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by Bob Ditter
From mid May until late July this summer I spent
forty-three days in a camp somewhere in one of
ten states in the United States. I boarded thirty-three
airplanes, took six ferries, and drove over four
thousand miles to be able to speak with paid
and volunteer counselors, key staff members,
directors, campers, and parents. I'd like
to share a sampling of some of those experiences
in this month's column.
Junior Counselors
We
all know that the transition from camper to staff
is a rough one. It seems that no matter how much
you tell your junior counselors (JCs) that being
a counselor is hard work involving personal sacrifice,
they always seem like they've been hit
by a truck called "reality" once
camp begins. Given their deep personal love of
camp and their potential for great camp spirit,
it's worth the effort to cultivate these
young people and help them develop into mature
staff. Here are a few things I've learned
about working more successfully with JCs that
might help in that process:
- The best people
to talk to JCs about their role as counselors
and the transition they are about to make are
successful, strong performing members of your
staff who were themselves former campers and
who have lived through the very transition
the JCs are now facing. Not only do they have
the most credibility with JCs of anyone on
your staff, they know first hand just what
the challenges of making the transition from
camper to staff really are. They can offer
advice that is more practical and more inline
with what JCs will actually experience, and
the chances that JCs might actually listen
are greater when delivered by people with whom
they can easily identify.
- Junior counselors
experience a myriad of difficult feelings when
they graduate from their camper careers and
advance into the ranks of staff. Some of these
include the following: a) In one quick summer
they go from high status as the oldest campers
to low man on the staff totem pole! This means
they go from being the most celebrated, most
visible group on campus to the least.b) They
have to give up hanging out together as a group
after having spent years developing an extraordinary
closeness with one another. The truth is that
many JCs come back to camp for their friendships
more than anything else.c) Younger counselors
are easily frustrated when campers don't listen to them, and they
insist all the while that they "were never
like these rude kids" when they were campers!d)
They don't understand why their spirit
and love of camp isn't enough to get them
high marks as counselors. JCs need a chance to
talk about these feelings and have them validated
by senior staff members who care about their
growth and well-being.
- Junior counselors,
I have discovered, often have a concept of
what it means to "work" with campers that
is very different from their senior counterparts.
Given that they are closer in age to campers
than most other staff, many JCs identify more
immediately with campers and are more tuned-in
to their emotional and social struggles — sometimes
too much so. Talking with campers about these
social and emotional needs is what many JCs call "work." While
they are often very good at connecting with campers,
they often minimize the more physical tasks of
being a counselor: like clean-up, which still
needs to be organized; or laundry, which needs
to be collected or distributed; the sunscreen
that still needs to be put on; the tables that
still need to be cleared; and the campers that
need to get to activities on time. "We
talk with the kids more than anyone and we understand
them better, but we still get yelled at for not
doing our jobs!" Sound familiar?
- Junior
counselors need a compassionate, mature senior
staff member to mentor and guide them through
their first summer. This, of course, is only
important if you want a program that actually
develops increasingly skilled and capable counselors.
This person — one whom the JCs respect
and admire — should be in touch with JCs
before they even come to camp (a separate camp "user
page" for junior counselors on MySpace.com
or Facebook.com dedicated to this very purpose
is an ideal way to make and maintain this contact).
This mentor should meet with them throughout
orientation to set up expectations, facilitate
a meeting with former campers-turned-counselors
(see point #1), then follow up with regularly
scheduled, summer-long meetings to talk about
kids and the adjustment they are all making in
their new role at camp. This well-respected senior
player will need to validate all the losses and
changes JCs legitimately experience (see point
#2) while helping them develop ways to cope with
the demands of their new role.
- When it comes
to JCs, I have found that most camps confuse
post-session evaluations with coaching. Both
are forms of feedback, but giving feedback
to anyone after their job is over doesn't allow them
to benefit from that feedback while they still
can make use of it. JCs more than others on your
staff need more immediate and specific feedback
about how they are doing in terms of their work
ethic (being on time, being properly prepared,
sharing responsibilities, pitching in, being
where they are supposed to be); camper care (making
sure campers are fitting in and making friends,
attending to homesick kids, making sure their
self-care needs are met); and following camp
rules (making curfew, etc.).
