Supervising Free Choice Time

At camp we talk a lot about independence, being able to be the person you want to be, and learning about yourself, and at the same time, as camp directors, a lot of us have a hard time letting go or not being in control. One way we try to solve for that is with free choice times at camp. These look like free time after dinner, carnivals, choose your own adventure games, you name it. What they have in common are times during a camp session where kids get to choose how they spend their time and wander between different areas.

Some explanations

Supervising play times

The times mostly look like there are some activities going on and kids bouncing between them. The activities can be adult lead, like high ropes, or just stuff kids pick up and do, like carpetball.

For the activities that campers opt into but then are lead by camp staff, the training for standard activities applies. Lead a great activity, engage with kids, set clear rules, make sure you are fun to listen to etc. 

For activities like carpetball, sometimes the supervision is a little more complicated. If the kids are sorta leading their own fun, what even are the responsibilities of the staff in this space? We made a brief video about supervision and mention this sorta free time supervision as zone defense.

I want to dig into this a little more. 

First, as the person scheduling staff in these areas make sure they know their role, I like to assign staff to specific areas. Dakwan is in the lower area of the barn, Alice is in the makerspace, etc. Then I like to have a rover or two, at Stomping Ground we call them the bookies. These people are in charge of both making sure all the spaces are engaging, but also carrying a clipboard with who is supposed to be in each area. Sorta like the waterfront director would be the bookie at waterfront both doing buddy ups but also checking on the lifeguards. 

So if I am scheduling a free time, I assign my 10 staff to different areas and then assign a booky or two to wander around checking on campers and staff to make sure things are going well. I find assigning staff to specific areas reduces clumping (when staff don’t have clear expectations and hang out together instead of with kids) and assigning a booky helps create a safety net.

Basically - there are always people at activities and people are wandering around, so kids are supervised 100% of the time. Based on what your camp needs and what your layout looks like, you may think about an hourly meetup to count, a tag in system, or multiple smaller free zones.

Supervising Your Zone

Ok so now what do the staff in their zones do? Mostly the same thing they do everywhere else. It isn’t that complicated, and if we aren’t clear I think it can be easy to sit off to the side. Being clear here is super important. Something like: 

Your role is to:

• First keep kids safe, physically and emotionally

• Second to engage and build connections

Often, engaging makes it easier to keep kids safe but not always. Think about the extreme version of this while kids are swimming. A lifeguard's job is really just number 1. They keep kids safe and stay vigilant, but are not creating connections. 

WHAT does this look like?

We do SCANS. 

• Sandbox

• Connection

• Ask

• Narrate 

• Safety 360

Sandbox

Building the sandbox and being clear about what is allowed in the space makes supervising a choiceful area much easier. This is about setting expectations and starting from a place of safety.

Set clear boundaries for the physical space but also the rules. At gaga illuminate the hidden curriculum for the rules. Kids can wander over to gaga, and then who sets the rules? I don’t think there is a right answer, but be clear if the rules for gaga are flexible or stay the same. In general, the more space we give for kids to make up how they interact with the space the more creativity they can have, but also the higher the chance of conflict. 

Connection 

After creating a sandbox, you may be able to move to a place you can connect. Let’s say you are supervising a space with picnic tables, hammocks, and board games. You can absolutely play a game of Catan with 3 or 4 kids or maybe sit with 2 or 3 kids talking about Magic. This is a great time to connect with kids, engage, and make free time even more special. 

Connection can also look like noticing one camper sitting by themself and just sitting with them and checking in. 

Ask

Building choice starts with consent. Consent in these spaces is about asking more than telling. After we build the sandbox, it is up to each camper in the space to decide how to interact. This means asking more questions than giving answers. 

In our example above with the camper sitting by themself, one option is to tell them to go join gaga. You mean well and you believe they would have a better time if you told them what to do, but what if we flipped that. What if, instead, you sat down next to them and asked how they were doing or hit them with a random would you rather? In these choice times, there are plenty of moments where you will tell kids to stop or use a directive instead of asking a question, but those times tend to be about safety. When things are safe push yourself to ask more questions. “What are you up to?,” “Can you tell me about your shirt?,” “What are you excited for?” 

Narrate

Kids are learning how to make decisions by making them in these choiceful spaces. For some kids, this is one of their first times. Sometimes it really helps to illuminate what you are seeing. 

This can look like:

• “I noticed a bunch of kids headed over to soccer if you want to go.”

• “Thanks for helping the younger campers get their paints set up. I see you”

• “It feels like when you go hard at gaga for the whole free time you get cranky”

The goal is to share a little of what you are seeing without putting too much judgment on the campers. 

Safety 360

Finally, we are back to safety. When you are sitting playing Catan with 3 kids your job to supervise the whole space hasn’t changed. What that looks like is continuing to play Catan, but also scanning your whole area to see what is going on and making sure everyone is safe. It might mean getting up every 5 minutes or so and doing a lap.

Basically, you are playing zone defense and anything that happens in your zone is up to you. If you don’t feel like you can sit down and play Catan and do safety 360, it is more important that you choose safety 360. 

SUMMING IT UP

Remember the key to these free times is to number 1 keep kids safe and number 2 build connection. I believe the best camp experiences find ways to build these choiceful times into the very fabric of their camp environments. 

---

WORK WITH JACK

Jack is a sough after trainer working with 3000+ camp staff and 20+ camps in 2022. Interested in working with him this summer?

Send him an email - jack@thesummercampsociety.com

His two most popular training topics are around The Hidden Curriculum and 5 Keys to Being a GREAT Camp Staff.

---

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Stoplight Scheduling - Setting Camp Staff Up to Be the Most Impactful

Being a summer camp counselor is hard as hell. It involves taking on a ton of different roles.

One minute, you might be leading 10 seven-year-olds on the hunt for buried treasure, and the next, sitting back during rest hour while your campers play cards and read. At another moment, you could be  cherishing your well-deserved couple of hours off. 

Helping counselors  recognize these different engagement levels, listening to them, and designing a schedule from this perspective can boost staff success this summer. 

Let’s Call The 3 Engagement Levels - Red, Yellow, and Green

Green - The Staff Need To Bring It

Yellow - The Staff are On But It’s Ok to Take a Step Back

Red - The Staff are Totally Off 

Not everything at camp neatly fits into these categories, but this framework names what is happening, gives staff language to express their needs, and allows directors to clearly outline their  expectations. When directors illuminate this hidden curriculum, they reduce anxiety, increase engagement, and help staff know when they can rest. 

Green - 100% Engagement

The easiest level to understand, green is  often the most tiring and most rewarding. We are in green mode when we lead  activities, directly engage in solving conflict, help campers through tough situations, etc. 

Yellow - Working, But A Little Chill

Yellow has the widest span. Some camps I have worked with break yellow into green-yellow and red-yellow. These are times when staff have to be in a specific location, but they don’t need to be fully engaged. This might look like taking a step back to supervise gaga, chilling while kids relax at rest hour, eating with kids after they get food, or supervising the cabin once kids go to sleep. It also, depending on your culture, might be things like doing some office work, setting up an activity away from kids, or being on call. In my opinion, what makes an activity yellow is when  a staff member is on but not asked to be fully engaged the whole time. Yellow responsibilities often can oscillate between green and yellow depending on the situation. 

Red - Do You

During the red level,  staff are totally off. They don’t need to be engaged and can do whatever they want. 

A Simple Way to Articulate This

Make a list of all the times of day for staff members and categorize the times  by red, yellow, and green. As a scheduler, this is a great way to see what you are asking of staff, and it allows the staff to see what is expected of them. I have to admit that every time I have done this, we make up a few variants to satisfy the group’s needs. You might  add purple to mean that staff  are off but can be called upon in an emergency, or orange could  designate starting a game (green) and then being able to sit back (yellow). The focus isn’t so much on the colors as on developing  a common language. 

Note from Allison

I love this framework, and I think it’s so important for what we’re seeing in the industry right now. How many people had staff ask for a break or time off and couldn’t give it? Finding yellow moments is probably easier than finding red moments, and if we’re sharing that with staff, it can be super impactful.

Speaking of finding yellow moments — I bet you can find even more than you think. Maybe during an all-camp game you need a good amount of your staff to be green but SOME could be yellow. Could you divide the staff into “hype groups” and let some be green while other are yellow? Maybe you’ve got three groups and two are green Monday, two Tuesday, and two Wednesday, meaning every person on staff gets more yellow time than they might have before. 

Get the shared language then get creative. Then let us (and others) know how you use it so we can all think bigger and do better.

WORK WITH JACK

Jack is a sough after trainer working with 3000+ camp staff and 20+ camps in 2022. Interested in working with him this summer?

Send him an email - jack@thesummercampsociety.com

His two most popular training topics are around The Hidden Curriculum and 5 Keys to Being a GREAT Camp Staff.

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Making Them the Main Character

On The Summer Camp Society Podcast we have been talking a ton about recruiting staff and how we tell the story of what camp is like. In October 2020, I wrote this letter to the rest of the Stomping Ground team trying to help encapsulate our voice. It wasn’t specifically about staff recruitment, and rereading it three things stand out now more than ever. 

1. How can we make sure the staff feel like they are the main character of the story?

2. How can we be real and compelling at the same time?

3. The way we communicate and how we say things matters.

Below is that letter. Remember when we were all wondering about virtual camps!?

THOUGHTS ABOUT HOW WE FRAME THINGS

I love making content. 

The goal of all our content is for people to fall more in love with Stomping Ground and give people an excuse to talk about us. Content is the fuel that makes word-of-mouth marketing easier. At MACC, someone talked about how the Y logo is the idea and then the people working at the Y are what makes it true. I liked that. 

Our content is what builds how people think about SG. We position it as very personal, informative, fun, willing to take some risks, and maybe most of all working our asses off to not assume we know what is best for everyone. 

We work our asses off to assume we don’t know what’s best for everyone because that relates to every part of both free choice at camp, partnering with kids, and having humble curiosity.

In marketing, they often call this making the customer the main character of the story. We take this to heart in everything we do. If you look at the big banner in my room it reads “A resident camp where kids CAN thrive.” Not where they do or will, but we basically are saying where they MIGHT. 

Now we inspire the next generation of radically empathetic decision makers. Which is distinctly different from building great leaders or even growing radically empathic decision makers. We are coming alongside young people and helping them as opposed to teaching or changing them. 

We talk about building a world where they can see what the world could be like. 

I know these sound like semantics and I think we have relaxed in our rigidness around self- directed education but I don’t want to lose that belief in partnering and coming alongside kids. 

HOW THAT MATTERS FOR MARKETING

I want to push us to find the balance between confidently creating awesome stuff and making it about us. 

Let me think of an example. Someone is writing a blog post about teens that I haven’t read yet. How do we decide to put that out into the world?

• Option 1: Look at what we are doing for teens. If you are a teen you should do our thing.

• Option 2: A quote from the article and an invitation to learn more. “I hope you will join us”

• Option 3: A thought about the world and a connection back to the article. “Being home with the whole family can be tricky for anyone. Check out Ray’s thoughts about growing up as a teenager and a new virtual teen leadership retreat we are offering” 

These aren’t super polished but are very different. 

This is an idea I originally heard about from this guy Chase Reeves who used to run a small business podcast called the Fizzle Show. This is some other guy summing up Chase’s point. 

‘A character is someone who wants something and overcomes obstacles to get it.’

He then points out a mistake that virtually all of us make when we’re starting out, but hardly anyone discusses: the main character fallacy, or a problem identifying the main character of your story.  Where do most people begin with their stories?  “Me, me, me.”  As Chase points out, while this may be a great equation for creating a compelling novel or other work of creative art, it is a terrible equation for business marketing and brand building.

