“You folks do this beautifully. We’ve tried two other camps, and THIS was what we’d been looking for the whole time. The people + the tradition + the philosophy = spectacular experience.”
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Did you know that being a summer camp counselor is more beneficial to your career than taking a summer internship, that the skills practiced and learned working at camp have far more value than the clerical duties often assigned college student interns? That’s exactly the claim put forward by Darryl Brown in his short article appearing in USA Today. He describes being a camp counselor as the “perfect summer job.”
“In this job, I am part of an organization that gives me duties that are critical to its long- and short-term success. Supervisors give me responsibilities such as interacting directly with customers on a daily basis, and they fully integrate me into the professional hierarchy. To top it all off, I am learning legitimate skills that will help me develop professionally when I move into the workforce.”
It’s true; having “camp counselor” on your resume is a very good thing. The skills required to be a great counselor are valuable and in demand by employers, things like problem solving, leadership, creativity and imagination, being a “team player,” stamina, compassion, responsibility and maturity.
Being a camp counselor means receiving training in all of these areas, and then means practicing them in the real world, working with kids and taking on the complexities of life in a summer camp community. Everyone will tell you that being a camp counselor was the most challenging and the most fun job they ever had. I suspect most summer interns won’t be able to say that.
What are you going to do this summer?
We found some wonderful pictures of Nancy Carrier, Rockbrook’s founder, and her family on a road trip. The photographs are dated from the 1930’s. Nancy is pictured on the left in the first photograph and second from left in the middle photograph. She is also pictured at right taking a photograph. We can only imagine the adventures they had as they all piled into the car and hit the road. Other pictures we found show the same group camping out on a mountain top with a gorgeous view, riding in the car, taking photographs and hiking. It looks like quite an adventure! Nancy Carrier’s adventurous spirit continues today at Rockbrook!
If you haven’t seen this video about the history of Rockbrook Camp, it’s a “must see!”
At Rockbrook, our camp Equestrian Program teaches “English Riding” as opposed to “Western Riding.” But what is the difference between these two forms of horseback riding?
One difference you’ll notice right away, even before mounting your horse, is in the saddles. Western saddles are wider and deeper, with a very prominent horn toward the front. These are stable, comfortable seats designed for the cowboy (or girl!) who needs to spend a long time in the saddle. English saddles are smaller and lighter to allow the horse the greater freedom of movement required for the different hunter jumper gaits. And again, they don’t have a horn.
Other parts of the tack are different too. The reins are closed (left and right sides connected), the stirrups are shorter, and the bit is softer in the horse’s mouth in English Riding.
With these differences, naturally how you ride English is different from Western riding. As opposed to Western riding’s use of the reins, English horseback riding relies much more on balance and the rider’s legs to control the horse. The rider is often up and out of the seat (two point, posting and jumping for example), as opposed to the seated position in Western riding.
Add to that learning to walk, trot, canter, dressage and jumping techniques, and you can see that learning English horseback riding is a wonderful sport.
It doesn’t take long, once your daughter has attended an overnight summer camp like Rockbrook, to realize that the weeks spent having fun, enjoying outdoor adventure, horseback riding and all sorts of crafts have also been profoundly formative. Summer camp professionals and camp families alike, all know it; camp builds character.
In fact, it was back in 1929 when Hedley Dimock and Charles Hendry published their study Camping and Character: A Camp Experiment in Character Education. This book reported what the authors saw as positive changes in campers’ behavior as well as the mechanisms that explain how camp can be so “stimulating and enlightening.” Far beyond what ordinary classroom learning can provide, they saw the highly social nature of camp to be most important for helping children grow more responsible, trustworthy and more caring, fair and respectful in their interaction with others.
At Rockbrook we take great care to create a culture where all children feel included and appreciated, where staff members are extraordinarily admirable, and where positive peer pressure reinforces honesty and kindness. This is camp, and this is why camp builds character.
As hardworking students, you’ve rounded the corner into that time of the school year that can be laden with academic demands. The middle of the semester can keep you busy writing papers, studying for midterms, and maybe even preparing a senior thesis. A heavier workload usually translates into longer nights in the library, yet as important as scholastic success is, don’t forget to step outside every now and then. According to child environment and behavior researcher Andrea Faber Taylor, our directed attention, which we use when concentrating on tests and work, is not a limitless resource. Cracking the books day in and and day out leaves you with a serious case of both physical fatigue and mental fatigue.
So, what’s the cure? Go outside. Taylor’s theory of attention restoration argues that “walks in nature and views of green space capture our involuntary attention, giving our directed attention a needed rest”. Your physical environment has a significant effect on your mental state, and perhaps locking yourself in the basement of the library isn’t really the answer to your quest for academic accomplishment. Make a point to sit in the sun, walk around campus, or even eat lunch outside. Mother nature might just be your best study buddy yet.
This week we sent out the first installment of our monthly staff newsletter. Aside from including tricks of the trade (how to French braid!) and recipes (chocolate chip muffins- yum!), we challenged our counselors to pause from the hustle and bustle of the “real world” to do a few things to remind them how sweet this life is. See if you can take our challenge!
