I'm in charge of kids for the summer

kage_rod

Fear me for I can influence children.

I just got a job as a summer camp counselor, starting training June 16th. There'll be kids from 6 to 16 years old, and some with special needs. Plus, one of the first camps is for Adult Special Needs. I'm actually rather excited, but a bit scared.

Has anyone here been a camp counselor? What was it like?

Zeehat

I think Scott was, and has high regard towards it. I have, in a sense, ran summer camps for children before. They have all gone great.

Sail

I will be doing similar work this summer. I am one of the instructors that runs our youth foundation's summer sailing program and I will be working with the same age group, plus an adult sailing course, and this will be my third year.

If you like working with kids, then you're going to love it. Although there is always a few tough cases, the majority of kids are awesome and will respond positively to you if you treat them that way. Just always be sure to set and enforce the ground rules early on and you'll do fine.

CHOIS CHOIS CHOIS

I went to summer camps since I was 7 and have been going to the same place for the last 8 or so years. I loved the place, to bad it was closed due to funding. It was a YMCA day camp, but with no 'C' part involved. I went there for all those years hoping to be an LT, Leader in Training, and then be a camp counselor myself.

If you don't mind me asking; what organization is this and what is the location?

What I and the other kids always liked in a counselor:
~ All around fun person.
~ Active, they joined in on activities and games.
~ Was always easy going and fun to talk to.
~ Were strict and had a firm grasp on the kids.
~Usually asked us to do things rather than ordered you to.

Just keep the things in mind and have fun. It will be fun and the kids will give you lots of laughs.

Apreche

Camp Counseling is the best job in the world. However, it just doesn't pay enough, and it's only in the summer. If I didn't need the money, or if I were a teacher or something, I would counsel every summer.

HMTKSteve

I do a week long day camp for girl scouts.

This years theme is flight and space so I'm getting my friends from the 501st to show up in costume for an event.

Lyddi

I was a counselor in a computer camp at my college. It was for high school kids, and we were supposed to be introducing them to programming. They learned Jython and Lego robots, etc. Most of them didn't want to be there, however, and were like "my mommy made me do this stupid camp, so I'm not going to pay attention and learn." So they all looked at each other's Myspace pages most of the time on the camp computers. There was this one little cute nerdy kid who actually did what we told him to and was very interested. He was such a little nerdy cutie-pie, and it made me wonder if I acted like that when I was a kid, and it would make sense because I never had many friends at that age...

Anyway, moral of the story: even though the kids didn't care, I had fun because I made tons of money and it was easy.

Page

I used to be a night counselor for two summers, and for the most part it rocked, though we always had some one at least once wonder off during the night, and then having to hunt around a pitch black camp, only to find out after two hours of searching the bloody kid has reappeared in his bed, I blame the day counselors for those incidents.

Solo

I was a counselor once. I was the nice one who was really cool and almost got myself and the kids in trouble. As much as you might think that sounds like I was horrible, it actually worked really well. When there was a problem I was able to go to the kids as a friend instead of a counselor. Problem is there's really only room for one of those types of counselors, the others need to yell and instill order. It was a fun experience.

kage_rod

If you don't mind me asking; what organization is this and what is the location?

Camp Tamarack near Grande Prairie. I trust you guys aren't stalkers, eh?

I do like kids, strangely enough. I kind of want to become a foster parent when I get older, even though I hated to babysit.

^_^ Thanks for the feedback, and I'm surprised no one here went, "OH NOES" like my friends did.

xenomouse

Camp Counseling can be tough with kids who have issues. Even still it is worthwhile and memorable. With normal kids, it's golden. Just keep in mind that the title of "Camp Counselor" implies that you are an eligible candidate (and primary target) for dunking during swimming pool time.

Coldguy

What evil could you do....I got it! Convince them that games with pixelated graphics (NES, SNES, Genesis) are better then the modern games that are out there. You will be doing a great service if you could pull it off.

kage_rod

Just keep in mind that the title of "Camp Counselor" implies that you are an eligible candidate (and primary target) for dunking during swimming pool time.

K'pown - there's no pools! Or lakes or streams or anything. Haha! I hate swimming anyway.

What evil could you do....I got it! Convince them that games with pixelated graphics (NES, SNES, Genesis) are better then the modern games that are out there. You will be doing a great service if you could pull it off.

That's not evil. Well, except for the fact that it's kinda hard to find good working ones nowadays unless you know people or places.

CHOIS CHOIS CHOIS

^_^ Thanks for the feedback, and I'm surprised no one here went, "OH NOES" like my friends did.

That's because were your real friends. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Just Joking ^_^, but seriously, FRC forums is like one big ol' happy family.

HMTKSteve

I may not be in charge of kids this summer. Our girl scout council had a statewide merger this year and the new council has a major problem with the independence our camp enjoys. They have done next to no marketing for our camp while one a few miles away from us had had fliers distributed to 60+ schools and they are offering busing for kids who can't be driven to the camp.

The camp I work at has been around for well over 20 years and has always been profitable. This is the first time our numbers have been low and it is mostly council's fault. Even the campers who have been going for years thought the camp was shut down because they never got any mailings.

Yeah... I'm pretty pissed off right now...

kage_rod

Awww... *hugs* That's horrible.. I hope you can still get it though - maybe they'll be more intelligent next year? Take a part in the council if at all possible.

HMTKSteve

Awww... *hugs* That's horrible.. I hope you can still get it though - maybe they'll be more intelligent next year? Take a part in the council if at all possible.

Not likely.

The problem we have is that in CT we go from the extreme of the "Gold Coast" to the backwoods of the Norther parts of the state. The council we used to have was split up so that ours only handled the northwest (backwoods) area of the state, also known as the "red" part of the state. The new council is run mostly by members who were in the "blue" part of the state. See where I am going with this?

When the councils all merged the camps were all looked at and ours was singled out as a potential for dropping in large part because of the way our old council cooked their books. We never had a real budget but instead worked off of the camp fees. We had a lot of donations form local businesses and thus our expenses were very low. What money we did make was often gobbled up by our council on the books to pay salaries for people who were not even involved in the camp!

We had to deal with a lot of shit after the big merger and we still are. To make matters worse the new council wanted us to charge volunteers for the privilege of volunteering! All of the other camps in state have paid staff, we never had paid staff because our council was always using our "paid staff" budget to pay their own staff.

It's real bad and it blew up today. Our long time camp director is ready to quit and a lot of people are just fed up with the changes this new council is bringing in.

For example: If you want to do any kind of fundraising it has to be through a council-approved company. We feel this change has come about because the council wants control and their kickbacks. At a meeting this was talked about and council's position was that no one else should profit off of the girl scout troops (Pampered Chef is bad because the consultant makes money). When some members pointed out that "someone else" always makes money no matter what the fundraiser be it cookies or magazine subscriptions they were promptly ignored.

It has been a serious culture clash this past year. my wife has been running our troop for five years and she is on the verge of quitting because of all the new hurdles this new council is imposing on us.

Alex Leavitt

I was a counselor for four years at a summer camp in New Hampshire, where I taught archery. Counselor-ing is definitely one of the best pre-real-world occupations out there!

CHOIS CHOIS CHOIS

Yeah, my summer camp that i went o for about 8 years closed the year before I was going to start leader training to be a counselor myself.