Important Lessons

BurningVegan on Tumblr wrote this:

The Five Most Important Things I Learned From Being a Camp Counselor

1. 1.    Patience is not a virtue, it is a skill that should be exercised always, especially when one least feels like it.
2. 2.    Treating people differently is not the same as treating them unequally.  To treat two different people in identical manners is insulting to who they are as people.
3. 3.    Sometimes, it’s you.  Sometimes, it’s them.  Usually, it’s a little bit of both.
4. 4.    There is no better feeling in the world than a little girl telling you you’re like their second mom or a big sister.
5. 5.    To paraphrase Daria: “There is no aspect, no facet, no moment of life that can’t be improved with ice cream.”

This counselor knows exactly what she’s talking about. 

I agree with everything she has to say, and I like her list so much that I fully intend on sharing this with the staff next summer.  While many veteran counselors know a lot of this already, new staff members are often left wondering if they are doing things right and what they can do to be better.

The Seven Absolutes of Camp Counseling

     I made this handy graphic at the beginning of summer to post in my camp’s staff house. It’s all stuff we cover in staff training but anyone who has worked at camp can tell you that counselors are human too.  We sometimes forget the really important stuff come week seven, when we are so tired, so burned out on songs and games, and so easily pushed to behacing just like our seven year old campers.  It happens. 

    

    That’s why it’s SO important for administrative staff to help their unit staff. Boost morale. Make sure they’re getting breaks. Make sure they are getting water! As them if they are feeling OK.  It’s the small stuff and we’ll talk about this more in-depth soon.

    So, I posted this in the staff house as a reminder. This is, however, just the brief version.  These “absolutes” are from a much longer article from the ACA’s Camping Magazine.  While I find some of them aren’t entirely “absolute,” they should still be followed 90% of the time. 

Follow the jump for the full article, then tell me what YOU think counselors must ALWAYS remember! Are these the same as your list? What would you change?

What’s your camp name?

Or “what I’ll be telling the help desk at the store to call over the loudspeaker.”

When I tell people I work for the Girl Scouts, or when a friend of mine calls me Stormy, I often get asked why are nicknames necessary? Why have nick names at camp? Honestly, my initial thought is along the lines of "Why not? Wouldn't you like to be called something else for three months out of the year? Isn't name calling supposed to be positive?"
That's not the real answer.

When Girl Scouting was founded in the US by Juliette Low in the early 1900's, it was inappropriate for young girls to call their adult leaders by their first names, but it was also agreed that Girl Scouts was not such a formal environment that girls should refer to their leaders and other trusted adults by their surnames ("Ms. Low"). The solution to the problem was the start of the Girl Scout tradition of "camp names" or nicknames to be used in place of real names. Our own founder, Juliette Low was known to most as "Daisy" (hence the naming of our youngest age group, the Daisy Girl Scouts). 

A camp name is a name that describes you in some way. It could be an animal or insect you relate to, a favorite food, or plant, or any sort of name that you connect with. Once you choose a camp name you must always keep it. The only way you can change it is if you change camps, and even then, it's usually not something you would want to do unless you have to. You're name could be "dolphin" or "flipper" because you love to swim and play in the water. Or it could be "Pokey", because that was your favorite pet turtle's name when you were a kid. My name is "Stormy" because she was my favourite character in the TV show Rainbow Brite, because I like summer storms a lot (unless of course it makes the campers cry).
 

Camp names serve all kinds of purpose in the camp environment. They clear up confusion when you have staff who have the same name (Any counselor named Ashley or Sarah will agree). Camp names give the counselor some anonymity outside of the camp environment. Camp names are easier for campers to remember, and give the campers a way to relate to you. As you go on throughout life, and as people find out you worked at a Girl Scout camp, they will likely ask you your camp name. They are a way for Girl Scouts to relate to one another as sisters. Having a camp name is a rite of passage for CIT's (Counselors in Training), and counselors who are taking pride in working at camp for the first time.

When I went to camp we didn't get to know the counselors names unless we were good, or had been there for years, or had the decency to write to them when they were at camp or during the school year. Now it’s often the norm to tell campers your camp name at the end of the week (I personally hate this, though I understand the reasons why).

Other nicknames I have considered included "Shamrock," but we already had a Clover at my first camp; "Narrin" but it was halfway through the summer before I thought of that one; and "Godzilla." And even though I have switched camps before and can technically change it my mom made this point to me: “Stormy is now your professional reputation. Your camp directors know you as Stormy, when they give a reference it’s for Stormy. Changing your name is changing who you are.”

Funny enough, the first girl scout camp counselors I had at Narrin had us pick camp names as well. I'm sure they got in trouble for it (you must know your campers real names, in case of emergencies), but my first camp name, at age 10, was Kirby. Kirby was my dog, and she was named after the vacuum cleaner. 