So who is the main character of your story if not you?  Your business?

No.  The main character of your story is your customer or audience.  But not your customers or audience as a whole—just one particular customer.

Another way to think about it is imagine we are at a party. We want to be the people that are listening and then doing cool shit with people and not the people yelling about how cool we are. 

This idea has been even more tested with fundraising. I saw the real study for this once showing how much more money was raised when appeal letters had more “You”s and less “I/we”s. Here is a better description than I would do. 

2. You. Fundraising letters are about what the donor wants, not about what you want. Donors want to do something about problems they care about. They want their contribution to be recognized. Not, “Our generous donors helped,” but “You helped.” “You can make a difference.” “Your assistance made it possible.”

3. I. Not, “We hope…,” but “I ask you to ….” “I’d like to let you know how your money has been put to work.” “I’d like to like to tell you how much your donation has accomplished.”

This commitment to language that reaffirms that we are partnering with people not saving them or powering over them is a huge differentiator for us and will matter a great deal as we enter an economic downturn and all money is a little harder to find.

---

Note from Allison

Jack wrote this note to Stomping Ground, and I think there are a lot of nuggets in it but maybe fewer direct takeaways for camps who aren’t Stomping Ground. So what does this mean for you?

In short, check the perspective you’re sharing from (especially on your social). Use less “Look at all the cool stuff we’re doing,” and more, “We can’t wait to see the cool stuff you do.” When we’re thinking about this in the context of staff recruiting, I think it looks like a whole lot more shoutouts for current/previous staff or impact stories and a whole lot fewer posts about the benefits of working at camp.

WORK WITH JACK

Jack is a sough after trainer working with 3000+ camp staff and 20+ camps in 2022. Interested in working with him this summer?

Send him an email - jack@thesummercampsociety.com

His two most popular training topics are around The Hidden Curriculum and 5 Keys to Being a GREAT Camp Staff.

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Starting a Monthly Giving Program For Summer Camp

In April of 2020 the world was ending. Remember? We were washing our groceries, didn’t know if we should wear masks or not, the world shut down. It was scary. At Stomping Ground, the camp I helped start, we were terrified. Scared of what would come and hoping to serve our families we did two big things. 

1. Started Hometown Stomping Ground - a very successful virtual camp that we don’t run anymore mostly run by Allison Klee

2. Started the Flying Squirrels - an awesome monthly donors club mostly started by Ray Mahar that is still going strong.

Monthly giving has become so technically easy I recommend it to most non-profit camps.

Quick Stomping Ground stats:

• Small Camp - 120 ish campers at a time

• Small Alumni Base - Started in 2015

• Current Monthly Donors - 96 - want to be 97 and learn how it works by seeing it in action? Please? ;)

• Monthly Donor Revenue - $2,981

• Annual Revenue from Monthly Donors - $35,776.8

• Average Monthly Donation - $31

Stomping Ground is a small camp with a small alumni base bringing in $35k a year, engaging alumni, cultivating larger donors, and honestly having a blast. It isn’t a ton of money, but I bet you can make more.

Here is what we did. 

1. Kick Off Event

We threw a party. Dress Code: 90s Camp Counselor. Remember this was peak shutdown time so we threw a Zoom party and, honestly, it was so fun. We invited everyone we could think of that was young-ish, 21+, and had some connection to camp, asked for donations, and had a blast. The key to this night was having a hype MC and a thoughtful closing. 

Agenda (as I remember it)

1. Welcome - 10 minutes of clowning kinda like you see when you join our webinars or debriefs

2. Options (this is how Stomping Ground runs camp too) - two rounds 15 minutes each

   1. Camp Kings

   2. Camp Stories

   3. Code Names

3. Embers - 10 minutes

   1. Laura, co-founder/executive director, told an impact story and thanked everyone for coming. She might have let everyone share something. I can’t totally remember. That time is sorta a blur. 

About 30 people showed up, drank a few drinks, and had a good time. We raised just over $1,000. 

2. Follow Up

After this event, Ray called everyone that came and thanked them. He also asked for feedback about the idea of a young donors monthly giving club. Told them a little of what we were thinking, asked them what they thought, and gauged their interest.

3. Soft Launch

After talking with all these folks, Ray emailed them individually to ask if they wanted to join. This way when we went public we knew it was worth it to make all the materials, video, etc. 

4. Public Launch

With an initial cohort of about 15 people already in we ran a small public campaign to get donors. Emailed alumni staff, posted on socials, wrote blogs, asked the new members to ask their friends, etc.

5. On-Going?

Now, Stomping Ground occasionally pushes for new monthly donors throughout the year, includes an ask in post-camp emails to caregivers, and mostly hasn’t pushed too hard since. 

What do monthly donors get?

They are promised 3 things. 

• Invitation to the annual Flying Squirrel Retreat Weekend at the camp property in Saratoga Springs (Date to be announced!)

• Two exclusive Zoom hangouts a year playing games, sharing reflections, and connecting with group members

• Optional quarterly meetings to discuss the growth and progress of camp and ways you can help

On top of that they get a touch point from camp every month. Ray plotted this out so each month they would get something like...

1. Text from Ray giving an update or just checking in

2. A postcard saying thank you

3. A video from a cabin at camp thanking them

4. A t-shirt

5. A note from Laura

The idea is mostly low or no-cost items that let them know they are valued. 

For most camps, you have much much larger alumni bases to draw from and this is an easy way to get those folks back engaged with camp and make money doing it.

---

Last shameless plug: The best way to learn about monthly giving is to become a monthly donor. Stomping Ground is a great place to learn. Consider joining here. You get to learn and help send kids to camp! JOIN NOW

---

JACK SCHOTT

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Don't Join the Summer Camp Society

Super click-baiting title, Jack. BUT for real there are plenty of really great reasons not to be a member of The Summer Camp Society. 

CAMPER OPT IN POLICY AT STOMPING GROUND

At Stomping Ground, the camp I helped start, we had a camper opt in policy and three agreements that everyone agreed to. The camper opt in policy is basically this: if kids didn’t want to come to Stomping Ground then they didn’t come. This gets complicated when parents want their kids to come, but the kids don’t want to. In that situation we were adamant that the kids didn’t come to camp.

We might have lost out on some impact and definitely lost out on some short term revenue, but it was the cornerstone of everything we did. It gave us a shared vision with every camper. They wanted to be at camp and we wanted them to be there. 

The other three agreements are 

1. Not to jeopardize the future of camp (Framed in the negative and we can talk about that later)

2. Respect yourself and others 

3. Work through conflict when it arises 

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T JOIN THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY 

It’s Not About The Experts

As camp directors, we say all the time that we are “community first.” At TSCS, we couldn’t believe more that investing in your professional community is the single best professional development you can do. It is great for your camp and it is great for your career. 

For TSCS, that means some of the meetings have more laughter and crying than bulleted takeaways. You know how some camps invest more in their toys than their staff? We don’t. Those camps are awesome. I love fancy rock walls and cool keynotes, but that isn’t us. We are the camp swimming in the lake, dancing to Kanye or screaming to Taylor Swift (thoughts on music at camp), while the counselors get covered in paint to lead the campers on a magical journey. We aren’t anti-cool toys, but they are far from the front of our brochure. 

This sounds like I am anti-cool toys or in the professional development world, anti-experts. That isn’t true – it just isn’t our focus. ACA brings in awesome experts, you can get amazing experts from MasterClass, SkillShare, or just by googling. I love learning from the best and have gotten connected to career-changing information from fellow Summer Camp Society Members. 

But, it takes effort to become part of a community…are you ready to put in that time? 

If not, don’t join The Summer Camp Society.

Real Vulnerability 

We get real. Our members talk about their families. We sometimes share hard shit. We ask folks to come correct about what they are working on. Don’t posture or be know-it-alls. We are exploring what camp can be like in the future, not the way it has always been done. 

Reading that, sorta sounds great, but it is fucking hard sometimes (oh yeah, some of us curse). It means sharing the floor and checking ourselves. It means sometimes sharing with people you don’t know that well and being an active participant, not a fly on the wall. 

It’s not the norm to be pretty open about all of the personal and professional challenges that come along with this job and lifestyle…are you ready to be pretty honest and share about your life with others?

If not, don’t join The Summer Camp Society.

Inclusion.

We are actively working to make camp more inclusive, accessible, and welcoming for more kids (and adults) across the world. We are not a JEDI organization, and at the same time, we do stand for justice work. We are honored to partner with and support some awesome camp JEDI org like OAAARS, Transplaining, S’more Melanin and BLACC.

Our members give a shit about this work and we all are on a learning journey to build equity into to fabric of our organizations… Are you in?

If not, don’t join The Summer Camp Society.

Support > Competition 

I love winning. I have been accused over and over at camp of rigging teams to make sure my team wins (Slander!). Members of The Summer Camp Society don’t hate competition, and we play games with winners and losers, but it all comes way second to lifting each other up and helping support each other. 

We make jokes, clown with each other, but if you are the kinda person looking for yelling this isn’t the place. If we were activity areas at camp, we would be more arts and crafts and pick up basketball than music lessons and tennis class.

The key really is we ask everyone to just be kind to each other… are you ready to work toward raising up our industry, instead of focusing on just the success of your career and your camp?

If not, don’t join The Summer Camp Society.

Growth Over Status Quo

Sometimes we dig into some wild, outside-the-box ideas. We certainly approach each new idea from the perspective of how might that work instead of that’s a terrible idea and I’m going to tell you why. 

If you have everything figured out, that’s awesome for you. But don’t join The Summer Camp Society.

Be Nice, Learn, Contribute

Don’t join The Summer Camp Society if you are looking for experts in the front of the room, think you know everything, or have a hard time being kind. 

Alright, Jack, weird marketing gimmick over. The truth is, I hope you join The Summer Camp Society, because I hope we can build a camp industry that is more full of laughter, growth, and support. That is what we are working on and it’s hecking awesome!

More Info About Membership

No messing around, I will personally give you your money back if you think it sucks. No questions asked.

---

JACK SCHOTT

TSCS CO-FOUNDER
CLICKBAIT EXPERT

jack@thesummercampsociety.com

Less Rules More Inclusion

Federal Law Requires You Wear a Mask at All Times While In the Airport

Editor’s Note: Okay, it did when Jack wrote this blog, so just play along.

I am sitting at JFK waiting for my flight. Every 10 minutes or so there is an announcement:

Federal law requires you wear a mask at all times while in the airport. Failure to do so will result you removal from the premise and a $50 fine.

But here is the thing: 3 guys just walked by me without a mask, the guy to my left hasn’t had a mask on in an hour, I see lots of diaper chin mask situations, and WHAT ABOUT EATING?! All the restaurants are popping, tons of folks are eating McDonalds, even the staff at the airport aren’t consistent. 

I am not coming here with covid plans or even a take on what the right mask rules are. I am here to talk about being real with the rules. When the rules aren’t clear it benefits the people who are insiders and folks willing to push the limits. 

The Hidden Curriculum 

I am a broken record about illuminating the hidden curriculum to help more outsiders become insiders as the level one inclusion work we need to do at camps. More on illuminating the hidden curriculum (short video - long video) and check out the hidden curriculum training documents in the Free Stuff section of this website. So much of illuminating the hidden curriculum is about getting us all on the same page about what the unspoken rules are in our spaces. 

But what does the airport announcement have to do with our camps? 

Everything. 

At camp it is easy to add more rules. It is easy to say, “Ya! Everyone has to wear shoes outside all the time.” We say that because the nurse has pulled too many splinters or with really good intentions to make camp safer, but what does that really look like?

It looks like campers getting yelled at for running outside to hang their towel up without shoes on. It looks like new campers being afraid to not wear shoes in the pool because they took the rule literally, because they listened. It looks like counselors having to decide whether to let kids break the rules because they think it is a little silly or enforce the rule because they are afraid to get in trouble. 