Can you complete five of the following tasks by the end of the month?
We’ve written before about how the average American child spends 53 hours per week consuming electronic media— television, computers, cell phones, video games, ebook readers —interacting with various screens. One consequence of this media consumption is all the advertising it includes. Woven throughout these hours of electronic entertainment is a flood of ads and product branding, to the extent of about 3000 ads per day, according to one study. Just about everywhere our children go, including their schools, they are exposed to carefully crafted advertising messages. Advertisers know that children constitute not only a large market themselves, but also a powerful force capable of influencing their parents’ spending. Even more insidiously, they know exposing children to brands very early in life can have lasting brain effects that influence their buying habits as adults.
Recognizing this trend in America, researchers have begun to study the effects pervasive advertising and branding have on children, their (cognitive, social and personal) development, and their overall physical and psychological health. Unfortunately, it’s not good, with links to tobacco, alcohol and drug use, to obesity, to premature sexual activity, and to fostering negative body image ideals. There is strong evidence that advertising and even subtle branding messages have profoundly negative effects, so much so, several European countries, Greece, Belgium and Sweden for example, have banned advertising that explicitly targets children.
Fortunately for the children that attend summer camp, there is a true break from media consumption and from its accompanying advertising. Spending time at Rockbrook, playing outside, and enjoying real friends and relationships, function as countering forces. Back to the basics of childhood, girls at camp find they are more creative, more imaginative and more adventurous. We all know camp is a refuge; it is in this way as well— a refuge from advertising and branding. And that’s a great thing.
Toward the end of our recent Rockbrook Alumnae reunion celebrating the 90th year of the camp, the women attending held an impromptu chapel meeting. Like those held on Sunday mornings in the summer, this gathering was a chance to sing favorite traditional songs and reflect upon some of the more important experiences, lessons and values we all associate with Rockbrook. These are wonderful moments, often full of personal stories, and on this occasion, childhood memories of camp.
Marie Brown, who came to camp starting in 1989 when she was 8, shared something that we’re so proud to reprint here. It’s a brief reflection on how the Spirit of Rockbrook can sustain and revive us long after we grow up and become adults in the “real world.”
“The wonders of air travel, incredible timing, (and a supportive husband) have made it possible for me to step out of the stifling mayhem I have been living to come for a brief moment to be here. All the stone and concrete has fallen away into mountain laurel, rushing water, beloved rocks and roots and trees…and faces that, despite the decades, haven’t seemed to age.
I have to admit, I was afraid to come. My memories of this place are so deeply embedded in my heart, so close to my core, so invaluable to my spirit, I was afraid that coming back here with the sharpened, hardened and perhaps jaded eyes of an adult would somehow mar the perfection of those memories. And between having a genetically poor memory, and the inability to return to any of the places I actually called home as a child, at times it feels as though the past were no more than a figment of my imagination. There is no other place on the planet that I can go to that holds anywhere as much of my memory in its hillsides as this place. So it was with trepidation that I came to tread back into those memories.
I was grateful as a child and well aware it was only because of the generosity of my grandmother (also a Rockbrook girl) that I was able to come year after year. But I don’t think there was any way for me to understand how big a gift she was giving me until I left Rockbrook to fare the rockier world of “civilization” without my annual reprieve in this Rivendale.
I have spent countless days and nights over the last years feeling I was going crazy, feeling so trapped or confused or heartbroken about the state of the world; a world continually more driven by fear, over “teched” yet disconnected, and terrifyingly detached from, and destructive of, nature. It is so easy to get overwhelmed by all the noise… and for someone as sensitive as myself, to feel despair. But despair won’t do any of us any good. So coming back here at this particular moment for me, and walking literally as if I were Mary Poppins jumping into the chalk painting of my childhood and finding it hasn’t changed (and where it has it has only gotten better) has given me such rejuvenating hope. I am not crazy. I am not intolerant, or impatient, or bitter. I am just in severe withdrawal of my annual dose of Rockbrook.
And what this weekend has shown me is that the gifts and perspective, and lessons this place has to offer are just as present and valuable to me now as there were for me when I was a little girl. If not more so. These enduring stones soften my hardened defenses. The cold waters warm my chilled spirit. These steep hills dull my impatience and intolerance. And rather than damaging the perfection of my memories, returning has added to them. Returning to Rockbrook for even this brief sip has filled my belly once again with a little bit of ginger, a little bit of grit, a little bit of spirit and a little bit of wit to carry with me as I go back out once again to face the big bad world.”
Thanks Marie!
During the recent Rockbrook reunion there were several sets of Mothers and Daughters in attendance. It was such a special experience for Moms and Daughters to finally get to be campers together, sharing bunk beds, singing camp songs and dining around the green tables in the dining hall.
During the activity portion of the reunion there were lots of Mother and Daughter sets spotted sliding into the lake on the water slide, hiking together, playing tennis or making crafts. Overall though, the favorite experience for everyone was just sharing time with their loved ones in such a special place. Sharing the gift of Rockbrook with your daughter is definitely the gift that lasts a lifetime.
