Inclusion at Summer Camp - The Hidden Curriculum

Inclusion at Summer CampInclusion & Community Building

Jan 23

What does it mean to be inclusive? Why do we want to be inclusive? How can we create inclusive spaces?

We spend most of our time thinking about this at Camp Stomping Ground the sleepaway camp I help run in Saratoga Springs New York. It isn’t perfect, but we get better every day.

On the Stomping Ground Benefit Webinar, Kurt Podeszwa, the director at Camp For All, talked a lot about being barrier free instead of inclusive or accommodating. I loved that as a framework. How can we create spaces with less barriers for the people who might come to our camps.

Cole Perry, PhD doctor man and all around maker of camps better for more people, talks all the time about creating spaces that are designed with you in mind as opposed to spaces where we make it possible for you to be here.

Nelson Strickland, director of YMCA Camp Birkett and founder of See the Color, talked on the webinar about being transparent about what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to be more inclusive of black folks, people with mobility issues, the autism spectrum, english as a second language learners, what do you want to do and how can you do more of that?

Nelson’s clear example was around music. If you want to have a space designed for black folks and you are a white camp director, get some black folks to help pick and play the music. Taylor Swift and the Avett Brothers are fine, but can only get you so far if inclusion is our goal.

At Stomping Ground, the camp I help run, we serve mostly healthy, mostly neurotypical, mostly middle to upper class (about 40% of our kids come on scholarship), mostly white (about 35% of our kids are kids of color), mostly gender binary (I don’t know the percent of queer kids at our camp but I would guess it is slightly above average because our families tend to be super liberal) kids. We work every year to broaden the spectrum of kids that can be successful at camp and that camp is designed to serve.

I think a lot of inclusion ideas are based on the assumption that diversity is for the “new people” that we are now including but I disagree. I think diversity makes better experiences for all, not just the people we had to work to include. Our current campers deserve to make friends with all kinds of people. When our camp isn’t diverse and we don’t talk about diversity, we are sending the message that we believe camp is just for middle class white kids.

Lots of times I hear people say, there is a camp for every kid but it just might not be my camp. I hear that. I think it is mostly true, but I think we need to do better. I think most of us can do a better job of designing our camps for a slightly wider section of kids. The goal being if we can broaden that group every year we end up with a camp that is awesome for as many kids as possible.

For us where we have had the most success with is understanding and illuminating the Hidden Curriculum. I learned about this idea from Sylvia van Meerten, one of the founders of Camp Tall Tree, Scott Arizala’s number one business partner, bad ass YPO facilitator, person with cool tatoos and no time for bull shit. OH! And cool mom. If you couldn’t tell I think she is amazing and I have since tricked her into being my friend and joining the Stomping Ground board.

ANYWAY! Besides Syl being amazing she blew my mind when she started talking about the Hidden Curriculum. Now everything I see I see through the lens of the Hidden Curriculum. The best way to start to understand what I am talking about is to watch the video below or read Syl’s explanation of the hidden curriculum here.

The basics are that when we are in different environments there are different ways we are “supposed to” act. Most of the time those ideas are not expressly told to us, but most people figure it out by social referencing or because they grew up in the same types of environments. But you can imagine if you aren’t that tight at social referencing or you grew up in a totally different environment than it is harder to see those unwritten rules. It is harder to know what you are “supposed to” do. It is harder to see the hidden curriculum.

So even if you do pick up the hidden curriculum if it is different from your norms it requires a bunch of energy and attention.

What Syl has brilliantly helped me see is that if I run a place like camp, and I want it to be more inclusive and designed for more people than just people like me, it is my job to understand what our hidden curriculum is and illuminate it for people who don’t see it yet. It is my job to make it easier for new folks to understand the culture and norms of my camp so they can be more successful. Not only that, and this is the part that I Iove the most, but once I start to see and really look at the hidden curriculum at my camp it is my job to begin to ask if that is the hidden curriculum we really want. Is this hidden curriculum designed for the people we want at camp? Is it designed to make a space that more people want to be a part of?

This leaves us with two simple, but incredibly challenging, steps forward for creating a more inclusive camp.

Begin to figure out ways to illuminate the hidden curriculum in ways that are digestible for all our campers and staff.
Begin to look at different aspects of our hidden curriculum that we may want to change because they aren’t serving our mission or goals.

Sylvia is going to write at least one more blog post specifically on how she and her team do that for kids on the autism spectrum. But to be honest the best way I have found to start thinking about this and making camp more inclusive is to spend as much time with Syl as possible. I convinced her to run some workshops on this at Stomping Ground and now she is also running them for all camps. We ran our first Inclusion Specialist Training last year and it was amazing. We hear from camps across the country about how this has begun to change the culture at their camps, help with behavior management, and create more inclusive spaces. I hope you will think about joining us either online or in person.

https://www.thesummercampsociety.com/inclusion-specialist-training

One blog post and one idea won’t magically create an inclusive camp, but for us this single idea as been the cornerstone for moving us in that direction.