Counselor Blog

This week's post is a guest blog from Laura Dallas McSorley, a member of one of ACA's educational allies, Teach For America.

Camp Glisson was the most wonderful place I had been as a kid — almost magical. I had been to other day camps and even overnight camps, but nothing was like the first time I stepped onto the grounds of Glisson — beautifully nestled in the North Georgia mountains around a large waterfall, with an old wooden chapel. I went every summer, as did my siblings, and even my parents as a nurse or the minister for a week. (Glisson is a United Methodist camp.) When I was old enough, I was finally a counselor, getting to fulfill a long-held dream. Most of my co-counselors were passionate about Glisson's central mission: ministry to children. Many went on to go to divinity school or teach school.

I, however, couldn't imagine myself in the classroom or in a church. Instead, I spent the next several summers dedicated to various social justice causes that pulled me away from camp — homelessness prevention and housing reform, advocacy on my college campus. And as I began to dig deeper, exploring not just the effects but the root causes of the social injustices I saw around me, I found Teach For America (TFA). After graduation, I headed to Washington, DC, to teach in a Head Start classroom with TFA’s first cohort of early childhood educators. I spent the next five years teaching pre-K in the city.

At camp, the culture we built in our “living groups” was so powerful that campers and counselors were often crying at the end of the week when it was time to say goodbye. We often said at those times that, while we felt like we were returning to the “real” world, in many ways camp was more real. Camp and the communities we built offered a glimpse at what a “beloved community” could be, in the way God intended us to dwell in the world.

I thought about this often when thinking about how to build a safe, supportive, and nurturing environment for all my students, regardless of what might be happening outside our classroom or school. Of course, I worked intentionally to have strong relationships with families, including home visits, and to incorporate students' home lives and cultures — through pictures of their families, favorite books, memories of neighborhood walks, and community reading materials. Just like at camp, I tried to make my classroom a microcosm of the real place we want the entire world to be — one where we are free to explore the “outside” world with fresh eyes and discover new information about ourselves we can translate at home. For my three- and four-year-old students, this might mean being more independent in their routines or exploring and describing an array of animals that live in the ocean.

One of my dear friends and co-counselors, Rob, and I were known for singing — all the time — with our youngest campers. Not just at the designated chapels or special “singing on the porch” activities, but literally walking from lunch to the pool . . . and everywhere. Years later, this became my persona as a teacher as well — but with a different purpose. I wanted to use all my teaching time with students in developmentally appropriate ways as strategically as possible — making every moment count toward the ambitious goals we were working toward together. While we rhymed our way through “Willaby Wallaby,” counted down with understanding from ‘Five Little Monkeys,” or explored complicated new vocabulary like “Dreidel,” this brought joy and perhaps again a bit of notoriety to our neighborhood walks — just as I had enjoyed at camp — but also rigorous mastery for our students on key skills to succeed in kindergarten and beyond.

I want all kids to have the chance to feel a part of a loving community as I did each summer at camp, just as I want all children to have an excellent start from their very first formal experience in early childhood through the rest of the school experience. I loved being a camp counselor, as you likely do, too. Now imagine you are getting to expand your impact to not just a few weeks, but to a year or more with a student and their family. As a teacher, you'll get build daily the “real” world we want all students to have. What could be better?

Laura Dallas McSorley was a 2006 D.C. corps member with Teach For America. She currently serves as Managing Director of Teach For America’s Early Childhood Education Initiative. Don’t forget to apply to Teach For America by the final deadline — Friday, February 15th. APPLY NOW

Photo courtesy of Lutherhill Ministries, La Grange, Texas
 

Camp is place to make new friends (or meet up with old ones!), learn how to be a leader, and hone your skills to help kids have fun and grow.

ACA’s 2013 ACA National Conference gives you the chance to do all that, too!

Network with peers and experts, attend great keynote lectures, and workshop your skills in a wide variety of educational sessions. And, as always, Student Members of ACA attend conference FREE. (Check out the registration page for details.)

Join us in Dallas, February 12–15, 2013! Visit the conference homepage to find more about the keynote speakers, educational sessions, and schedule — plus special events and pre-conference gatherings.

Not a member? First-timers can join ACA for free.

Special thanks to Allison Lee, an archery counselor at Camp Chinqueka, for submitting our last counselor story of the year! Have a great fall — summer will be here again soon!

I don't even know how to narrow my summer down to one favorite memory. There are just too many! Having recently just worked at camp for my second year, I know 100 percent it will not be my last. As soon as I walked back into camp for the second time, I knew was back at home, my real home, a place where I feel completely comfortable to be myself and let go of all the stress and worries that comes with real life.

