5 Tips for Running the Best Summer Camp Staff Training with Greg Golf

Staff TrainingLeadership & Staff Development

Mar 21

Hi y’all! I am Greg Golf, camp trainer, consultant, former director, and founder/owner of a music production company. If you want to know more about me, check out this video about how one time my counselor gave me a stick and it changed my life.

Below I outline 5 of my favorite tips for running the best summer camp staff training.

OUTLINE AND MODEL

Tip number one: outline and model the behavior you want to see amongst your staff for your counselors. Before orientation starts, go to your leadership staff and tell them, “Hey, these are the five to ten things that we really, really want to impart on our staff. We want to make sure that when we greet them, we are looking them in the eyes and smiling. We want to make sure that when they ask a question, and we answer it, we follow up with, ‘Hey, did that answer your question?’ We want to make sure that people are referred to as the name they prefer to be referred to as, so when you meet someone you say, ‘Hey, do you prefer Julia? Or do you prefer Jackie?’”

Those are all just examples, but modeling how you want your counselors to treat your campers has to come from your leadership team, and how they’re treating your counselors during orientation. Also, something that is a little strange that you can do during orientation, is tell your staff, “Hey, your leadership team is going to specifically wish each of you guys a good night. Is that weird? Since we're all not campers, maybe. But this is to show you guys what we want you to do with your campers.” They will understand, they will learn, and they will know exactly what to do when the campers get there.

SHOW DON’T TELL - As much as possible

My second tip is to do everything you would do, within your power, in a normal camp session, during your orientation. During the first session, your counselor should know everything that's going to happen, ideally, and have seen it with their own eyes. So they're not getting surprised as well. If you have dance night on Wednesdays, have a dance night on Wednesday during your orientation session. If you have big camp games that you do every session, do them during your orientation session. If you do a closing campfire and opening campfire, do those during your staff orientation. Model it the same way a session goes. Staff come, they have a counselor, they get greeted, and they get invested in. They learn how camp works over the first three days, and they get given the tools to succeed. They form lifelong bonds, and then the last night of orientation, knock it out of the park, like with a closing campfire.

USE STORY TO ILLUSTRATE THE BIG TAKEAWAYS

The third tip for running the best staff orientation possible is to think about your most important messages you want to send to your staff over the course of the summer. Instead of saying, “Hey, make sure that the youngest group has sunscreen on,” have a senior leadership member tell a story. For humans, stories stick in our minds so much more than somebody saying, “Hey, I want you to do this.” Use the power of story to drive those things home.

Have all your main messages scheduled out that you want to send during orientation. Have somebody people look up to tell a story that has the message of what you're trying to send. It will go over one thousand times better. Then, during the camp session, if we aren't putting sunscreen on the youngest group of kids, somebody can say, “Hey, do you remember during orientation when this person told this story?” That counselor will remember how it made them feel and it'll come back to them and it's going to land much more than just telling somebody to do something.

HELP STAFF SEE THE WHY

My fourth tip is to make sure staff know “why.” Staff that have grown up at camp inherently know why, but then again, the first years that just got out of leadership programs might need little reminders. However, some of our staff and counselors have never been in a summer camp environment before. I'm sure you're hiring them on the “why” that they want to change kids’ lives, but this is something that you have to continually remind staff throughout the course of the session and orientation.

You're doing ropes training, and a counselor is not paying attention. Tell them why we're doing ropes training: to keep kids safe, to allow kids to try something new, to get out of their comfort zone, and to learn and grow from the disruptive moment of reaching the top of the wall or of going off the zipline for the first time. And in order to do that, the very first thing we need to do is to keep kids safe. That's why we're doing what we are doing.

ADD SOME SCIENCE

My fifth and final tip (it's a little strange) is to bolster all of the fun and community building that you're doing with a little easy, teensy bit of science. Now, I might have just lost you. You might say, “Hey, we're at camp, we are not about science!” You most definitely are about science.

Explaining why certain camp tricks that we all know work, again, explains the why behind when we’re doing something, it helps our college staff realize what's happening in the brain of a camper when we're using some of these tactics that are classic, classic, classic staff tricks. Explain to them the science behind why, when somebody gets up for water and they’re homesick, and you walk them over to the water fountain, it helps them. Their body is more upright, their shoulders are back. Immediately their body is telling their brain, “Okay, I'm doing okay.” They're walking, they're doing an activity, it's distracting them from their feelings, they're drinking water, that sensation of drinking water is soothing. The act of getting up and doing something is just going to make a child feel better.

When you talk about red, blue, and green zones, and how if a camper is in the red zone and is physiologically and neurologically in a heightened state, or if a camper’s in the blue zone and they're in a very down or illogical state, you've got to return them to the green zone prior to getting through to them. Kids can't listen unless their needs are met, they feel cared for, and they're in a stable state, too. So when someone's in the red zone, a camper is upset and is mad and it's red and it's tense.

We calm them down, we go on a walk with them, we get water, we do some deep breathing, we go to a place where we feel safe. Once that camper has gone from the red zone to the green zone, then you can reason with them. You can deliver messages to them, you can build them up and widen that green zone. When a camper is in a blue zone and they're feeling down, we have to spend time getting them back up into the green zone. So if a camper sitting there is looking upset, I would walk up and say, “Hey, it seems like you're not feeling so well. Do you want to talk about it?”

Get them talking a little bit and get them up and moving. Moving around and having somebody to talk to is going to get them back into that green zone. Once they're in that green zone, you can say, “You know, I understand why you were upset or sad about what happened earlier at lunch, but ultimately, we are here for you. Just because you didn't get that third corndog or just because you've spilled ketchup on yourself. It is one of those things that happens. And here at Camp blank, you matter.”

That was a quick example, but teaching the counselors why the red, blue and green zones work will make it stick with them. It'll give them the tactics they need to become the best possible versions of themselves.

Thank you so much. Have a great orientation this year, y’all!

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