- A major skill
for JCs to learn is how to take critical feedback
well. Learning how to accept and integrate
thoughtful feedback into one's performance
is a life skill. I find it is best to discuss
the issue of receiving feedback with all the
JCs in a group setting. In that discussion
it is important to talk about how to keep things
in perspective, how not to take things personally,
and how to make use of the feedback one gets
to make positive changes in one's performance. Learning
to truly hear and evaluate feedback is a significant
part of what JCs should learn in their first
year as counselors as it is crucial to further
developing into a better counselor.
Many camps
have a junior counselor program without giving
much thought to managing it well. Learning to
"ratchet up" your program with innovative ideas
will help you tap into the spirit and special
energy of your JCs while helping them grow into
more skilled staff members.
Poor Loser Camper
"Jason"
is a nine-year-old camper most of us have probably
met at some time in our careers. An avid competitor,
Jason is a small wiry boy who loves to play games
like basketball, ga-ga, and dodge ball. You could
say Jason really throws himself into the game — sometimes
literally! While Jason is a strong competitor,
he gets very upset when a point or play doesn't
go his way or when a team mate doesn't
perform the way he thinks they should. When this
happens, Jason has been known to push, swear
at, or even hit his opponent — or his team
mate — often getting himself ejected from
the game as a result.
Most camp professionals
would probably suspend Jason from the activity
and explain the potential consequences of his
behavior. They might even have a "strike
one, strike two, strike three" set of escalating
consequences for Jason's behavior. "Strike
one" might be, for example, you sit out
the rest of the game. "Strike two" might
be getting banned from that game for the rest
of the week or camp session. "Strike three" might
be having to call his parents or even go home,
depending on how egregious Jason's behavior
is. Jason might even be remorseful and promise
never to do it again, only to get caught up in
the heat of the game and lose his temper once
again.
So what do you do if the specter of these
consequences — well-intentioned and reasonable
as they are — don't make a bit of
difference in Jason's behavior? What if
this escalating set of consequences doesn't
result in any learning on his part?
Sit Jason
down and explain that you want to help him stay
in the game and you need his help to do it. Tell
him you are going to give him a wristband, like
the "Livestrong©" wristbands
many campers and staff wear these days, but one
with a special meaning. This wristband will be
his bright reminder to stop and count to ten
before he gets angry in a game. Tell him that
before each game you will give him the wristband
to put on and that you will also put one on that
is identical to his. When you give him that wristband,
you will give him a little pep talk and tell
him that if he gets upset, he should come to
you for help in keeping his temper. You can then
call "time outs" if you think Jason
might need to calm down, and now Jason can feel
like someone is there to help him. Tell Jason
that you will be carrying a small 3- by 5-inch
file card, and every time Jason "catches" himself,
asks for help, or takes his own time out to cool
his temper, you will give him a point. Once he
gets a certain number of points he gets to do
something truly special at camp, like get an
extra water skiing period or play a special game,
etc.
This is a synopsis of a scheme I tried this
summer with several different kids with similar
behavioral challenges at different camps, and
it seemed to have a high success rate. The wristband
is something the other kids don't really
notice, since so many of them have one of their
own anyway, and the point system on the "traveling" 3-
by 5-inch file card (counselors hand it off to
one another as Jason goes from place to place)
gave "Jason" the kind of immediate
feedback he needs to make a significant change.
This little scheme also fits my maxim about changing
behavior, which is that we can't expect
children to stop doing something (in this case,
losing his temper in often fierce ways) unless
we give them something else to do in its place
(ask for help, count to ten, cool off, etc.).
Parents and More
Early in the summer, I used
the phrase "kidsick parents" to describe
many parents today who have great difficulty
separating from their children when they go off
to camp. Much has been written about "helicopter
parents" who hover over their children
and are over-involved and don't allow their
children to learn coping skills from the common
pains and setbacks we all encounter in everyday
life. In my next column, I will talk more about
working with these parents and share other insights
from the summer.
Let me leave you with one closing
thought about parents, however. Parents give
us their "best children" when they
entrust them to our care. It is only right that
we should give them our best personal and professional
understanding of children in return, for it is
only with this commitment to continued learning
that we will retain the trust parents have in
us and in camp. We owe them and their children — and
camp as a whole — nothing less.
Originally published
in the 2008 November/December issue of Camping
Magazine.
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