It looks like the insiders and ruckus makers winning while the rule followers, quiet kids, and outsiders anxiously try to figure out what the real rules are. 

I see three options. 

1. We aggressively and unapologetically enforce rules even when they don’t make a ton of sense to be fair.

2. We leave it the way it is and let there be tension between the insiders and the outsiders. 

3. We use our power to start removing unrealistic rules.

How do we know what rules are unrealistic?

We ask the kids. We ask the staff. We look at old documents around what has led to the most incident reports. 

As I wrap this up I want to take a step back. This summer, last summer, and every summer, black and brown kids will be disciplined and sent home from our camps at an astronomically higher rate than their white counterparts. I know this anecdotally about camps because as an industry we don’t keep great records, but it is proven in our schools. 

By focusing on removing these rules that are enforced inconsistently we are able to make it easier to be an insider. We are making it easier to remove unconscious bias from the enforcement of these rules. We are making our camps more inclusive. 

I don’t know what rules you should change at your camps, but what I want you to think about is instead of asking what new rules can we add to make camp safer, think about what rules can we remove to make camp more inclusive. 

The Hidden Curriculum Basics And More

This May we are running a Hidden Curriculum Basics Seminar for frontline staff as a part of our Summer Staff Power Pack. The Power Pack is truly an INCREDIBLE deal — 20 mix and match spots in TEN virtual trainings (WITH RECORDINGS) that can teach your staff literally SO MUCH before the summer starts. It’s so cheap you can’t afford NOT to do it.

---

JACK SCHOTT

CO-FOUNDER, CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER, THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

THE PAST 12 MONTHS

WOAH! In the last year a lot has changed for the world, us, and most importantly for this memo, TSCS. Some of the notable changes:

1. We realized we needed help. In Spring 2021, Paige Moffett came on board and launched our membership program, which has transformed the way we do business. We have doubled down on the community aspect. It is much better and the heart of TSCS. THANK YOU, PAIGE!

2. We have committed to a seminar model that is more virtual. From a revenue standpoint, these keep TSCS running. They are also great value and essential content, and help us also make change in our industry and our world. We think there are big opportunities to more easily run them, make them more impactful, and increase revenue.

3. The retreat is back. Forty two people gathered last month in New Jersey for the first TSCS retreat in 2 years. It was full of tears, excitement, and community. The energy and lovefest was wild, and we created a welcoming community that brought some incredible new folks in. The membership program is the heart, but the retreats are the soul of what we do. 

4. Allison Krabill is joining the squad as our executive director! This is going to give us even more bandwidth to get more done, grow, sustain our already-strong community, and make more impact.

5. We are bringing on exceptional camp consultants as faculty members to provide a steady stream of content, thought leadership, and connection within our membership group and the greater camp community. We’ll be announcing our first class of faculty this Thursday; stay tuned!

WIDE-EYED THINKING

Here is the thing: The Summer Camp Society strives to be the best possible way to help camps serve kids more effectively in inclusive, empowered, and compassionate communities. The work we do has ripples across the country and the world. It sounds grandiose, and it is. When we are able to help camp directors be more effective, shift a mindset, and just feel better, the impact is exponential. Taking care of the camp leaders who are a part of TSCS impacts hundreds of thousands of kids every year, and their families/communities. It makes a difference.

LET’S LEVEL UP

Thinking about what we do…it falls into mostly 5 categories. Maybe we’ll have more later, but here they are for now:

1. Membership

2. Seminars

3. The Retreat

4. Content Creation

5. Individual Trainings/Consulting

With these five in mind, here is how we are going to move forward:

Membership: The membership program is our sustaining community of practice. Where friendships and collaboration have a home, and where people who care about making their camps and the world better can lean on and learn from each other. What if we set a goal of defining this group as the best virtual community of camp leaders helping each other build more effective, equitable, and efficient organizations? For that to actually happen, it needs to grow and we need to bring that to more camps. Then, what if we set a goal of growing the membership community to 100 camp professionals while at the same time increasing the benefits of TSCS membership by Summer 2023? That is a hard goal, but we are up to it. 

Seminars: There is a lot to do here. We’ve been running seminars for several years, but have really increased these offerings over the past 12 months. They started off in a haphazard way and showed varying success, but the impact of the seminars has grown as we’ve partnered with extraordinarily talented and wise facilitators like Simone Gamble from OAAARS, Briana Mitchell & Makela Elvy from S’more Melanin, Chris Rehs-Dupin from Transplaining, and Laura Kriegel & Allison Klee from Camp Stomping Ground.

We think we can do a lot better by building repeatable systems that make it easier for incredible facilitators to run these types of learning experiences, for us to market them, and for participants to explain the value to decision-makers in their organizations. We so appreciate how these seminars allow participants to do a deep dive on topics that matter, and bring back actionable change to their organizations and communities. What if we set a goal here to run at least 10 seminars in the 2022-23 school year, serving  300 participants? 

The Retreat(s): The in-person retreat is so fun. We are cocky for sure, but we think it is the best professional development money you can spend at camp. By going to the retreat, you make actual friends and have actual helpful people in your network that you can actually call to help you do stuff. You also leave with tangible takeaways and all that, but the key is that you have people to call for the unexpected problems. In other words, you have a real community. The other magic about the retreat is that you get your spark back–you remember why you are doing this work, and why it matters. For many of us, the retreat is the fuel we need to keep going. It’s camp magic for us. Can we run two retreats next year? Yes. Let’s do two retreats with 50 people each–one in the late fall and one in the late winter/early spring. (Pss… want to make sure you get the info for our next retreat? Here’s a quick form to make sure you don’t miss out!)

Content Creation: In this category, we have the blog, webinars, videos, social (Instagram + Facebook + LinkedIn + TikTok), emails, and the Free Stuff section of the Website. With Allison coming on board we have a huge opportunity to take all these up in a big way. Gary Vee outlines the Pillar Content Strategy here - The basic idea is from one piece of content we create a whole bunch more. The big logic is the more we grow our readership, email list, and social media following, the easier it is to make an impact.  We think investing time here drives everything else. Plus, the content we put out helps camp leaders grow and organizations make changes in a very accessible way. And, we need a GOAL! How about: grow our email list to 5,000 and Insta followers to 3,000 by Summer 2023?

Individual Trainings/Consulting: To us, this is the least thought out and has a lot of room for brainstorming and thinking. We will bring in good revenue from training and speaking engagements this year, but there aren’t great systems. We can imagine a world where we use our reach to help other people (like our seminar collaborators) get and manage speaking engagements. Or maybe where we have subcontractors that help us run projects. We’re not sure what to do here and we think formalizing this and building a good plan for it is a classic fall project. Camp leaders: What do you need? How can we help

BIG GOAL!

We think the real way we are going to be able to make an impact and change the camp world is by growing TSCS like we outlined above.  We know we are making a big impact within our current community, but our community is relatively small compared with the greater camp industry. It’s extremely small compared to the youth development community as a whole. We want to maintain the small-community feel of TSCS and expand its reach; we want to have more camp directors stick with this challenging yet important work; we want to bring the magic, joy and fun of camp to people who are usually the ones giving it (and not receiving it as much). But, most of all, we want to help people leverage camp as a tool to change the world.

GRATITUDES

To Allison and Paige: We couldn’t be more excited to be working with you! You both bring incredible skill sets into our organization and we can already feel such big momentum and push with you on our team. We’re grateful for you and your commitment to our mission and community.

To Our Members: There was a point in spring 2021 where we weren’t sure if we could keep going. The pandemic killed ALL of our business–we’d gone without revenue for almost a year. We’d both started to seek out other sources of income. You convinced us that TSCS was instrumental in your lives and worth saving. You helped us articulate the vision for a sustaining membership, and you shared your belief in our movement. You’ve all become incredible friends and we’re so grateful for you!

To Camp: You’ve taught us both and given us both so much. You are a force in this world. It is our honor and privilege to help you not just stay relevant but continue to be one of the most relevant and important levers we have for societal change, and we’re grateful to be able to do that through The Summer Camp Society. We can’t wait to see what’s next for us and for you!!

WITH SO MUCH LOVE!

Jack & Kurtz

---

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM

SARAH KURTZ MCKINNON
CO-FOUNDER, THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
CAMP DIRECTOR AT HEART
KURTZ@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM

Are We Thinking Too Small About How to Recruit More and Different Staff for Camp?

Chris and Briana ran a session at our The Summer Camp Society retreat that I can’t stop thinking about. The goal of the session was to leave with a marker of progress for action steps for building a more equitable camp or camp industry. First of all, it was fascinating how thoughtfully they moved us from high-level ideas to tangible takeaways. If you haven’t explored their offerings please check them out.

Now, we are in a group brainstorming an idea Jared Wood from Opequon Quaker Camp brought to the table. He is looking for how to make the camp counselor job more accessible. Of course, can we pay more, but what else can we do? We start talking about questions like: What if fewer staff members had to sleep in cabins? What if they got more time off? Could they sleep in cabins only some nights?

Every camp is different and there won’t be a one-size-fits-all approach, but this got me wondering:

Are we thinking too small about how to recruit more and different staff for camp??

I will admit, when I think about recruiting staff for camp I mostly think about how I can help folks learn about the opportunity, build some trust around the idea, and see how fun and rewarding it is to work at camp. But this is very self-centered. It comes from a really good place but it is also me saying, “I have this awesome job opportunity…I just need to convince other people to take it.”

AND, if I am being honest, I don’t want to be a camp counselor for the whole summer. Maybe it’s not 100% as awesome as I make it sound. Jared’s prompt made me think, if I could get paid the same as a director to be a camp counselor for the whole summer would I do it at Stomping Ground, the camp I helped start? The answer is no. Would I do it for a couple weeks? Hell ya! So, for me, the length of time is the dealbreaker. For others, it might be the sleeping arrangements, the pay, the daily schedule, or the time off setup. If I could figure out what other dealbreakers for folks were, could I try to eliminate those and get people who would be great additions to our team and camp communities to apply? 

In other words, what could I change to make the job more attractive to me and more importantly, to folks that might actually take the job?

HERE ARE SOME IDEAS

1. Pay More - At Stomping Ground we pay new senior counselors $400/week (up from $300/week in 2021). How can we raise that? At Stomping Ground we could add more kids. We could raise the price of camp. We could fundraise more. We could give away fewer scholarships. We could hire fewer staff and pay the staff we hire more. We could spend less money somewhere else. 

2. Not Have To Sleep In The Cabin - Sleeping in the cabin all the time is drag. Not for everyone, but when I pitch the job to a lot of people this is the first thing they roll their eyes at. We have two staff members sleep in every cabin, but do we need to? Could we have 1 staff member sleep in every cabin and the other staff sleep close by? Could they rotate? This goes against all the current common practice, but 9 times out of 10 the second counselor doesn’t do anything all night long. Nine times out of 10 counselors don’t anything after like 10pm. My big concern around only having one staff member sleep in the cabin is what are the implications around child abuse prevention? What if no counselor slept in the cabin with the kids, but two staff per village stayed up all night in the middle of the village? These staff could be hired specifically for this job. What if they were local nurses or hospital techs that already have night shifts? What do my licensing, accreditation and insurers actually require, and what is a reasonable alternative that is still safe but more sustainable?

3. More Days Off - At Stomping Ground, we currently have two counselors in every cabin for two week sessions. Each counselor gets a full 24 hours off on Saturday or Sunday during the session. Then everyone is off between the sessions (Friday afternoon through Sunday at noon). What if we could give staff more days off? One way that could work would be to add a third counselor to every cabin (which does cost more money). However, with a third counselor we could basically rotate one counselor off every day. I think I would keep all three counselors on for the first 3 days then start the rotation and have all three counselors on for the last day.

