Author Archives: Jeff Carter

Jeff Carter is the Director of Rockbrook Camp for Girls in Brevard, North Carolina. He attended Davidson College, earned a master's from Harvard University, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in the History of Religions. He has taught at Vanderbilt University, Davidson College, and the University of South Carolina. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Nigeria, is an All-American college athlete, and a published author. Beginning in 1988, he worked for eight years as a camp hiking and rock climbing guide before becoming, with his wife Sarah, the owners and directors of Rockbrook.

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March 26, 2011September 10, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

Children Need Nature

Do you know about the North Carolina Children and Nature Coalition? It’s based in Asheboro, NC and is a non-profit organization dedicated to reconnecting children with nature. In response to the growing evidence documenting the benefits children gain from playing outside, benefits we have discussed here and here, this group strives to keep people informed through its web site, publications, conferences, and public policy initiatives.

Of course, Rockbrook fully supports this mission. Camp life is immersed in the natural world, offering a daily celebration of its wonders and hidden beauty. Every minute, as children newly experience nature at camp, they are inspired to grow more confident, cooperative, and compassionate.

The NC Children and Nature Coalition and other state-wide environmental education organizations have launched a campaign to establish a “Children’s Bill of Rights,” a formal recognition that children need and deserve outdoor experience. They put it like this.

Every North Carolina child should have the opportunity to discover, explore and connect with natural spaces and wild places close to home, in neighborhoods and cities in North Carolina, from the mountains to the sea by:

Playing in a safe place outdoors,

Camping under the stars, learning to swim, riding a bike,

Using their senses to experience the natural world,

Visiting a farm, seeing how food is grown, growing something,

Exploring a stream, splashing in a wave, catching a fish, stomping in a puddle, playing in the mud,

Hiking in a natural area and following a trail,

Rolling in the grass, playing in the sand, climbing a tree or searching under a log,

Sharing nature with a parent, guardian, mentor, teacher or environmental educator, and visiting a zoo, aquarium or environmental education center.

Sounds a lot like camp!

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March 18, 2011May 30, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

All Their Senses

“I worry about how much time my kids spend looking at a screen.”

We’ve heard this more than once recently, perhaps not so surprisingly when you consider how many electronic screens are part of our lives these days. For our kids too, in addition to television, there are cellphones, computers, tablet computers, ebook readers and hand-held video games. Screens are everywhere, even in our pockets! With this kind of availability and often unlimited access to technology, we now see that the average 8-18 year old child in America is spending 53 hours per week consuming electronic media.

We’ve discussed before the value of unplugging from technology and how camp gets kids out of the virtual world of screens and into the actual world of nature. Camp turns off the screens and gets kids actually doing things instead of just watching.

It’s worth underlining another benefit to turning off the screens. It’s the simple fact that by getting kids outside and giving them lots of fun things to do, they stimulate and utilize all their senses. They feel things— mist in the morning, hear things— owls at night, smell things— galax along the trail, and even taste things— s’mores (!), that can’t come from a screen. By bringing all of their senses into play, instead of just their eyes and ears, kids activate and develop their brains in important ways that can enrich their future experiences.

This is another way camp really matters to kids. It’s fun in creative, imaginative, and sensuous ways. It’s stimulating in the best sense.

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February 23, 2011May 30, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

Interrupt the Race to Nowhere

After discussing the rigorous, driven parenting style recounted by Amy Chua, the recent documentary film Race to Nowhere adds fuel to the fire. In their desire to do “what’s best” for their kids, to provide them “every opportunity,” and to cheer them on to “work hard” toward their goals, the film shows parents pushing their kids to the brink. It’s heartbreaking to see in the film the anxiety both school kids and their parents are dealing with as they race between school work, team practice, and other responsibilities. The quality of what they eat and the amount of sleep they get are the first to be sacrificed in this pressure to excel, but kids are also, I would say, giving up important parts of their childhood. In the name of “getting into a good college” and later, “getting a good job” they have hopped on a treadmill that’s speeding past valuable opportunities to develop as healthy, happy human beings.

Here again, we have to applaud the power of a traditional sleepaway summer camp to act as a welcome relief from these pressures. Rockbrook is a down-to-earth community of people who simply love to relax, be themselves, make good solid friendships, and enjoy the pure freedom of summer. We’re a zany bunch, always in motion, and always ready to try something new for the fun of it. Camp, like the best moments of childhood, is full of unexpected pleasures. Surrounded by equally enthusiastic people, it’s easy to be excited about everything!

The lasting benefits of a camp experience are very well documented, but here’s another. It’s simply wonderful for kids to take a break from the pressures of school. Interrupting the “race to nowhere” with camp is a very good idea.

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February 19, 2011October 5, 2023 • Children • Jeff Carter

Is She Ready for Camp?

Is my child ready for sleepaway camp?

It’s a common question, even from parents who went to camp themselves. Children have such individual needs and develop at so very different rates, there’s no age or school grade to point to. One girl might be perfectly ready for camp after kindergarten, and another may want to wait a couple more years before starting. Sleeping away from the comforts, familiarity and consistency of home is a big step for a child, so how is a parent to know if the time is right?

Here are 5 ways to know if your daughter is ready for an overnight camp experience.

1. Emotional Health: This is important to consider because children who are generally happy and enthusiastic do very well at camp. They seek out new experiences and are quick to participate. They recover from setbacks easily, and are comfortable expressing their emotions.

