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28 views5 pages

Project 2 Teacher Draft

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api-757385791
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We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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There is no community I feel more closely connected to or comfortable within than the

camp I work at every summer. My history with this summer camp goes back to my early years.

When I was about eight or nine years old, my mom enrolled me in this summer camp with my

best friend at the time, who shared the same first name as me. No other community or group has

impacted my life as much as this camp has, and I’ve gone from being a camper to becoming a

lead counselor and guiding youth through nature.

I believe labeling this community as just a summer camp is a great disservice to what it

does. That isn’t to say it’s some grand spectacle that should be looked up to, but I truly believe

it’s more than just arts & crafts and swimming in ponds. This summer camp is through an

organization called “Friends of the Petaluma River”, whose goal is to preserve and maintain the

river, as well as help locals build a connection with it. The summer camp is called Green Heron

Nature Camp, and it focuses on nature immersion and helping youth build a connection with the

outdoors.

Even as a camper, I was exposed to and became familiar with the language and culture of

the camp, and learned new words for the activities done every day. Games that I played in school

were instead set in a nature setting, and members of the game took on different roles and

recreated different scenarios. Instead of the childhood classic “sharks and minnows”, we instead

played “fire in the forest” and embodied the animals that live in a forest or a swamp marsh.

Instead of “capture the flag”, we played “ravens and wolves". This was a new language and

culture that I had picked up on early on in my development and it has greatly shaped my outlook

on life and nature, but it wasn’t until I started counseling at the camp that I really started to

understand the ins and outs of it. Working with children is an entirely different world, it requires

a shift in how you interact with others. Especially while immersed in nature, guiding campers
through the natural world while also ensuring their safety and encouraging them to open up and

become friendly with one another requires not just a good understanding of communication, but

an understanding of how each individual child’s mind acts.

While the role of a camp counselor should be one that ensures the safety of campers, a

major part of it is also engaging the children in activities and games. I luckily had experience

with many of the games played at the camp, but how to get the campers excited and engaged, as

well as how to maintain that energy, initially presented itself as a daunting task. I learned how to

switch between two personas while working, one that’s concerned with safety and the

game-leader. I found the right way to present myself energetically to get the campers riled up for

games with lots of running, and found the right way to present myself calmly to get them in the

right mindset for stealth games. Learning this was integral to becoming comfortable with camp

counseling, as it helped greatly with keeping campers engaged.

Each kid enrolled at the camp is at a different stage in their development, and has a

different understanding of social interaction and how to engage in social interactions. Many kids

at the camp have never been in an outdoors environment for long periods of time, and are used to

the comforts of being inside. One of the first pieces of literacy I learned from working at the

camp was conflict management, specifically between youth. In the essay Coaches Can Read,

Too, Sean Branick writes, “Coaches need to be able to do so much more than just read. They

need to be able to read people.” This applies to camp counseling as well, as you must be able to

read the campers to be a successful counselor. Many children don’t have the same developed

senses of reason and logic that adults have, and how you handle conflict between two adults will

very likely not have positive results if the same techniques are done with two kids. Especially
with younger children, some of them haven’t fully developed a sense of empathy, and need to be

guided and shown how their actions affect other people.

One instance where I’ve had to use the skills I’ve gained as a camp counselor was during

my third year of counseling. There was a particularly young girl in the group I was helping lead,

who had a lot of trouble focusing, listening, and connecting with her peers. On one very hot day,

we were walking as a group up a steep hill to the eucalyptus grove, where we had activities

planned for the campers. This girl had been zapped of all her energy from the heat, and after

walking halfway up the hill refused to walk the rest of the way. She tossed her backpack to the

side, and sat down on the ground. I knew she was very volatile at this moment, and raising my

voice or arguing with her would just make the situation worse. Despite my agitation, I calmed

myself down and connected with her in a calm manner. I was able to convince her to stand up

and walk with me the rest of the way to the grove. If I didn’t have the knowledge I had learned as

a counselor, I wouldn’t know how to effectively communicate with her.

Building a trusting relationship with children is also different than how it's done with

adults. There’s a balance between giving the campers freedom, and also setting boundaries to

ensure their safety. If you take a too restrictive approach, it stunts the camper’s ability to connect

with their peers, and nature. The campers need the opportunity to experience the natural world

themselves, and develop their own relationships with it. It’s the goal of the counselor to guide

them through that, and help them discover how they interact with nature best. This can look like

time spent out on the water, kayaking, canoeing, and swimming. It can also look like time spent

on land running around, or sitting quietly and whittling or journaling. Giving them the freedom

to experience nature in a way they are most comfortable with while also making sure they stay

safe is an essential part of camp counseling. On the other hand, if boundaries aren’t set and the
campers are allowed to do whatever they please, it can become difficult to guide them

throughout the day and introduce new locations and activities. Knowing how to communicate

effectively with campers is an essential part of a counseling job.


Sources

Branick, Sean. "Coaches Can Read, Too." Writing About Writing: A College Reader, edited by

Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011, pp. 557-573. Print.

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