In the past we have had 10 campers per cabin. Adding an 11th camper would easily pay for the third staff member per cabin and let us give everyone a raise. Would better paid, more rested staff be happier with one more camper?

4. Change the Daily Schedule - Can we change the schedule to give more staff more hours off during the day? At Stomping Ground we run basically every hour 4 or 5 options plus Downtown Stomping Ground (DTSG). DTSG is basically a free space where kids can wander between different activities (see the video below).

It requires less staff to just run DTSG and all of camp can hang out in DTSG and be happy for an hour. What if for the first activity every day we just ran DTSG and no activity options? We could run that with just the ad staff and give all of the counselors the first hour of the day off. I bet at most camps there are kind of free play spaces that could be staffed with less people if we got creative.

5. More Flexible Full Summer - I said above that I would be happy to work a few weeks in a cabin, but all summer would be hard. How could we build some systems that let folks only work a couple weeks? Maybe work a couple weeks in cabins and a couple in the kitchen? Training would be hard, but solvable especially with returning staff. I know YMCA Camp Ernst hires a ton of first year counselors and they each work only a few weeks each summer. How could we mimic this? It is always hard to keep staff through the end of the summer. Part of that is school and other commitments, but part of that is because it is the furthest from staff orientation. Could we run ongoing training like typical businesses? The reality is seeing camp actually running is great training. How could we combine that with some in-service direct reflections, mandatory meetings or workshops, etc.?

I am not sure all these changes make sense this summer or if they are even possible. I just suggested adding more staff when recruiting is already hard. This wouldn’t be easy and I think it is worth looking at what the actual job is asking for. In other words, How can I change the actual job to make it easier and more appealing to potential staff?

Take all these ideas with a grain of salt, but please if nothing else think for a second about what we are asking our counselors to do and what systems we can change to make their jobs easier.

---

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

TSCS's Recommendations for Tri-State 2022

Next week is the annual American Camp Association NY/NJ Tri-State Conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey. This is the camp conference of camp conferences; the biggest in the country and probably the world. If you’re going, get ready for a crush of learning, socializing, and fun. The Tri-State lineup is incredibly strong this year, and you are going to have a ton of choices of seasoned presenters (think: Michelle Cummings, Jim Cain, Michael Brandwein, Dr. Chris Thurber, Ruby Compton, Andy Pritikin, Dave Malter, Roz & Jed Buck and more). In this blog article, however, we’re going to highlight some of the best new(ish) presenters on the circuit, and tell you why we’ll be first in line to get into their sessions.  

Chris T. Rehs-Dupin, Transplaining

• Foundations for Trans* Inclusion at Camp (Room 417), Monday, 8:30-9:30am

• Supporting LGBTQ+ Campers When their Parents are Not-Affirming (Room 417), Monday, 3:15-4:15pm

• Intro to Gender Inclusive Housing (Room 417), Tuesday, 8:30-9:30am

It’s no secret that we are big Chris Rehs-Dupin fans here at TSCS. The thing about Chris is that he has a huge heart and tremendous wisdom–and has the teaching and empathy skills to bring others along. Chris worked in camping for more than a decade (two decades!?!) and is now on a mission to make camps the safe, inclusive and joyful places that they should be for trans* youth and staff. We’ve been in hours upon hours of seminars with Chris these past two years, and we’ve yet to see him stumped by a tough or tricky question. If Tri-State goes like ACA Nationals, Chris’s seminars will be standing room only. Get there early to get a seat!!

Simone Gamble, OAAARS

• Doing the Work: A DEI Panel on Where to Start and How to Keep Going (Room 417), Tuesday, 9:45-10:45am

Simone is one of the best facilitators we have ever seen. They are somehow able to intersect the camp experience with the greater world, explaining practical yet powerful ways that camp leaders can act as change agents both within their own programs and in the outside world. When we had our retreat last month, Simone’s workshops were listed continually as some of the best professional and personal development experiences our participants had ever had. They are only at Tri-State for this one panel–we think this is a can’t miss event.

Briana Mitchell

Briana Mitchell & Makela Elvy, S’more Melanin

• How to Assess Equity at your Camp (Room 402), Tuesday, 8:30-9:30am

• Briana will also be on the panel “Doing the Work: A DEI Panel on Where to Start and How to Keep Going” (Room 417), Tuesday, 9:45-10:45am

Makela Elvy

Briana and Makela have taken the camp world by storm with S’more Melanin, launching their training and consulting offerings as well as their new S’more Melanin Seal of Approval. We had the privilege of working with this pair for our last two offerings of the Intersectional Equity Scenario Seminar and at our recent TSCS retreat. The way they each approached equity issues at camp from a practical, strategic and compassionate standpoint was mind-boggling. These two facilitators jam pack their presentations with actionable nuggets, broad perspectives, and a commitment to justice in camping and the greater world. Going to Tri-State just for their equity assessment workshop alone would probably be worth it!

Eric Wittenberg, Camper Machine Operations

• Camp Business Financials: Money Moves at Summer Camp with Kenny Brook (Room 301), Tuesday 8:30-9:30am 

• A Lot in a Bot: Technology and People are Changing, There’s a Bot to Talk About (Room 322), Tuesday, 3:15-4:15pm

• Stronger Re-Enrollment: 4 Steps to Follow Your Data to Higher Retention Rates (Room 309), Wednesday, 9:00-10:00am

We’ve known Eric for a few years now and are always blown away by the way that he uses data to get more kids to even better camps. Eric strategically applies data science to the everyday, critical decisions that camp directors make.  Unfortunately, in our industry, many of us have not learned about how to leverage data for better results, instead we rely on our hearts and intuition. Eric understands the heart and intuition part of camp directing, having grown up at camps and even started and operated a highly successful camp, but he also knows that a lot of the story and many of the answers lie in objective data.  If we had to choose one of Eric’s sessions, it would absolutely be the one about stronger re-enrollment on Wednesday. Even if this session only helps you retain one more camper than you otherwise would have, it would be worth it–but we’re guessing that it will help you retain many more than that.

Hillary Gilberg, Kutsher’s Sports Academy

• Can We Do It All? How to Balance Parenting and Summer Camp Life (Room 401), Tuesday, 12:30-1:30pm

Hillary is so passionate about the sustainability of parenting and a career in camping that she reached out to us to volunteer her time to help facilitate our Camp Babies seminar this winter. Hillary has a great sense of humor, huge commitment to camping, and tons of recent, firsthand experience having two super young kids at camp. This is a topic that we haven’t seen so much at flagship conferences, but we truly believe that the disjoint between camp life and home life causes many people (especially primary caregivers) to leave our industry–where we desperately need them. We would love to see more sessions like this at the big conferences and are so excited to see Hillary step up and lead the charge at Tri-State. If you have kids, are thinking about having them one day, or have coworkers who are caregivers, show up to this session and show your support for this critical yet often ignored topic in our industry.

Elizabeth Ramirez

Elizabeth Ramirez and Ryan Ende, OAAARS

• A Crash Course on Being a Change Champion (Room 415), Wednesday, 9:00-10:00am

• Elizabeth will also lead the DEI Roundtable Workspace (Room 419) on Tuesday from 2-3pm

We got to know Liz last spring when she served as a panelist in our Centering BIPOC Voices at Camp webinar. Liz has incredible insights and an awesome resume of experiences, including several years at Fiver Children’s Foundation. She’s also currently earning dual masters degrees in social work and business administration at the University at Buffalo. In this session, she plans to lean on her expertise in organizational development to give audience members actionable frameworks they can use to institute change. So, learn from other presenters about the why and the what, but come learn from Liz and her co-presenter about how you can use management science and psychology to make lasting change within your organization.

LOOKING FOR COMMUNITY AT TRISTATE?

Are you going to Tri-State? Let's get together! Alice and Paige will be at Wing Craft at 11am for lunch on Tuesday, March 15. Want to join? Let us know so we can call in a reservation (click here). We encourage you to bring a friend who might love The Summer Camp Society, too! (If you forget to RSVP - that's ok, come anyway!!) Even if you’ve never done a program with us, we’d love to have you!

5 Keys to Being a Great Camp Counselor

It is harder than ever to be a great camp counselor. A multi-year global pandemic, increased understanding of mental health issues, often understaffed camps, more inexperienced counselors, increased parental pressure, and so many other factors have pushed us to the brink. 

At the same time, it can be easy to get lost in the weeds instead of focusing on the building blocks that make for a great camp counselor. Let’s get back to basics with the five keys to running a great group. Being a GREAT camp counselor. 

1. Greeting and Welcoming—Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum

2. Relationship Building—Building Authentic Connection

3. Establishing Systems - The Business of Camp

4. Amazing Memories—Making Magical Moments

5. Tough Situations - Managing Conflict

When we train our staff on these five things, we set them up to succeed. It helps them manage their own stress, which reduces anxiety, burnout, and increases happiness and fun. Being a camp counselor is a tough job, but it doesn’t need to be that complicated. Most of what I think we need to help staff with this summer is identifying where there are skills deficits for our specific staff this summer and providing specific training in one or more of these 5 categories.

Let’s look at each one:

Greeting and Welcoming—Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum

Often when we talk about inclusion trainings, we are focused on including specific groups. For good reason, inclusion and diversity trainings tend to overlap and we have more work to do as an industry to include people from all backgrounds. At the same time, inclusion starts with welcoming. A camp counselor’s first job is to be the host of their group. 

This starts with welcoming campers on opening day and continues through explaining the bizarre chants, how meal and shower times work, and bringing new folks in on the inside jokes. We call this illuminating the hidden curriculum. The hidden curriculum includes all the unspoken rules about a space that tend to be unsaid but are true. Understanding the hidden curriculum is what makes you an insider. The first job of camp counselors is to ensure their campers feel like insiders by illuminating the hidden curriculum. 

A couple of resources around being a great host and the hidden curriculum

• Free 15 minute video about illuminating the hidden curriculum at camp

• Four-week virtual seminar around the hidden curriculum and inclusion with me and Nelson Strickland

Relationship Building—Building Authentic Connection

When kids feel like they are part of the larger community, they are happier, more fun to work with, and more likely to return to camp. After we have ensured that kids understand the hidden curriculum, the next step of our job as camp counselors is to set up the conditions for kids to make friends.

Three super simple ways to start the relationship process as a camp counselor:

1. Use kids' names three times as soon as you meet them. Tell them you care about knowing their name because you care about them. After all the kids have arrived, create a bunk map of your cabin with all the kids’ names and have your co-counselor quiz you. It is 100% your job to know every camper's name in your group by the end of the first day. This goes hand-in-hand with playing name games on the first day so kids can learn each other’s names. 

2. Make a list of all the kids in your cabin and a grid with each day they are at camp. Every day, make sure to have at least a one-minute one-on-one with each camper. On the grid, put a smiley face, frowny face, or neutral face based on how you feel like that interaction went. If you do this and share it with your supervisor, I bet you will get huge bonus points. 

3. On that same grid, make it your goal to know one thing each camper loves and write it next to their name. For example, when you see one of your kids wearing a Buffalo Bills T-shirt, ask them about it and write it down so you will always have a place to start a convo with them. 

Establishing Systems - The Business of Camp

When I was an 18-year-old camp counselor, I was incredibly cocky and a little charming with kids. I will say, I was good at the building relationships and making memories side and mediocre at the business side. A huge part of the camp counselor’s job is building a predictable and repeated structure for the campers in their care. Camp counselors build the sandbox for the kids to play in. We don’t have to be overly controlling, but we do need to set clear expectations and set kids up for success. 

