because they dislike the premise of slower or less-athletic kids being captured first. Who knows?
Because we can’t always predict some of the lessons kids will learn from these adventures, we adults need to set aside the vision for what it should mean to kids and make room for what it actually means. Of course, you can always suggest other meaningful insights. Your intended outcome is not the only plausible or profound one.
If you’ve asked open-ended questions during a debrief and received some unexpected answers, here are some ways to validate the diversity of participants’ experiences:
“Fascinating. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Thank you for sharing that. Who else thought or felt something similar? Or different?”
“Your fresh perspective has got me thinking. Tell me more.”
“Sometimes, people experience [state one of your predictions]. How does that relate to what you experienced?”
“It’s so cool that different people got different things out of the same activity. What does that make you think about?”
Take the bad with the good.
In one of my favorite workshops on positive psychology, I guide participants through an experience in savoring. Everyone gets a single Lindt chocolate truffle, but rather than their gobbling it up, I first ask folks to examine the wrapper and appreciate its design and artwork. Next, I ask them to smell the piece of chocolate—first with the wrapper on, then with the wrapper off. Then, I ask people to share the thoughts and feelings this olfactory experience has sparked. I also ask them to notice visual things they might have missed, such as the equatorial line around the chocolate, the bellybutton-like nub where some machine filled the spherical shell, and the surface gloss caused by tempering. The final part of the experience is for participants to close their eyes and hold the truffle in their mouth for a full minute, without biting or chewing.
As you might imagine, debriefing those 60 seconds is fascinating. I quickly learned that my idea of savoring—namely, that it enhances gustatory experiences—is not universal. Although most people love savoring chocolate in ways that expand their already strong love of chocolate, a few say things like, “That was the longest minute of my life” and “That was fun, but it would have been better to just eat it regular, like I wanted to.” One person once barked, “I almost choked on that damn thing!”
Had I felt defensive, I might have tried to convince every person that they must have done something wrong if savoring had not enhanced their experience. I might also have missed important opportunities to be inclusive. When you debrief, it’s important to give voice to dissenters from the majority experience and from preconceived notions of why the experience was worth doing in the first place. Granted, my savoring exercise is not particularly adventuresome (unless you’ve never eaten chocolate), nor is it particularly risky (unless you’re allergic to any of the ingredients), but it is a useful case study of how beneficial it is to include the bad with the good in any debrief. I’m gratified to have learned more about savoring—after listening to both negative and positive experiences—than I would have learned if I had let my biases drive my debrief.
Follow up a few days later.
Almost every youth leader debriefs participants immediately after the adventure concludes. Some longer experiences, such as a multi-day canoe expedition, may be debriefed a few hours later or perhaps the morning after returning to base camp. These common practices make intuitive sense, and they are often practical, considering that a unique group may not reassemble in the future. However, some of the most important reflections and insights occur days (or sometimes weeks, months, or years) after an adventure. Therefore, there is great value in a two-part debrief for especially powerful experiences—one immediately after, to check in with everyone and ensure their stability—and another a few days (or more) later. You might be pleasantly surprised to hear participants share things like the following:
“At first, I thought the activity was stupid, but now I get it.”
“I thought it was a great activity, but now I’m not so sure.”
“It would have been even better if [suggested modification]” or “I’m glad that we [part of the activity] because it helped me see [fresh insight].”
“What I most remember is how [high point or low point] made me feel [strong emotion] and I had to [new way of coping].”
Finally, it’s worth adding that certain powerful experiences need no debrief. I remember sitting in silence on our camp’s main dock with nine campers and my co-leader, watching the sun set over the mountains. After a spectacular swath of yellow and orange turned to violet and crimson, and finally to darkness, we rested, spellbound, lost in our thoughts. Eventually, we walked quietly back to our cabin through a majestic grove of white pines. Even without moonlight or flashlights, there were enough dusky leftovers for our dilated pupils to easily stay on the path.
When the first camper clicked the latch, opened the cabin door, and flipped on the lights, the spell was broken. The boys grabbed their toothbrushes and started to get ready for bed, as if we hadn’t witnessed one of the most beautiful sights on earth.
My co-leader and I walked together, a few paces behind the last straggler to the lavatories, when he turned to me and said, “That was amazing. We should debrief when we get back to the cabin.” I smiled at him, and he added, “On second thought … that was un-debriefable.” I smiled more, knowing some adventures lose a fraction of their luster under the magnifying glass of group analysis.
Christopher Thurber, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and faculty member at Phillips Exeter Academy. He created Prep4Camp.com, the only evidence-based homesickness prevention program, and co-authored the best-selling Summer Camp Handbook with Dr. Jon Malinowski. His newest book, The Unlikely Art of Parental Pressure, includes eight ways adults can transform harmful pressure to healthy pressure. Learn more about the work that Chris does with schools, camps, and companies on DrChrisThurber.com