Camper Needs/Experience Debrief Recap
So many of you joined us yesterday to debrief camper needs and experience! It was GREAT to see you and AMAZING to hear all the conversations. Camp people helping camp people and building community - it’s what we love to do!
So everyone can feel safe sharing their experiences, we are not recording the debriefs. Instead, I’ll recap each one with a quick blog post. We hope these help!
BIG THEMES
Campers need mental health resources.
It was difficult to meet campers’ emotional needs and getting them to understand and communicate what they were feeling.
“Having big feelings but not being able to identify what those feelings were.”
More campers were thinking about and talking about gender identities.
Caregivers aren’t always disclosing important mental and physical health information, and camps want to know how to improve this going forward.
Campers struggled with basic conflict resolution skills.
Camps need more training time and more mental health-specific training prior to camp.
Camps are considering more unstructured time to help mitigate overstimulation.
Camps had a lot of the same challenges this summer.
Campers still had a great time at camp this summer.
OTHER STUFF
Debrief Questions (use them with your team!)
SOME QUICK IDEAS I HAVE
These are not comprehensive and will not solve all your problems, but they’re a start. We’ll work on more ideas for you throughout the year!
Melk from YMCA Camp Willson mentioned free mental health first aid trainings and sent the following steps. She sends these out to her staff.
Follow this link: https://www.mentalhealthfirstaid.org/take-a-course/find-a-course/
Put your location.
On the left, you can filter your options. Pick Open for course status, Blended Course with Virtual Instructor-led Training for Course Delivery format, and Youth for Format.
After it filters out your choices, you have to do some digging. Start clicking on the register buttons. Look for courses that have a fee amount of $0.00. Those are the classes you can take for free!
Make sure have mental health professionals on staff. Like I said last week, consider partnering with counseling students (and pay them).
Embed some social/emotional skill lessons in your opening day (and maybe first few days). Intentionally talk to your campers about what it means to be a cabinmate and friend. Talk about emotions and make them some kind of game. Go over how you want the group to approach conflicts.
This can be done on a big-group level by you but would probably be most impactful from your staff, so teach this and model it in staff training (or bring in an outside trainer to help with this and set you up with success for the whole summer).
Check out Transplaining’s resources and consider Chris’s upcoming Gender-Inclusive Housing Seminar.
Think about implementing restorative justice practices at your camp.
Look at your schedule and see where you can slow things down.
Consider adding something like Downtown Stomping Ground that campers can head to when they’re feeling the need to step away a bit.
When everything seems overwhelming, remember: campers had a good time this summer.
Pat yourself on the back for a job well done!
LOVE THE COMMUNITY, CONNECTION, & CONVERSATION AT OUR DEBRIEFS?
We have similar conversations every week with our TSCS members. Join by Sept. 20 to be added to a FREE peer group in addition to all of our other membership benefits.
Want to start working on some of this in person?
We’ll be talking about a lot of it at our retreat!
RECAP COMPILED BY
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