Let’s talk about shower time for a second. When I first started working at camp, I would look at a bunch of 7-year-olds and say, “Ok, grab your stuff for the showers and meet me outside.” Obviously, that was a disaster. They didn’t know what to get or have a timeline for when to do it. I also didn’t include that while we were at the showers, we would be brushing our teeth and changing into PJs. I would get grumpy that the kids didn’t bring all their shower stuff, the kids would get annoyed, and showering would become an incredibly stressful time for everyone. Instead what I could have done is taken 30 seconds and written down a short checklist on a whiteboard:

SHOWER TIME:

• Grab your…

  • PJ’s (including underwear)

  • Shampoo and body wash or soap

  • Toothbrush and toothpaste

• Change into your shower shoes, no socks

• Meet Steve (the other counselor) outside in 2 minutes

• GO!

Then Steve waits outside for the kids to finish and he checks each kid's supplies while I go around and help each camper gather their supplies. This proactive approach is a bit more work to start, but it makes everyone’s life easier at the showers. Building systems like this and writing them down not only helps the campers but also helps co-counselors be on the same page. 

Pro Tip: Trading off with your co-counselor who is the lead staff and who is the support and building shared language around it is the number one way to reduce animosity. Get used to saying things like “Do you want to be the lead on shower time or Embers and bedtime?” It feels a little nerdy at first, but it will make your summer so much better.

Amazing Memories—Making Magical Moments

To me, this is the most fun part of being a counselor. This is where you build your credibility with your kids and bake fun into their time at camp. These are classic events like taking kids on kitchen raids, deciding to sleep out under the stars, having an ice cream party, and building inside jokes with your group. 

Everyone does this differently, but your goal is to create the kind of culture where the kids are proud to be in your group. This does not mean putting other groups down or creating conflict with other groups, just that kids take pride in being in your group. 

Five Ways to Make Memories with your Cabin:

1. Make up a cabin-specific chant you can yell as you go around camp

2. Start a positive prank society—go around doing nice things like cleaning areas, putting up nice signs, etc.

3. Take your group to a special place at camp and cook ramen noodles over the fire 

4. Wake the whole cabin up in silly ways with accents and costumes every morning

5. Put on a carnival for the youngest kids at camp where your kids run different stations during rest hour—talk to their staff first

Tough Situations - Managing Conflict

No matter how awesome you are at all the things I described above, there will be conflict at camp. Being able to work through conflict when it arises is important. Every camp has different systems for how this works, from top-down strict rules to just getting the director, but understanding how to work through this is the cornerstone to handling tough times at camp. 

At Stomping Ground, the camp I helped start, our conflict resolution systems are based on restorative practices. When folks are upset with each other, we have what are called circles. The goal of these circles, which are just structured conversations, is to heal harm, mitigate future harm, and build community. 

Thoughts from Laura Kriegel, Stomping Ground co-founder and executive director: It turns out Restorative Practices are actually kinda the opposite of behavior management systems. I get it, as a counselor all I want is to make the annoying or disruptive or just down right rude behaviors go away. As well intentioned adults trying to help a crew of kids figure stuff out we put systems in place to try and manage unwanted behavior. Unfortunately however the outcome is often a lack of trust between camper and staff. While it take alot more time and some more energy having a structured restorative conversation the outcome is often more satisfying and effective for everyone involved.

If you want to learn more about circles and restorative practices at camp, check out these three resources below:

• Free Restorative Practices at Camp Website 

• Free podcast all about Restorative Justice at Camp

• Free Restorative Justice Curriculum

BEST JOB EVER

Working at camp is the best job ever. It is tiring, amazing, and the best experience for so many people. I hope these ideas make your summer just a little easier so that you can focus on what matters: helping kids have a successful summer. 

---

MORE TIPS FOR STAFF

5 Keys to Being a GREAT Summer Camp Staff Member - Jack Schott & Nelson Strickland

Age Appropriate Bedtimes at Summer Camp

Supervision At Summer Camp - Jack Schott, Chris Rehs-Dupin, Sarah Kurtz Mckinnon

Looking for more videos of great tips for staff?

We have FREE virtual courses available for our members. For the cost of one membership ($360-600/year), your ENTIRE STAFF gets access to our virtual courses (including restorative justice).

---

TRAININGS WITH JACK

I will be on the road most of May and June doing staff trainings all over the US doing trainings all these kind of topics and more. I would love to work with you. If you are interested shoot me an email/text and let’s make summer 2022 the best one yet!

• jack@thesummercampsociety.com

• 585-451-5141

---

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

5 Rules for Running Great Meetings at Camp

As I gear up and talk to a lot of camps about trainings for this summer almost everyone I talk to has been stressed about helping staff get back to basics. There has been a turn over of staff, a lot of us lost summer 2020, and many campers and staff are out of practice doing relatively normal camp stuff.

This is the second of a few posts we are doing around normal camp stuff, around, how can we just make things at camp a little easier so everyone can be just a little less stress. - Jack

MOST MEETINGS SUCK, BUT THEY DON’T HAVE TO.

At camp, we ask a lot of our seasonal leaders, unit directors/division heads/activity area supervisors/etc., including asking them to run meetings. Meetings look different for different purposes, but they are generally gatherings of people for sharing some information or making decisions.

Think about it; our seasonal leaders have to do it all the time, and it’s hard. At Stomping Ground, we offer folks this one-pager with specific training around running meetings. This blog article is designed to give new supervisors some specific tools for running what we call a business meeting. 

BUSINESS MEETINGS AT CAMP

Think about a business meeting, like the meeting a village leader might run with their counselors before campers arrive for opening day or the waterfront director might lead with the lifeguards each week. These types of meetings tend to have some information that needs to be shared from the supervisor, some decisions that will get made, and some sharing of ideas in the group. You have probably been to thousands of these meetings and had some great experiences and some terrible ones. The structure below is not the only way to run a meeting effectively, but it is a great starting point.

5 RULES FOR RUNNING EFFECTIVE MEETINGS

1) Know what you want.

Priya Parker calls this the disputable purpose of a gathering. When you are running a meeting, start with the point. Say the goal out loud so that everyone is on the same page, and the meeting has clear boundaries. It is your job to be the keeper of those boundaries. 

For example: “Let’s get started. Today we are meeting for 30 minutes to talk about how to set our village up for success with this new group of kids.”

“ALRIGHT! This meeting is going to be about making sure candlemaking safe this week. We had some close calls last week, and we are going to get them sorted in the next hour.”

2) Have a plan and own the process.

Once everyone knows the point of the meeting, it is your job as the meeting facilitator to make sure this gets done. Before any meeting, I jot down a few bullet points about how I want the meeting to go. Sometimes this is a more formal agenda or sometimes I write it on a scrap of paper or the back of my hand. You know how camp goes...

After sharing the point of the meeting, tell everyone how we are going to get there. This doesn’t have to be set in stone, but it is your job as the meeting facilitator to move the meeting along and set the boundaries when things get off track. As the meeting facilitator, you have the power to change the plan as you go, but let everyone know what you are doing. It will give a sense of calm and ease folks’ anxiety to know there is a plan and it is being thought through. 

You are the host of this meeting, and this part is an art. Some meeting facilitators tend to bulldoze and not let other people share while others sit back too much and don’t take enough charge. Think about who you are, and be cognizant of trying to grow here. 

Example: “Here is how this meeting will roll. First, let’s go around and do 30-second celebrations. Then, I have a few things to let you know about changes for this session. Next, I will hand out the camper files and you can look at them with your co and ask questions. After that, let’s talk about the village carnival for Friday. I’ll wrap us up before noon so y’all can get to lunch.”

3) Use visuals when you can.

When you have a visual, everyone thinks you are more prepared than you are. Take 30 seconds before the meeting to write down the agenda and an inspirational quote on a piece of butcher paper or even a notebook that you hold up. Even better, be able to give the agenda to folks before the meeting so they have time to think ahead. 

Visuals or other media for meetings help you express what you mean and level up the agenda. For the waterfront meeting, have a diagram of where the lifeguards stand. When discussing time off, draw up a quick schedule of when counselors will be on and off. When planning the carnival, draw and label the different stations. 

Protip: I suck at making visuals look good and often lean into people picking on me for how silly they are. I love to draw up a quick sketch in my notebook ahead of time and bring some markers and butcher paper early to the meeting. Then, I ask someone who is more artistically skilled to draw the cooler version of my crappy drawing. This does three things: it gives a cool visual for the meeting, involves someone else, and shows that I am human as they laugh at my attempt. 

4) Be explicit.

This goes hand in hand with having a plan and owning the process. It is easy to fall into a trap of assuming we are all on the same page when a meeting feels good. As the host of the meeting, it is your job to make sure that is the case. I constantly find myself in meetings saying things like: “Love that. Just to be clear, what we are saying is...” or “Hell ya, I think that means we are deciding...”

In your meetings, make sure you are clear about what information is negotiable and what isn’t. When making group decisions, make sure to restate what the decision was and look around your circle to see if everyone is nodding in agreement. 

Pro tip: When looking around hoping for agreement, you might not always have a consensus. Often that is ok and you can make the call and move on, but this is an opportunity to notice who has a dissenting opinion and follow up with them later. Ask how they are feeling or just spend a little extra time hanging with them so they know you care and that they can ask you questions. 

5) Set clear times and say when the meeting starts and ends.

Timing is tricky at camp. Often a day seems like a year, and a week seems like an hour. My take is that it is ok to be imprecise on how long things will take, but be open about it and illuminate transitions. 

Pick a start time and end time for the meeting. Hopefully, you can end the meeting early, but try not to end the meeting late. Kurtz might hate this, but my take on meeting start times is to pick a time, tell everyone that time, and plan on starting 5 minutes later. 

During those 5 minutes, don’t just sit back. Jump in a couple of times telling everyone they can clown and laugh and that the agenda will start 5 minutes later.  

This is the important part: when you are ready to start the agenda, take charge and let everyone know the format has changed from clown town to meeting time. “NICE! Ok, y’all, I am going to run you through the plan of this meeting, and we are really getting started NOW!” This makes it clear that you are in control and gets the meeting started. 

Following that same logic, make sure you end the meeting. You know how at the end of a meeting some people mill about, unsure if they can leave or are expected to stay? I hate that. Just end the meeting.

“Thanks, everyone. I am going to chill here if you have questions, but the meeting is 100% over. Stick around if you want or go do whatever you gotta do.”

Kurtz here: I do kind of hate this but Jack is right. It’s realistic. My modification here is to have those first 5 minutes be a kind-of agenda item. Have something out for people to eat, something for them to do (like a survey to fill out, etc.), so people who are on time get some sort of perk and people don’t get used to things being 5 minutes late, and then there’s a creep to where everything starts 6, 7, 8, etc., minutes late.

Often camper and staff experiences are made or lost by the folks running these meetings. The middle managers, seasonal leaders, and summer supervisors are the culture keepers and the community leaders who create the sandbox for the rest of the campers and staff to play in. With that in mind, we offer an asynchronous virtual seasonal leaders FREE with membership.

---

TRAININGS WITH JACK

I will be on the road most of May and June doing staff trainings all over the US and I would love to work with you. If you are interested shoot me an email/text and let’s make summer 2023 the best one yet!

---

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Thinking About Thunderdome - Rainy Days

As I gear up and talk to a lot of camps about trainings for this summer almost everyone I talk to has been stressed about helping staff get back to basics. There has been a turn over of staff, a lot of us lost summer 2020, and many campers and staff are out of practice doing relatively normal camp stuff.

This is the first of a few posts we are doing around normal camp stuff, around, how can we just make things at camp a little easier so everyone can be just a little less stress. - Jack

WHAT IS THUNDERDOME?

