Fall is often the time to reflect on the successes of your summer and begin to turn your thoughts toward growth and improvement for next year. When it comes to character development for campers, we can sometimes get so activity — or curriculum — focused that we forget to emphasize the importance of reflection and evaluation. Described herein are a variety of approaches to creatively evaluating the character development efforts you are implementing in your unique program.

Foundation: Defining Your Mission

Program evaluation at camp should always be founded on your mission, so the first step is to make sure you have a clear understanding of what you are trying to accomplish and the reasons why. In relation to evaluation, consider asking and answering the following questions:

• Mission — What is our organizational mission? Does it need to be updated to reflect our current approach? Is it well-known among our camp community and embedded in our culture? Do we communicate our mission throughout the year and at camp?
• Core values — What character strengths or values do we focus on and want to evaluate? Are we modeling and communicating these values consistently to campers?
• Outcomes — What are the specific outcomes we hope our campers will experience? What camper growth do we hope has happened by the end of camp? How do we anticipate the camp experience will positively impact their future life?
• Staff practices — What can we see our staff members doing that demonstrates our mission and values in action? What do we expect our campers to notice about these character-based staff practices? How should the practices make campers feel?
• Camper experiences — What are the mission-centered activities at camp? How can every activity at camp be adapted to incorporate character development? Which activities are most connected to the positive outcomes we expect campers to experience?

Defining: Your Values in Their Words

Sometimes it can be easier for us to define our core values in paragraphs and stories rather than simple sentences. However, we need to find clear, youth-friendly phrases that describe our core values. Character strengths such as respect, responsibility, compassion, or integrity could be described and explained in a variety of ways. You can start with a dictionary definition, or you can start with conversations with staff or campers. No matter what, you need consistent language to use and reinforce at camp and in evaluations. Consider these questions as you create your definitions:

• Conceptually — How do you consistently teach what each value means without relying on specific examples? Is wording age-appropriate and understandable for your campers and staff?
• In practice at camp — What are some specific examples of your character strengths or values in action at camp? What do your values look like in relation to others at camp? To oneself? To the natural environment?
• In practice at home/in their community — When campers return to home, school, and their community, what are examples of practicing each of your camp values? How will your camp values help campers contribute positively to their families and community?

Timing: When Is Reflection Happening?

There are a variety of effective strategies for evaluating programs and camper experiences, and trial and error can help you decide which work best for your camp’s goals and within your unique culture. Consider when you are currently engaging in evaluation activities, and compare some of the reasoning behind other approaches:

• First day/last day — Some camps utilize camper-friendly definitions of their character strengths and have campers rate “I” statements on the first and last day, with their perceptions of how they demonstrate each value.
• Each afternoon (day camp) or evening — One approach includes structured reflection time at the end of each camp day, where campers write about the day’s activities or progress toward goals. Reflections might include open-ended questions or ratings. They could be the same targeted questions each day or day-specific questions. Some camps focus on a different value each day and tailor their reflection questions to that specific value.
• During/after specific activities — Observations of staff members delivering camp programming can happen at any time throughout the camp session and may be based on evaluating specific character-based staff practices. For campers, it is valuable to engage in verbal or written reflection after camp activities to connect what they did to the camp’s character strengths.
• Last-day only — Some camps prefer to utilize one comprehensive survey that campers complete just before leaving camp. Campers may reflect on their perceived growth in camp values over the course of the week.
• Postcamp — Camps sometimes reach out to parents after camp is complete to ask about any growth they noticed in their campers. It is essential to connect these questions to the intended outcomes you identified for how camp will impact your participants’ home and community lives.

Scope: Who Do We Need to Hear From?

As you consider the scope of any evaluation, it is important to be realistic about the resources you have for developing, distributing, compiling, and analyzing responses you receive. Stacks of completed, unread paper surveys in the corner of your office make very little positive impact. As you decide on the scope of evaluation efforts, think of what your first step is for the next camp season. How can you level up your efforts without overstretching your staff? From a character development perspective, consider a few of the things each group might tell you:

• Campers — How they understood your character strengths, whether/when they saw them in action at camp, whether/when they had opportunities to practice them, or if they felt they grew or improved in the character strengths.
• Staff members — How much they valued your camp’s mission or character strengths, whether/when they saw them in action at camp, any character growth they observed in campers or themselves, and how they put your camp’s values into practice (typically they “tell” you this through your observations).
• Parents — whether/when they saw character growth in their children after camp, or what they heard from their child about the camp experience and culture.
• Other stakeholders — How your board, community partners, or volunteers understand and prioritize your character goals, and where they see areas for growth or capacity building.

Planning: How to Use Responses

It is crucial to have a plan for how you will use data from each question you expect people to spend time answering. Communicating your plan when administering a survey or facilitating reflection can also add significant meaning for participants.

• Program quality assessment — Are we successfully doing the specific things we intended to do? Can we observe our mission in action? Do our campers perceive it in the ways we want them to?
• Continuous improvement — What areas for growth do our stakeholders (campers, staff, parents, volunteers) identify?
• Marketing — What stories are our stakeholders telling that will help draw more campers or staff to camp? What messages will especially speak to parents choosing between many options for their children? What data demonstrates our mission in action or character growth happening?
• Grant applications — What information can demonstrate the value and impact of our organization, or its needs?

Final Thought: Try Something New!

As you think about your current approach to evaluating your character development work at camp, identify one area for improvement and creativity. Character development can happen throughout the day/week/month at camp, and there are many creative ways to capture your campers’ thoughts and experiences. In addition to those described herein, you can use photography, videography, posters available for sharing throughout the session, or any number of other ways to capture information. As you commit to promoting character growth in your campers, strengthening your evaluation processes will help you build your organization into a community of character as well.

Amanda Palmer, MS, is a camp trainer, consultant, researcher, and doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho. Amanda supports camps and organizations year-round with developing plans for aligning their unique missions with observable staff practices. Within ACA, Amanda is a program quality coach, an accreditation visitor, a subject matter expert for the Character at Camp initiative, and a member of Camping Magazine’s Editorial Advisory Committee. She is a former camper, camp counselor, and mother of four campers of her own. Contact Amanda at [email protected].