Second Favorite Time of Year

You can easily guess what this camp director's favorite time of year is, but you may not know what comes in second place. It's right now -- these first weeks of Spring. Why is that? Because, just like the awakening of the flowers and trees, camp families come alive with excitement about camp. For me, that means that I get to talk to lots of moms and dads and kids as they write or call with questions about the summer, or just to say how excited they are for camp.

I love to answer the many questions that come up about camp, the big ones and the small ones. Whether it's about the bunk groups or the activities, the packing list or the bus stop, Settling In Day or a Weekend Adventure, medical concerns or food allergies, missing home or making friends, choosing activities or evening programs -- it's all fun to talk about.

In addition, I (along with Teri and Jeremy) get to talk with parents about their kids. We love these conversations because it's fun to hear how exited the kids are for camp and also to help address their individual concerns. The more conversations we have the better, because then we know our campers better and can help make the summer an awesome one for them.

Add to all this the conversations we have with our staff, and Spring is a hectic, enthusiastic time around here . . . second only to the summer itself.

Tom

Woot! Camp Conference

Teri, Tom and I just got back from the Tri-State Camp Conference which is held every year.  It's a gathering of people from all facets of the summer camp profession.  As you can imagine, most of the attendees are directors like us.  But there are also camp counselors, professional speakers, child psychologists, camp nurses and administrators from the American Camp Association.  There are also plenty of vendors who sell specialized products and services to camp.  The people who sell us our sports equipment, the company we buy our skate park pieces from, even the guys who take care of our insurance needs were among the many in the exhibit hall.

Most of what we do at Tri-State is attend sessions on various topics of professional development. This year I went to some of the best sessions I'd ever participated in. I went to one that fit the Campus Kids philosophy particularly well. It was all about alternatives to intense competition. The speaker, Rick LaVoie, has a special needs background but his message was aimed at all camp and school programs. He stressed that competition could be excellent when the sides are fair and when people get to choose to participate. But if you're forced to compete or have to compete in situations where you don't have a chance to win, it can be a negative experience. He taught lots of ways to promote cooperative activities where working together makes them fun. Rick challenged the idea that classrooms and camps should be competitive to get kids ready for the "real world" which appears to be obviously competitive. We talked a lot about how hard some companies work to increase the cooperation among their employees in order to make that company more successful in a competitive marketplace. Interesting stuff, eh?

Now this may be more interesting to the parents out there than the campers, but the keynote speaker of the conference was Seth Godin. Seth is a best selling author and successful entrepreneur. He was the founder of several companies including Squidoo, one of the most popular websites in the world. On www.squidoo.com you can basically find user-designed pages on any topic of interest or make your own page. It's pretty neat stuff. Seth talked about how it's good to be different - "You've got to be worth talking about if you want people to talk about you and promote your business". To this, I say, is there anything better that telling people about Campus Kids?

One more thing, before I go away on a week's vacation! WOOT! Remember when I was telling you about the CD Mixes we made for the staff retreats? Here's a video that highlights the mix from the staff assistant retreat and the songs they contributed:

 Hope you liked the video! Talk to you all when I get back!

~Jeremy

So right now I am sitting at my desk furiously burning 19 copies of a CD Mix in preparation for our upcoming Staff Assistant Retreat. While my computer hums away, I’m wondering if we ever told you about our now-famous CD Mixes.

For the past few years, whenever we have a staff retreat, we prepare a CD mix that everyone contributes one song to. The exciting part is that no one knows who contributed which song (well, I know because I make the mix but I stay quiet about it). At the retreat itself, we play the CD and everyone tries to guess whose song is playing. It’s lots of fun! Also, every CD has a theme. At the leadership retreat in January, the theme was “Songs I liked when I was a kid”. Here’s the playlist from that CD and list of the leadership team members (in a random order). See if you can guess who picked each song:

1. Steely Dan, “Reeling in the Years”                                                                     
2. Paul Simon, “I know What I Know”
3. Rolling Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”
4. Mya w/Blackstreet, “Take me There”
5. Bruce Springsteen & Bob Dylan, “Forever Young”
6. The Beatles, “8 Days a Week”
7. Aretha Franklin. “Respect”
8. Modest Mouse, “The World at Large”
9. The Turtles, “Happy Together”
10. Soul Asylum, “Can’t Even Tell”
11. Spice Girls, “Wannabe”
12. Cyndi Lauper, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
13. Jimmy Eat World, “Futures”
14. David Bowie, “Rebel, Rebel”

a. Brooke
b. Abe
c. Sean
d. Sara
e. Jeremy
f. Kim
g. Teri
h. Todd
i. Dave G
j. Katie
k. Tom
l. Rose
m. Stu
n. Devon

Click here to see the correct answers!

The other big news of the day is that the most current issue of the "Sundial" is being collated by a CK Veteran you might remember! It’s Charles Cook! Charles was a long time counselor and aquatics coordinator with us. He also attended several weekend adventures. Charles is often remembered for his love of hot dogs and for being a HUGE JETS FAN! Yep. Jets, Jets, Jets! That’s all he ever talks about.

Until next time,

Jeremy

PS. Charles is actually a Giants fan and specifically NOT a Jets fan. But it was really fun to mess with him!