I have been to many camp conferences and heard about some great rainy day activities and some that, to be honest, don’t sound like fun. Most of the time when people talk about rainy day activities, it is in the context of what we can do during thunderstorms. At the camp where I grew up, Camp Stella Maris, and also the one I helped start, Stomping Ground, we called these times Thunderdome.

Thunderdome is different from just rainy days. Like Andy Pritikin says at Liberty Lake, rain is just liquid sunshine. We can do most of our activities in the rain. Thunderdome is when there is thunder and we have to move inside to keep everyone safe. 

BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL THUNDERDOME

I want to zoom out. The key to a successful Thunderdome isn’t just swapping an outdoor activity for an indoor one. It is looking at the program and seeing what kinds of moving pieces we have to set ourselves up for success. 

If I see that storms are in the forecast tomorrow, I think about three things before I go to sleep:

1. The weather could change. What can I do to delay having to change the program as long as possible?

2. How can I change the program to give me the most flexibility with the least possible work? 

3. What is the first “big” indoor program change we will make if needed?

I write down the answers to these three questions for the different aspects of camp so that when I am stressed tomorrow, I will have the beginnings of a plan. 

HOW DOES THUNDERDOME IMPACT DIFFERENT PARTS OF CAMP?

For the main camp program at Stomping Ground, we have five different types of programming, and when Thunderdome happens during each time, I want to have a varied approach.

1. Meals— We tend to eat most meals in the dining hall as a big group and don’t need to adjust much for Thunderdome except to potentially push up or delay traveling to the meal to avoid the worst of the storm.

2. Cabin times— We are in our cabins in the morning, after lunch, before dinner, and before bed. Cabins are great places for a relatively short Thunderdome, but they don’t have bathrooms. If we send kids to cabins, we try to have them pee first and not keep them in the cabins for more than an hour or so. 

3. Options— The bulk of a standard day is spent in free choice options. In Thunderdome, our first choice is to situate these options in one or two buildings. This can get us through the first hour of T-Dome almost every time.

4. Waterfront/Ballfield— These are all camp outdoor times where everyone is either down at the waterfront or playing on the ballfield. If we have Thunderdome during these times, they tend to be where we will make our first big program change to run an indoor activity. 

5. Evening Program— Evening programs or night games at Stomping Ground are the best part of the day for most kids. Kids look forward to them, and night games tend to be a big production. Finding ways to have awesome rainy day options is hard and important. Before totally committing to an indoor night game, we first want to see if we can plan for something that is outside and easy to set up so we can delay making the decision as long as possible. We delay making the decision because one of the worst situations is when we move the program inside and it gets sunny outside. The kids hate that. Fortress is a good example. 

THE BIG CAMP ACTIVITIES

Let’s talk about these big camp activities a little more. 

We don’t run anything too wild but always do try to give activities a little flair. They are things like...

1. Indoor carnivals

2. Casino nights

3. Skit nights 

4. This or That

5. Make the Directors Laugh

6. Talent Shows

7. Ham Jams

8. Zombie Prom 

9. Clue

They can be really fun. Some of our best programs end up being these rainy day options, but we try hard not to have them on the schedule early in a session so we can move them around. If we run a casino night when it is nice out and then we get three days of rain, we are down our best option for those three days. 

Thought from Mike O: I really like your distinction about keeping indoor-centric large camp activities for rainy days. 

THE BIGGER PICTURE

In the end, the key to Thunderdome is playing the game a little wider than just what to do when it rains. It is about expecting that Thunderdome will come, saving a few programs just for that, and staying as flexible as possible until you have to make a decision. 

An old president said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” This couldn’t be more true for rainy day programming. 

---

TRAININGS WITH JACK

I will be on the road most of May and June doing staff trainings all over the US and I would love to work with you. If you are interested shoot me an email/text and let’s make summer 2022 the best one yet!

---

I thought I was done writing this article, but then Paige asked this brilliant question.

Question from Paige: What are the guardrails around what you can and cannot run if it’s rainy and not T-Dome? 

The question is really around, what is safe and fun, both in the moment and won’t be awful after the fact? Getting really specific, we likely won’t run capture the flag on a super wet field because where we play CTF has hills and is asking for rolled ankles on slippery ground. It it is sprinkling or just wet we might run something like Clue because up until the last minute we can move it inside or keep it outside. The way we run Clue has different characters all over camp and groups of kids travel with a staff member to different characters to interrogate them and it ends with a “trial”. If Clue is indoor, typically the kids can move without having to stay with a counselors but have to stay in a designated space. 

One of the hardest decisions for us is looking at the forecast and seeing storm clouds on the horizon for 30 minutes after we start a big activity like a night game, but it is nice out for the beginning. This is can be a really challenging decision: do I risk it or play it safe? I tend to play it safe, but sometimes there is a middle ground. Back to Clue. Can we condense the boundaries of Clue to be outside but mostly around an indoor space that when the weather changes we can all move inside. Clue works great for this because moving inside can be the start of the trial, which can be dragged out with different theatrics to fill the right amount of time. 

The key again is building flexibility into the programming and have a good plan for how changes will be communicated. 

JACK SCHOTT
CO-FOUNDER CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Spark Phrases: Training Staff on Play

Last week I was talking with Emma Kaapana, the new director of YMCA Camp Lake Helena. She works for my old boss and we are trading time helping each other. I help Emma think through new aspects of her role and Diane Jackson, the marketing and fundraising director at their association mentors Ray, our director of community engagement. You can read more about that set up here. 

Camp Lake Helena is a brand new camp. YMCA Camp Seymour took over the property and is running a region Y day camp there. A huge part of Emma’s job is developing a culture and helping the staff be successful. Emma and the team are hoping to create a nice mix of camper driven play times with more conventional staff lead activities. We talked for about an hour and it got me thinking. 

I think most people that come to work at camps want to do a good job. The overwhelming majority like working with kids, like being outside, and want to make a difference in campers lives. Sure they will make mistakes, get tired, and not always live up to that, but I think they mostly want to. Where I think new staff fall short is more that they are confused than then are lazy. 

Think about it, camp is weird. When do we yell? Just before meals but not during them? And you want me to let kids play from 10-11am but then from 11am-12pm you want me, in the same place with no outside signal, to lead a game? And the game is some weird idea I hadn’t heard of a week ago? Plus all these other 18 year olds I don’t know are probably judging me? On top of that it is a long day, every day, and a long summer. How do I know as a staff member when to bring the energy and when is a good time to slow it down so I can bring it later?

It is hard. To get the most out of our staff and set them up for the most success we need to help them understand how to navigate camp. My friend Sylvia van Meerten calls this Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum or helping people understand the insider knowledge. Learn more about the Hidden Curriculum.

One way I think we do this is through language or creating spark phrases. These short phrases give us common language without having to fully explain an idea. I am sure you have them at your camps. By intentionally creating them and making sure we explain them to new folks we build culture and then give people the tools to navigate our hidden curriculum. 

Red Lining - A Spark Phrase Example

One example we stole from Camp Augusta is what they call Red Lining. At our camp, and maybe yours, we play a lot of games. Sports, gaga, capture the flag, other made up stuff, but lots of games. The thing about playing games is people have different understandings of what the point of a game is. Is it to win? Laugh? Have fun? Learn something? Do you play differently with 6 year olds than your friends? I think that can be confusing. 

At Stomping Ground, the point of playing games is for the people playing to have fun. If you are a staff member playing the game it is your job to figure out the best way to do that. Sometimes with the super athletic 13 year olds that means playing as hard as you can. Sometimes with the nervous new kids it is to chill and let them win. 

But that’s confusing and you can imagine it is pretty easy to mess that up or miss read the situation or maybe get caught up in the game and start to think the point of the game is for you to win. Lots of people get salty with people in that situation, but if you play basketball almost any other time the point is to win. So it is kind of an easy mistake to make. Anyway, we call this trying too hard to win for your sake Red Lining. If another staff member, or now even kids do it, think I am taking the winning too seriously for the situation they might say, “Yo Jack, you Red Lining?” Then I can check myself. It is a lot easier and faster than pulling someone aside and having a long conversation about competition and the point of games. 

You probably have similar Spark Phrases at your camps. By creating these and then making sure people know what they mean we are illuminating the insider knowledge of the place and helping to create an intentional culture. 

Spark Phrases and Kid Driven Play

There is a huge opportunity for Spark Phrases with camper driven play. This is what Emma and I started talking about as we dove into her opportunities at Lake Helena. One of the big problems with kid driven play time, some people call this unstructured play or free play, is that the counselors don’t know what to do. They often end up either taking over or sitting back and talking to their friends. I think many times this is a lack of understanding.

Here is our basic idea. What if we labeled different areas or times as different colors. Those colors would correspond with what we, as the supervisors, expected from staff. I imagine kids would start to know these colors as well and it would trickle down for them too. 

GREEN

Green zones are for times when it is camper driven play time. This might be free swim, fort building, the makerspace, free time, etc. During these times staff are expected to either, simply supervise, like a lifeguard at the pool, or supervise and engage. This might look like helping a group of kids build a fort while also keeping your head on a swivel supervising the whole group. The way green zones work is as the staff person leading the group you set the boundaries and expectations when you arrive with your campers then turn them loose. If you feel like things are getting out of hand you can either address the whole group, individuals, or a specific area. It is still your job to supervise during green times. 

BLUE

Blue zones are more classic staff driven activities. You are to lead the group, make sure they are engaged and supervised. In these spaces you are much more involved in each step of the process for the entire group. Examples: archery, high ropes, swim lessons. 

TEAL

These areas are a little more complicated and might change. When you are back at your cabin before bed is that a blue or green zone? A little bit of both. You probably lead the kids in getting ready for bed (blue) and then give them some time to hang out (green) before maybe doing a closing activity (blue) and going to sleep. Let’s call these teal zones, a combo of blue and green. 

I think a lot of what I just described seems super basic for people who get camp, but for new folks it is super confusing and hard to talk about. By creating shared language and illuminating the hidden curriculum around what is expected in different areas we make it easier for new staff to be successful. Maybe even more importantly we give our new supervisors the language to coach people through challenges. 

“So Jack, at free time today I noticed you just standing back and watching. You were probably focused totally on supervision, but in green zones like that it is a great time to engage with kids and keep your head on a swivel in your zone.”

“Jack, last night your kids were wileying out and didn’t seem to know what the deal with bed times. I know the teal zones can be confusing. The key there is to know when it is your turn and when it is your co’s turn to take the lead and really create a blue time before giving kids freedom to hang out before bed in a green time.”

I hope you have the best summer! If you are interested in more thoughts on the Hidden Curriculum check this out.

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum. Good for Mission. Good for Money.

There are two things every camp director talks about when it comes to camper recruitment

1. Word of mouth is the best and most effective marketing. I agree. Whether we mean face to face talking, or online discussions, people find it easier to take a risk on a camp that other people say is good. 

2. Retention is better than marketing. People say this because it is way cheaper to retain a current camper than go find a new one. I also agree with this. 

I want to talk about number 2 here, Retention. Specifically retention of first year campers. First year campers and their families are deciding if your camp is right for them. Retention for brand new campers tends to be much lower than returning campers. 

There are lots of reasons why kids might not come back to camp. They move. The camp you are offering is actually not what they want. They age out. I get that, and I really want the kids and families who love us to come back and the kids who want something else to choose a different camp. Some more thoughts on retention and growth. For this article I want to focus on the group of kids who would love camp, but for whatever reason it just didn’t click for them in that first summer. 

Sylvia wrote an awesome article about insider info at camp. She outlines that lots of kids don’t get camp because we don’t do a good enough job of on boarding them. She outlines how that creates less diverse and less inclusive environments. I agree, and it also is bad for our bottom line. 