About Me.

“HEY! MY NAME IS STORMY, I’M FROM DETROIT, MICHIGAN AND I’LL BE YOUR PROGRAM DIRECTOR THIS SUMMER!”

And thus was my introduction to campers for summer 2011. My name is Stormy, and for better or worse I will be your author here at On the Loose. I am, or at least I try to be, a “camp professional.” In reality, I’m more of a professional camper.

Previous to working for the Girl Scouts at various camps I worked for a co-ed teen leadership camp sponsored by M.A.D.D. For the Girl Scouts I have worked for three different camps in three different councils, and volunteered at a few others. This summer I’m hoping to make it four and four, but we’ll see what happens.

My first summer with the Girl Scouts actually paying me to camp and not the other way around, I was the CIT leader and leadership director. The camp was very small, my CIT’s were few, You could count the unit staff on your hands, and it turned out to be the last summer the camp would host resident camps.  It was, nonetheless, an amazing experience.

The next two years I spent my summers at camp as a Nature Specialist and camp photographer, as well as an all-around fill in for the ad-staff. I absolutely love my experiences there. I attended my first ACA conference, was certified in Project Learning Tree, and grew as a staff member exponentially. I absolutely adore teaching ecology and nature and other sciences at camp with experiments, studies, and games. Night hikes are my favourite camp activity to lead to this day.

This last summer I moved south and worked in an unbearably hot climate, and yet still never got a proper tan. What gives? I was a Program Director, which was my first “official” job involving the supervision of other staff members. I also was the creative force behind campfires and all-camp activities. I became a logistical mastermind at a GS camp that usually hosted around 200 campers and around 50 staff members. Ever try to plan a game to be played fairly on 400 acres of land while evenly dividing 200 girls and 40ish staff, planning around staff breaks, time constraints, and when the Brownies have to go to bed or they will be cranky? I have. It was both thrilling and aggravating. (Ever plan that game and then get thunderstormed out, thus ruining an afternoon of work? Yeah.)

My goals for this blog are to share programming ideas, games, and staff information. I hope it will not only b a blog for others to enjoy, but also be a small bit of my own personal summer staff handbook. I want to discuss issues that affect the camping community, the business side of camps, and also share ideas for ways to keep camp fun and thrilling for campers in a “technology age.”

Once upon a Time there was a little girl. 

She was the youngest, and she liked to explore.  She spent her days outside and would have spent her nights there too if her mother didn’t call her home.  She climbed trees, she hunted bugs, and she had a found bone collection that her grandmother found both interesting and disturbing. 

     She grew older, but her passion for the out-of-doors never ceased.  Her mom enrolled her in the Girl Scouts, and when she and her fellow troop members were finally old enough to go camping, they did.
     The little girl was in her element. They slept in cabins, they made food over the campfire, they went on Snipe hunts that both excited and terrified her. She wanted more.
     When the troop decided to go to resident camp together, without the supervision of parents and troop leaders, she was first to sign up. Her counselors were the coolest people on earth, and she wanted to be just like them. The campers stayed up late, sang ridiculous songs, and made new friends.

           Every summer after that the little girl would register for as many weeks as her parents would allow. She stopped singing up to go with her troop members and instead chose the mystery of being placed in a cabin with three other girls she’d never met before.  She made lifelong friends this way – friends who will tell ghost stories with you, make up songs with you, get into trouble with you, and who will still be there over a decade after those summers end.

     From the first week there she wanted to be a camp counselor.  The cool kids.  They all seemed so old and wise and still fun. They came from foreign countries, they played in the marching band, and they had fun colored hair.  Plus, they had camp names.  The little girl wanted so badly for a camp name that from that first summer onward, she was choosing a name for herself from a long, rolling list of ideas and interests. 

         The winter before she would have had a chance at finally getting a camp name and becoming a Counselor-in-Training, the Girl Scout council that owned her cherished camp closed it down and sold the property for houses.

     The girl, who was not so little anymore, was devastated. That same winter her school offered aptitude tests which gave you ideas of what you might like to be when you grew up.  She scored high as a veterinarian, and a park ranger, and she seriously believes to this day that her heartbreak of losing her camp was why.
     She attended other camps. Lots of them. She never gave up her summer tradition, but it was never the same. Instead of being a CIT she became a youth staff at a co-ed leadership camp. She didn’t even consider working at a Girl Scout camp again until she was 21. She didn’t think she could find that “home away from home” ever again. She was, of course, only partially correct.

The magic of your first love is the same as the magic of your first camp; there will of course be more, but there’s always something special about that one.

     This blog is about camp. It is dedicated to my first camp, and the memories it gave to girls for sixty years. It is written for camp staff and campers of all ages, to entertain, the help, to inform, and to get excited about something we hold in common – the magic of camp. I hope you will enjoy it.