This year, the whole staff waited in anticipation for two weeks before the bright, happy, and excited campers came running through our gates. Honestly, the feeling is indescribable. I still get goosebumps now when I think about it. It felt as if the previous nine months back at home didn't exist and as if I’d never left camp!

There were campfires weekly where we would dress up as crazy as possible. The evening activities ranged from a talent show one night to running around camp trying to collect gold for your tribe the next! Oh, and you can't forget the socials with the boys. I will always remember the time when the social was postponed for a few days due to bad weather and I literally had a couple of girls in my cabin in tears!

One of my favorite things at camp is something called candlelight. This has been a tradition for over fifty years, and it’s one of the most beautiful things you could ever witness. The senior girls spend their mornings and afternoons practicing a synchronized swimming routine to perform in front of the entire camp. When the time is right and the sun has gone down for the day on the last Friday of session two, all the lights are turned off on camp and everyone makes their way down to the waterfront in complete silence. The girls start their routine, and all you can see are their hands holding a candle up in the air, moving gracefully in the water. It is a very emotional night, and you can be nothing but proud of the girls for all the hard work that they put into it.

But it seems as soon as camp starts, it’s time for it to come to an end for another year. After what feels like thousands of hugs and tears shed, all the campers are gone and the camp is empty again. All you are left with are the most amazing memories and friendships of another fabulous summer and the excitement of another summer at camp next year.

I've put my life at home in Sydney, Australia on hold two years in a row, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. At camp you meet the most amazing kids that really do change your life. They are some of the most amazing people you will ever meet — and so are the other counselors. At camp, I got to meet people from all over the world, and even though we only worked together for ten weeks, the friendships we made will last forever!

A big thanks to Hannah (Tom Tom) Wiese from Camp Chinqueka for this summer story! What did your summer at camp teach you? Send your stories to media@ACAcamps.org and you might see them here!

As soon as the car rounds the bend and Bantam Lake comes into view, I smile and bounce up and down in anticipation for I know that I am almost at my summer home. I know that as soon as the car pulls on to the gravel drive, there will be my summer family, waiting to greet me with happy screams and lots of hugs. This was only my second summer at sunny Camp Chinqueka, but from the moment I stepped out of the car and my feet hit the ground, I felt like I was back home.

At camp, I’ve learned many lessons — things I could have never learned in school. Lessons such as, if you use a leaf blower to clean your cabin, you’ll probably set off the smoke detector. And, that if you let a CIT drive the golf cart, there’s a 90 percent chance she or another CIT will fall off it. I also learned to NEVER tip the waste toner cartridge from the copy machine, unless you want to wind up covering yourself and everything else in the room in a cloud of toner dust.

But, as it is camp, these lessons, however messy they might be, are never learned alone, but instead alongside at least one giggling friend. Instead of being sources of embarrassment, these stories turn into “camp legends” of sorts, stories to be shared by campfires for years to come. And that, I think, is the beauty of camp. Summer camp gives everyone — counselors and kids — a chance to be their own crazy, goofy selves.

At camp, it’s cool to wear underwear on your head and swimsuits over your neon spandex to campfires. It’s cool to make up a song about a “free-spirited pigeon” and belt it out while floating down the river in an inner tube. It’s cool to wear mismatched flip-flops and go days without shaving your legs because you’re having too much fun to be bothered with small details like that.

Camp is a place to relish the small things: ice cream sundaes; the whisper of the wind as it blows through the tall, stately pine trees; and the hug from a camper who just accomplished something she didn’t think she could do. Yes, at camp, the campers grow up, but so do the counselors as camp help shapes them into the people they want to be.

Photo courtesy of Cheley Colorado Camps, Estes Park, Colorado
 

Many thanks to Lynne Murphy from Ireland for this fun memory! Lynne was the evening program coordinator and Web manager at Camp Chinqueka in Connecticut this summer. Send YOUR summer story to media@ACAcamps.org.

As I look around my bedroom, a wall-to-wall shrine dedicated to camp memories, it is almost impossible to select one highlight of camp or explain how much camp means to me. It is a place where I feel more at home than I do in the house I was raised in; a place I have met the most spectacular people and children I will ever meet; and a place where I have grown, changed, and loved.