Syl can’t stop talking about the Hidden Curriculum, and how we have this set of insider knowledge at camp that when you get it you fall in love with the place. That obviously matters a great deal for inclusion, but it also matters a great deal for budgets. The illuminating the hidden curriculum and making it easier to feel like an insider and know how to navigate the weird world of our camps makes it more likely that more kids will fall in love with what we are providing. 

Inclusion too often is painted as something great for the mission of camp, but at odds with the bottom line. That might be true in some cases, but not here. The more we can illuminate the Hidden Curriculum and let more people be comfortable more quickly in our space, the more likely it is that they will want to come back. And when they want to come back they will pay tuition without us having to spend money recruiting them. 

I certainly don’t run camp for the money…. and without money we have no camp. Let’s figure out ways to be more inclusive at camp because it is the right thing to do and let’s not apologize for it or tip toe around it with the budget folks because in this case money and mission are in alignment not at odds. 

Let's dig into this more

Let’s look at the math.

Say we have 1000 campers and 10% of them are new - so we have 100 new campers. Let’s say our retention for new campers is 40%. We have 100 new campers with a 40% retention rate. So next year we will only have 40 of these campers back. It costs $829 to come to camp for a week. That is our rate. Those 100 new campers that turned into 40 returners is worth ~$33,000 in the second year. What if we could raise our retention rate by 5%? ~$37,000 in year two. 10% ~$41,000. If we can get 10 more kids from that 100 that already opted to come to camp to come back we make an extra $8k. If we can get them all back we would make about $50k. Now that is unrealistic, but the math is very clear. 

Better retention is good for the bottom line and most of us have the worst retention with our first time campers. We can make the biggest impact on our bottom line by increasing retention of our first time campers, which means we need to do a great job of introducing them to our camp culture, our traditions, and our hidden curriculum so they can feel like an insider as quickly as possible. 

Illuminating the Hidden Curriculum. Good for Mission. Good for Money.

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COMSTOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Inclusion at Summer Camp - The Hidden Curriculum

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. 

1. Begin to figure out ways to illuminate the hidden curriculum in ways that are digestible for all our campers and staff. 

2. 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. 

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

Networking Sounds Yucking But I Love Friends

Networking. LinkedIn. Working the Room. Personal Brand. 

I find these words to be gross. 

Building Relationships. Staying Connected. Meeting New People. Being Yourself. 

On the other hand this second set I love. 

Are they different? A little bit, maybe. For millennials, like me, we grew up in a time of sleazy internet trolls using the first list to abuse the system and get themselves ahead. The internet gave us the tools to create an internet version of ourselves and a real version of ourselves if we wanted to. It created distrust and dislike for the idea of networking. 

The reality is networking and relationship building is the best way for all of us to not only advance our careers and make more impact with kids but also increase the impact and effectiveness of our camps. 

After graduating from college, I got lucky. Laura Kriegel, my partner, and I decided to #vanlife and embark on a road trip. #vanlife for us was a 2000 Honda Civic, glamorous. What we thought would be 3 months turned into 2 years of visiting over 200 camps in 47 states. You can see more about our trip here, Camping Coast to Coast. We thought we were out learning about camps and how they worked. We were, but the best thing we were doing was an accident. We were building a network and a reputation as hard-working curious young people. 

What is Directors’ Camp?

I am beyond lucky. We stumbled into a huge network of camp people that I call all the time for help, advice, and thoughts on my wild ideas. If I had known we were “networking” when we left I probably would have hated the idea and done something else, but making friends with other passionate camp people? Count me in. 

If you are like me, you have a hard time with the idea of selling things, networking or coming off as disingenuous. I feel that. Now, I want to push you to change your mindset a little and reframe networking as relationship building and friendship making. That is what it can be if you stay true to who you are and are real with people. You don’t have to pretend to be someone you aren’t. In fact, pretending to be someone you aren’t is a terrible plan for long term networking. 

4 Ideas for Friendship Making in the Camp World

1. Directors’ Camp or The Summer Camp Society 

   I am biased here because I help facilitate these, but I help facilitate these because I believe in them. These are two camp “conferences” designed to put relationship building at the core. You will certainly leave with new ideas and tangible takeaways, but more importantly, you will leave with new connections and people you can call. 

   Directors’ Camp brings in some of the best camp consultants in the world. I tricked them into letting me come too... and you get to know them on a personal level while also connecting with like minded camp directors from across the US and Canada. This year it is in Michigan in September hosted by Scott Arizala, Steve Maguire, Sarah Kurtz McKinnon, Chris Thurber, and me. It tends to be a little less silly than The Summer Camp Society and brings in the big names like Steve, Chris, and Scott. Check it out here. Directors’ Camp. 

   The Summer Camp Society Semester - 4 years ago Kurtz and I got together to start The Summer Camp Society with the express goal of connecting young-ish camp people and creating a community. It was a roll of the dice and we weren’t sure how it would work. Today more than 70 people have joined us for our online and in-person semester and hundreds more for our online-only events. The Summer Camp Society Retreat is one of the highlights of my year. I have met many of my best friends in camp here. Learn more here. TSCS Semester. 

2. Host a Monthly Meet-Up

   What if once a month you gathered online to chat about some aspect of camp. Anyone can come or make it invite-only, but no presentations just discussion on something you are working on. Even better, are there enough people near you to have a beer and talk camp at a bar? I promise these relationships will easily pay for the time.

3. Host a Dinner at a Conference

   Are you headed to tristate, national, or a regional conference? Organize a dinner.

4. Visit Other Camps 

   I am a one-trick pony. This is how I started my career and I stand by it as the easiest way to build a network. Send out 20 cold emails and visit the closest 5 camps to you. Are you going on vacation next year? Add a day to visit a camp nearby. Camp people love bragging about their camps and love when people want to listen. 

Don’t network, make friends. Prioritize this as your professional development or the professional development of your new staff. It will pay off 100x what you put in. 

Directors’ Camp is a clear example of great networking and collaboration. Join us.

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COMSTOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

7 Types of All Camp Games You Can Run This Summer

WHY ALL CAMP GAMES?

So much of what we do at summer camp is around making memories. Steve Baskin, Director/Owner at Camp Champions, talks about the role of camp to be to give kids an opportunity to build their narrative. That so much of how we interact with the world is based on the narrative we play in our head. You might call this self-talk or your world view, but this personal narrative is built from our memories.

MEMORIES

The thing about memories is that they aren’t all created equal and we don’t remember experiences equally. Chip and Dan Heath describe this effect as the Power of Moments. We remember moments that are different. They call this framework EPIC. Moments of… Elevation, Pride, Insite, and Connection. 

At camp our job is to create opportunities for kids to have EPIC moments that might create memories and give them the power to create positive personal narratives for when they leave. 

These happen in large and small moments at camp, but a huge opportunity we have to create these is through all camp games. Think about it, where else can you get 50-200 maybe 500 adults and kids pretending and playing together. We have this enormous chance to create moments that kids will remember and awesome coaches, in our staff, to help frame these moments for kids to help them create positive self-talk. We will have to come back to how to coach staff around recognizing and reacting to potential EPIC moments and the power they have in those moments, but right now I want to talk about all camp games. 

BACK TO ALL CAMP GAMES

At Stomping Ground, the camp I helped found, we run different night games every night of the summer, but they are mostly variants on a few different archetypes. They are all made up specifically for our camp, but many of the basics or mechanics have been borrowed. Huge shout out to Camp Augusta for many inspirational ideas. 

Game Archetypes 

We break games down in categories. Campers vs Campers or Collaborative, Runaround or Party, World Building or Simple, Station Games, and Performance. Lots of games overlap and borrow from each different type, but these are the basics. Once we have an archetype we pick a theme or story, add some different mechanics, and build the hype. Today I want to look at the different archetypes and link to some examples. 

Campers vs Campers 

Simply who wins? Are the campers competing against each other? For me, the upside of campers competing with each other is that there is more of a mystery about who will win and there are more interactions that happen because we have more people on each team. We tend to only play these types of games with at least 3 teams. You can read more about how we split up teams here. 

Collaborative

In these, the campers are all on one side with counselors and other staff playing the “bad guys” or opposing side. Our style is to have staff on the campers’ side as well as playing the villains for supervision purposes and because the game is more fun. If you are a board game person, think campers vs campers is like Catan and collaborative is like Pandemic. 

Runaround

In almost all our games there is a ton of running around, but when we call them run around games we really are talking about if you can run around by yourself or if you have to stay with a group. For what we call run around games, as a camper, you can run around and interact with whatever is available by yourself in a designated area. Back to Capture the Flag. CTF is a run around game because we set boundaries and supervise within those boundaries but kids don’t have to stay as a group. 

Party Games

The other side of the runaround coin are party games. In a party game, campers stay with a specific group and a staff member as they travel around camp. These can be cabin groups or other groups, but for us they allow us to travel over wider areas of camp and still maintain good supervision.

World Building

These are the least defined types of games we play and tend to be the most complicated. Below is a write up for a game called Runes that we would call a world building game. For us they tend to have some kind of town, usually some currency and a shop keeper, and monsters. Most of the time campers are free to move around like a run around game. They tend to also be able to level up in some way, maybe earn weapons or special powers. These games often are the favorite for kids that love more complicated video games, board games, or things like Magic the Gathering. 

Station Games

For us, station games are anything where the little stations are the cornerstone of the activity. The most common station games are things like carnivals or casino nights, but rotationals where you move as a group to specific games or activities would also fit here. Here is a list of stations we brainstormed during last years All Camp Games Workshop.

Here are some carnival ideas from Nelson.

Performance

These are things like camp fires, skit nights, dance shows, plays, talent shows, etc. The idea is that the majority of camp is watching a small group of people do a performance. For the first couple years of Stomping Ground we did not run many of these because we didn’t think kids liked sitting still. On the third day of thunderstorms we broke and ran a talent show with the option for kids to go play games or indoor dodgeball. Almost all the kids stayed for the talent show and now we run more performances. You can see some of my thoughts about opening campfires, a performance. here. 

Below are some links to the write ups we use at Stomping Ground for these different games. Please feel free to use or adapt them for your camps. I love digging into these types of games and helping people bring their ideas to reality. 

GAMES

Harry Potter 3 Way Capture the Flag - Run Around - Campers vs Campers
Zombies - Apocalypse - Run Around - Collaborative
Fortress - Party - Campers vs Campers
Runes - Hybrid (World Building) - Collaborative

Some more games in the FREE STUFF SECTION of this site. 

---

WANT A ONe-hour crash course in planning games?

Our members have access to a recording of an All-Camp Activities Bootcamp with Jack Schott & Nelson Strickland.

---

JACK SCHOTT

CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM

Jack's Kookie Take on Professional Development

This is an adapted email I sent to our team at Stomping Ground as we build a professional development plan for our small team. For context, Stomping Ground is a sleepaway camp Laura and I founded in 2015 with 4 of us on the year round team and no history of a concrete professional development plan. In 2019 we added two year round employees, both recent college grads that had worked with us at camp.  

AN EMAIL TO OUR TEAM

Pictured above

Thinking about professional development today. Here is an article I found after I googled professional development. 

First, I don't think I have ever really thought about how to run Stomping Ground as a person in charge of handling other people’s professional development. I love learning things in a very Jack way and am constantly listening to podcasts, trying to make new things, and do things that seem stupid to other people. 

I am a huge believer in talking to other people and learning from random conversations because I think a huge part of learning a job or an industry is about the language people use. Not for nothing, this is why Kurtz and I started The Summer Camp Society a few years ago. With the idea that building community across camps is the single best professional development most of us can do. (Kurtz, did you see that? Not even 4 paragraphs in already shameless and honestly plugging The Summer Camp society)

LAURA & JACK’S PAST PD

With all that in mind, Laura and I have not really paid for classic professional development in the past, but I think we have been very professional development focused. First we went out and met a million camps. Then we started speaking about camps. We read and listen to a lot of books. The last one I just finished was all about negotiation techniques, now I am listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s new book “Talking to Strangers”. I go back and forth from listening to books for a few months and then not and just doing podcasts. 

