ADDIE To The Rescue
Camp directors who feel overwhelmed by the challenge of staff training are far from alone.
Role Play With A Twist
As most trainers in any industry know, role playing is a great way for new staff members to obtain hands-on experience before actually getting their hands on anything. Role plays are typically conducted in a controlled environment with other staff members, and each scenario usually ends with a positive conclusion.
Putting The Puzzle Together
Imagine a 500- or 1000-piece puzzle dumped on a table; some pieces are right-side up, while others are upside down. Each cardboard cutout represents one of the bits and pieces of staff training.
Begin With The Right Tools
Working as a camp counselor is one of the most challenging and rigorous jobs a young person can have. At first glance, it may be viewed as a fun job to run around, teach activities, and make friends, but employees very quickly understand the immense responsibility of caring for other people’s children.
Camp Administration 101: Staff Training And Education
Staff members are a camp’s most valuable assets, so invest in them by providing training, education, teambuilding, and networking opportunities, while empowering them to do great things! Here are some guidelines to make staff members the best they can be!
Combatting The Trauma Of These Times
A few years ago, camping psychologist Bob Ditter and I co-facilitated several conference workshops. Bob would share a critical element in the health-and-wellness realm of camp staff members, and I would share an activity that explored that topic.
Appreciative Staff Training
Many campers credit a lifelong friendship that began with a new friend at camp. The strongest bonds can develop while spending lots of time together negotiating the challenges of communal living with a dozen new people, overcoming homesickness, or even feeling the support from another camper during a first horseback-riding lesson.
Mental Preparation
If the past two summers have taught us anything, it’s the need for flexible and attentive plans. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to many different societal and existential failures across the country and the world, but it also has allowed for a stronger emphasis on health and safety protocols that many businesses, schools, and camps may not have focused on previously.
Memory Makers
What is the magic of camp? What makes a camp different from another camp? So many camp directors approach this question by saying … traditions. True, traditions are created and
Play The Part
“In theory, role-plays are supposed to teach by offering staff practice with key skills. But in practice, role-plays often flop. They either escalate into hyperbole or degenerate into
Creating An A-Team
Some of a camper’s fondest memories might be at the art shack with friends, playing a game of Four Square with pals, or being immersed in nature while looking for salamanders in the creek. Another memory may be of a favorite summer staffer.
Talking Points
This past year has been challenging, unexpected, and explosive in many ways. During the pandemic, the United States experienced a global-health crisis while still reckoning with racial, social, and political unrest, social isolation, and anxieties that will remain for decades.
Connection Before Content
In his 2008 book, Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block writes, “We must establish a personal connection with each other. Connection before content. Without relatedness, no work can occur.”
Scary Stories
At 1:30 a.m. on the second evening of summer camp, all is quiet as six young girls sleep in their cabin with their first-year, 19-year-old counselor.
Create A Camp Internet Policy
For younger members of a camp counseling staff, the World Wide Web has been an endless, virtual wonderland in which they have spent their entire childhoods. For them, computers are a fun, safe, and
Strive For Success
By the time I was 14 and had finished my first summer as a camp leader in training, I knew I wanted to be a camp director. It became one of my major life ambitions. As I worked my way from counselor
Continuous Professional Development
“It’s like picking berries,” concluded the woman sitting next to me on the plane. I had just explained my seasonal commitment to provide in-person staff training for 22 camps and summer schools in the
Investing In What’s Important
At a recent camp conference, a between-session conversation among several directors focused on organizational budget cuts and the lack of travel dollars for adequate continuing education.
Am I Oversharing?
Hey, kids, gather ‘round. Let me tell you what I did on my night off, how far my romance has gone, and what I really think about the camp director.
Do You Want A Spanking?
As an academic psychologist and practicing clinician, I’ve studied parent-child interactions in many settings—hospitals, clinics, university laboratories, refugee settlements, schools, homes, and summer camps. While these locales appeal to the scientist in me, there exists no better place to study parent-child interactions than the supermarket.