It was just two years ago that my life changed at sunny Camp Chinqueka. I had found a place where I could be myself and be happier than I have ever been. This summer was phenomenal! Despite the fact that every day at camp is packed with fun-filled activities, there is always one day that stands out in my mind. WATERSPORTS DAY!!! These are two words that are uttered with pure excitement and anticipation from the very first day at camp, even though it isn’t held until week six! 

Camp Chinqueka is an all-girls camp; however, we also have a brother camp, Camp Awosting. On this very special day, we join together and have a massive swim meet for our campers. Each year, each camp has a theme for Watersports Day. It is a great excuse to get everyone excited, pumped up, and dressed up! This year, we were Egyptians (queue “Walk Like an Egyptian” — a song that will be forever stuck in my mind because of this day!), and the boys were Romans. The week building up to this day, we spent hours making costumes, building a giant pyramid and sarcophagus, and most importantly, singing songs and learning new chants to cheer on our girls and scare off the boys! It is incredible seeing all the campers become even more spirited than they usually are (which is truly saying something!).

Watersports Day isn’t just a day of swimming competitions, it is also very important for another reason: WAR CANOE — a test of speed, technique, and distance against the boys. The girls and boys train so hard each summer, and each summer we cheer them on until the entire camp has lost their voices! Even now I catch myself singing “I SAID, LET ME SEE YOUR WAR CANOE!” Win or lose, we are always so proud of them.

After many hours of swimming, cheering and excitement, we have a delicious feast, and the campers dance the evening away at a social! I’ll never get sick of joining in as the entire camp does the “Cupid Shuffle”!

Not only is this day full of fun, dressing up, and an excuse to get in the water on a hot Connecticut day, it is a day that shows what Camp Chinqueka is all about. Our campers learn all about working as a team, supporting one another, being proud of yourself knowing you’ve done your best, and being yourself — but most of all, having FUN! It was a spectacular day, one I will ever never forget, and it’s just one of my many, many cherished memories of my time at Camp Chinqueka.

Photo courtesy of Camp Chinqueka, Litchfield, Connecticut

Thanks Angela Marks for the latest entry on the Counselor Blog! Send your favorite summer memory to media@ACAcamps.org!

My week with Rising Abilities was full of great stories and memories, but one story stands out the most. There was an adolescent camper with Autism who was so excited to catch a fish to cook himself that he spent every day asking his group to go fishing for all of their activity choices. On the last evening of camp, he finally caught one big enough to keep. Just down the stream, there was a five-year-old boy who was trying really hard to catch a fish, but was having trouble. The older boy looked at the younger boy and said, "Don't be sad — you can have my fish." Then he dumped his fish into the other boy’s bucket and walked back to the cabins. It was in that moment that I realized my campers had learned a great social skill: Kindness.

Photo courtesy of Rising Abilities, Lebanon, Missouri

Today's story comes from Katelyn Gillum, who now works for her camp fulltime! Send your story from the summer to media@ACAcamps.org.

If you would have told me nearly four years ago that being a camp counselor was going to change my life, I never would have believed you. I walked into my first summer at Camp Walden in Diamond Point, New York, thinking that it was merely going to be a two-month experience that would give me the opportunity to work with kids and boost my resume as a prospective teacher. What I didn't know is that it would change my world forever.

Having never gone to a sleep away camp as a child, I entered the camp world knowing nothing aside from what I had learned through movies such as The Parent Trap and shows like Bug Juice. I was expecting to find campers sneaking out of bunks, being sent to isolation cabins, and playing poker without any adult supervision. What I did find, however, was quite the opposite — an environment where people take care of each other, where long-lasting friendships are created, and where being yourself and trying new things is strongly encouraged.

After experiencing the beauty of sleep away camp, I began to wonder why everyone wasn't involved in summer camps. The sense of family, the amount of growth, and the ability to be 100% yourself is enough to make anyone want to spend two months in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Try explaining that to someone who has never been to a summer camp before, and the idea of it all seems a bit whimsical and unrealistic. That's when it suddenly dawned on me that part of what makes the sleep away camp experience so special is the fact that only a small percentage of us really understand the impact it has.

It's not only the special bonds created between campers and counselors alike, but it's the lessons learned and the ability to give and share with others that truly makes the camp setting unlike any other. I know that I would not be the person that I am today if not for my time at Camp Walden. Walden has allowed me to create lasting relationships with my campers and co-staff and has allowed me to find another place that I can call "home." I don't think I will ever truly be able to repay Walden for what it has given me, but I do know that I can share my experiences and encourage others to experience what the camp setting is all about!

Happy camping . . .

Photo courtesy of Camp Aranzazu, Rockport, Texas