Laura and I on the road in 2012…

I subscribe to a bunch of not for profit and marketing facebook groups just to read what other people are thinking about. I signed up for the free trial to Fizzle, a website for helping entrepreneurs bootstrap businesses, and watched all their videos and then canceled, probably 10 times.

I spend a decent amount of time every day reading articles that sometimes are super related to camp and sometimes aren’t. Watch a lot of youtube videos about starting businesses or making videos or whatever I am into at the time. 

I do The Summer Camp Society to make sure I am talking with camp directors about what they are doing and sharing ideas. (Kurtz! AGAIN! I am getting good at this.)

We have also been to 1,000 camp conferences.

I also talk to Kurtz and Syl almost every day and hear about their projects so I can steal more of their ideas. As I write this I am realizing the three ways I love learning are

What is The Summer Camp Society?

1. Consuming fire hoses of information mostly through audio and video

2. Trying to do things I don’t know how to do and scrambling to figure them out

3. Talking with people doing cool stuff

Laura is in grad school right now, at Columbia for Social Work. By far our biggest commitment to traditional professional development to date. She can describe more what that is like, but to quickly summarize, it is a very different take on professional development than I described and a much more tried and true method. 

Oh! the other thing I think that fits into my professional development is always having to publish something. A video, a blog post, whatever. 

Laura right now is doing a lot of traditional professional development, but she also taught herself illustrator, how to be a boss, everything she knows about restorative justice. I guess a lot of the restorative justice stuff was half and half. She went to a bunch of random PIRI things and other trainings. 

WHERE ARE WE GOING?

Anyway, I wrote that whole thing out describing the way Laura and I have learned in the past to say that there is no right way to do this, but I find it both very important and very interesting to learn new things, both tangible, web design, video editing, etc and intangible, what are other people doing for capital campaigns, marketing from a why perspective and more.

What I want to do is start the conversation about how do we, as Stomping Ground, and then as individuals, want to think about professional development?

This is not an email to say you aren’t learning, but an email to say I think there are very few things we all can’t do and can’t learn together so let’s make sure we are all thinking and talking about that. 

What are you hoping to learn? What kinds of things have you learned lately? How do you like to learn? How are we all growing our professional and personal networks? What can we all do to do more of that? What are you interested in? 

These are all big questions that all have a weird pressure of “What do you want to be doing in 10 years?” Or that’s what it can seem like. But I want to take the pressure off and say let’s learn some cool stuff together. 

LEADING LEARNERS

The Fizzle guys (mentioned above) have this idea of being a Leading Learner, where they say go learn shit and as you go write about it, make videos, a podcast, whatever but don’t be afraid of not being an expert admit that and then talk about the process of learning. Gary Vee calls this document don’t create or basically just show people what you are doing online. This is definitely the attitude we have taken as a camp and has been my style for this, as you all know, but not exactly Laura’s style. 

ANY WAY! My long ass writing is to say let’s start the conversation of what kinds of things everyone is interested in and then figure out how we all want to learn new things and how all this learning can be good for camp and each other. 

A lot of places just put together a budget and say spend it and just get each thing approved. I am happy to find money to pay for things like conferences or online classes if when we find cool stuff, but I want to start by figuring out what we want first and then work backward from there. 

Just a few things I have thought about signing up or going to as professional development but haven’t yet.

https://nonprofitleadershiplab.com/
https://thebootstrappersworkshop.com/
https://www.contentmarketingworld.com/
https://camplabs.org/
https://www.sxsw.com/
https://burningman.org/

OK THAT’S ENOUGH. I would love to hear what you all are thinking about this. LOVE YOU ALL!
Jack

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

What Do You Do The Rest Of The Year? - Staff Narrative & Social Pressure

“What do you do the rest of the year?” Perfectly well intentioned people always ask.

Go F$%K yourself. 

SORRY! That isn’t what I meant. I meant to say the canned answer I always give. “The big thing is recruiting campers and staff. It is kind of like planning a wedding and a birthday party for 200 people that don’t know each other.” 

No, what I meant to say is go take a hike. What do I do the rest of the year? What do you do the rest of the year you piece of sh!t!? NO NO NO NO NO. I never get frustrated.

Ok, I get a little frustrated and need my The Summer Camp Society people to pick me up when I am down. Kurtz would kick my butt if I didn’t get a quick plug in for the best community of camp people talking about big ideas and sharing specific tactics. You really should think about joining us.

Apply Now

Friendship Bracelets and Capture the Flag

One of the hardest parts about running camp has nothing to do with running camp. It is all about how other people look at us. How many people have called you a camp counselor in the last year? How does it feel when people just assume all you do is play capture the flag and make friendship bracelets all year? I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW TO MAKE A FRIENDSHIP BRACELET! 

Or almost worse when you tell a quick story about something mildly serious, like working with the health department or running payroll and your neighbor is shocked that “Wow, I never realized how much goes into running camp.” YA! OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE AN ACCOUNTANT BUT I JUST GIVE YOU THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT!

Ok ok ok ok. That’s enough Jack. I of course logically know that it isn’t a big deal and that it is my job to change the narrative of the people in my community to understand what camp is or to decide I don’t care what they think. 

Who Are We Losing?

But I wonder how many great camp directors have left the camp world because they didn’t feel like constantly answering that question. “What do you do the rest of the year?” Or how many potential great camp directors go become teachers, nurses, or lawyers because they don’t think camp is valued in their community. 

In my personal community we are slowly changing the mindset of those around us by inviting them to more events, building content, and in general, just trying to bring them a little closer to what we do. At the same time, we are looking at expanding our offerings and better telling the story of our impact. I think that is all well and good. It is good for Stomping Ground and probably more than that, it just makes me feel better, but that isn’t what I want to talk about today. 

What about our seasonal staff?

I wrote an article last year about 5 reasons staff work at camp and dig into why staff choose camp over the million other options. It is a perfectly good article, but I missed something. I missed that the reason staff work at camp is because the narrative they can tell themselves and the people they care about. 

We have an awesome staff member who wants to be a nurse. Let’s call her Jess. She just graduated undergrad with a different degree and will be starting nursing school this fall. She works in the hospital, was on our medical team, and makes enough money to support herself. Her parents are plenty well off, she has great connections, is smart, hardworking, and compassionate. She loves camp and wants to return next summer. I don’t think she will. 

I don’t think she will because her parents think camp is just fun. They don’t see her staying up late taking care of crying campers or keeping track of injuries and medication. The narrative Jess hears everyday from the people that care the most about her is that camp is fun, but mostly a waste of time. 

Rugby Boys Don’t Care About Impact Stories

I played rugby in college. I was the captain of the team, basically all my friends were rugby players. I skipped a lot of class to work on schemes to make us better or plan parties… I had tons of social capital with the rugby team. I proudly wore my camp shirts and was viciously attacked for working camp. For me I didn’t care. I told stories of camp, but none of them ever included impact with kids. The people closest to me in college thought camp was a waste of time and that I was a weirdo for wanting to be there. They thought the funny stories that happened during off time were cool or the stories of camp staff finding summer partners might be fun. I read the audience and quickly realized the narrative of camp that I had around impact and kids was not worth telling with gruff college boys. I don’t think I did camp huge favors with the stories I told, but I wouldn’t have done any good talking about comforting crying homesick campers or the change I saw in the kids I worked with.

Social Pressure

Our staff, like us, face tons of social pressure to choose not to work at camp. Our job is to help them build a narrative about their experience for when they go back home. This, like self care, won’t be one size fits all and this like so many things at camp isn’t just about what is said or what is done but is a combination of all things camp.

I am just now working through how this works at Stomping Ground and we are far from perfect. For us it has started with some changes actual changes in the job like paying people more and giving staff more time off. That is a start and is important, but I think there is a lot more we can do around the edges. 

Some ideas I have for helping the narrative our staff tell their community.

1. Meet the Parents. I used to be a strict I talk to the staff not their parents guy. Now, I want to meet and spend time with as many staff parents as possible. If they love me the chances that they will support their child returning as a staff member are through the roof. Plus, maybe they will become donors or at the very least advocates in their communities.

2. Meet the Friends. We talk about staff recruiting and using current staff to recruit their friends. I love this method by the way, but I think it doubles as a retention tool. Klee and I spent two weeks on the road last year meeting staff at their colleges and attempting to recruit their friends. Recruiting their friends had mixed results, but now, many of their friends who didn’t work at camp still love camp and support the idea of camp because they met a person.

3. Get Staff Jobs. Real ones. ACA is working on Project Real Job to make camp look more legit. I am in. One of our best narrative changers for current staff is to be able to point to former staff that we have helped get what our staff call “Big Girl, or boy, Jobs” with benefits. 

We could brainstorm a million ways to help our staff change the narrative of camp. The goal for me this year is to connect with more people in my current staff community and focus on trying to really understand what are the social pressures our staff are facing from the people they care about. From their we will develop plans and ideas for how to mitigate those pressures or change our staff structure. 

One of my favorite parts of The Summer Camp Society is getting to share results and ideas like this with a small community of people that it. Every week in The Summer Camp Society we share ideas about what is working at camp across North America in topics like Staff Recruiting, Program Development, Marketing, Mental Health, and so much more. Do you want a new group of badass camp director friends? Join us?

JACK SCHOTT
DIRECTOR CAMP STOMPING GROUND
CO-FOUNDER THE SUMMER CAMP SOCIETY
JACK@THESUMMERCAMPSOCIETY.COM
STOMPING GROUND ORIGIN STORY

25 Ways to Make More Impact this Summer

Photo by Roderick Cooney, www.thecampphotographer.com

By Jack Schott

Simple tips for counselors to make your job a little easier and make sure the kids have an even better time this summer. When you are at your best the campers are having a great time, learning, connecting, and ready to take on the world. You are the unfair advantage summer camp has to make more impact this summer.

1)  USE KIDS’ NAMES 3 TIMES

2)  HAVE A CATCH PHRASE OR REPEATING JOKE

3)  TELL KIDS YOUR ROLE

4)  GET ON THEIR LEVEL

5)  HAVE A GOOODIE BAG

6)  SMILE AND BOUNCE

7)  TELL KIDS WHERE YOU LEARNED THINGS

8)  5 FINGERS (STAY POSITIVE, DON’T POINT FINGERS, RESPECT, COMMITMENT, DON’T FORGET THE LITTLE GUY)

9)  GO FOR A WALK TO DE-ESCALATE CONFLICT

10)  PULL OUT YOUR BALLOON

11)  TALK WITH THE SUN AT CAMPERS’ BACKS

12)  1 ON 1 EVERY DAY

13)  ANYTHING CAN BE AWESOME

14)  HAVE A PLAN FOR WHEN KIDS ARRIVE

15)  GIVE KIDS THE SCHEDULE

16)  ASK CAMPERS FOR HELP

17)  TAKE OFF YOUR SUNGLASSES

18)  EVERYONE HAS A THING

19)  PICTIONARY TELEPHONE

20) HAVE A PLAN FOR DOWN TIME

21) MAKE SURE YOU KNOW ONE GO TO SONG - OH A MILKSHAKE

22) AND SKIT -DIRECTORS SKIT

23) AND NO PROP GAME -YEE HAW

24)AND NEVER TELL -GREEN GLASS DOOR

25) ALWAYS HAVE A WATCH AND A WATER BOTTLE

DOWNLOAD THIS in a FLYER FORMAT to give to your staff!