2. Social Proficiency: A sleepaway camp is a very social environment, so being able to make friends easily is an important skill. Children who are outgoing and friendly have fun joining group activities. They feel valued and get excited about being “on the team.”

3. Self-Care Skills: Living away from home also requires children to take care of certain personal habits. With minor assistance, they should be able to dress themselves, take a shower, brush their teeth, and sleep well through the night.

4. Following Directions: Joining a community of people means understanding and following a set of rules and expected behaviors. Campers should naturally comply and be happy to follow adult instructions and requests.

5. True Excitement: Girls are ready for sleepaway camp when they are truly excited about the idea. They may have learned about it from friends or family members and now are convinced it will be a super fun way to spend part of their summer. When it’s truly her idea, it’s a good sign.

Ask yourself if these 5 traits are true for your daughter. If she’s honestly excited about camp, follows directions well, can take care of her own hygiene, makes friends easily, and has a happy disposition about most things, then she is probably ready for summer camp. Of course, she doesn’t have to be perfect in all of these areas, because camp is a wonderful opportunity to improve them as well.

Going to a sleepaway summer camp is always an adjustment for kids. To one degree or another, each child is stretched in new ways, but with the excellent counselors and long traditions at Rockbrook, each is given phenomenal opportunities to grow as well.

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February 15, 2011March 5, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

Amy Chua and Summer Camp

Have you run into Amy Chua’s book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, or heard any of the controversy surrounding it? The book is mostly a memoir of Chua’s own childhood and her Chinese mother’s parenting style, but it’s also an account of how she is raising her own children with similarly strict, high standards, as opposed to what she sees as the overly indulgent, coddling, and soft ways of western parenting. Some of the anecdotes are shocking… demanding thousands of math problems be completed in training for a competition, threatening to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if a music composition wasn’t played flawlessly, and refusing to allow her daughters to attend a sleepovers because they are a waste of time. It’s not too hard to see why American mothers were so quick to denounce the book as horrible parenting advice.

After hearing about this, you have to wonder if Amy Chua ever sent her kids to summer camp. I kind of doubt it. We can only speculate, but for parents that value intellectual, musical or athletic achievement over everything else, spending weeks at summer camp to “just play” doesn’t make much sense. Calls for a longer school year, and thereby a greater opportunity for classroom learning, are akin to this attitude. The idea is that if you really want to be good at something, even the best at it, then you have to give up other things. Superior achievement requires sacrifice! While it is true, this approach can yield highly trained, skilled people, you have to wonder “at what cost?” Sure you might be a top-notch pianist, but what did you miss out on when you were doing all that practicing? Yes, we can all be a lot better at math and science if we study all year round and you might even be a world-class athlete, but with all that training, do you have any time for other parts of yourself? Your creativity, your friends, your undiscovered talents? Sadly, the answer in most of these cases is “no.”

Amy Chua’s book reminds us that training our kids too rigorously, at the expense of the “whole child,” can have serious consequences. Like a blind devotion to academic achievement, we risk narrowing educational experience and perspective to the point of debility.

Fortunately (and I would include Chua here), most parents understand the value of providing their children diverse educational opportunities because they want them to grow up with a wide range of personal skills that can serve them later in life.

That’s why parents send their children to Rockbrook. They want more for their girls than just what school provides. They understand the tremendous benefits of a summer camp experience. They know camp is fun, but more importantly, is a break from all the “practices” of the school year, where girls can relax and explore all the other sides of who they are.

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February 9, 2011May 27, 2020 • Adventure • Jeff Carter

Camp is an Adventure

Camp is an adventure! It is because it gets girls outside for all kinds of exciting activities. Climb high up a real rock! Paddle a raft down through whitewater rapids. Sleep in the woods far from the “comforts of home.” These, and other outdoor activities, are just plain thrilling.

But why is that? What makes something a thrilling “adventure?”

The answer might be a little surprising, but it actually boils down to danger. It’s true; an adventure activity always carries a degree of risk. It’s an activity where we “take a risk in the hope of a favorable outcome” (as my dictionary puts it). So for example, rock climbing includes the risk of falling. Whitewater boating has the risk of capsizing, and when camping in the wilderness there’s always a chance of horrible weather (among other things!).

But of course adventure isn’t about getting hurt or experiencing some disaster (there’s safety training and equipment to help with that). It’s about avoiding danger despite the threat of it. Adventure is about overcoming the difficulty and conquering the fear associated with an activity.

Adventure activities are thrilling because we can actually do them despite the risk. Through our own efforts, applying specialized knowledge and skills, we succeed in the face of possible failure. Sure it might be a struggle, but it feels great. Yes, an adventure activity can be difficult, but also really exciting to face it and win!

That’s why, incidentally, adventure activities are so good for boosting kids’ confidence.

Being at Rockbrook provides so many great ways to be adventurous, opportunities to try activities that may look a little scary, but then with the right instruction, encouragement and role models, to also manage the risks and cope beautifully with the challenges involved. Very cool stuff!

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February 4, 2011February 28, 2023 • Children • Jeff Carter

5 Ways Camp Helps Children Grow

Summer camp professionals around the country, largely encouraged by the American Camp Association, have begun to refer to camps as “Youth Development Organizations.”

Being at summer camp, we all agree it seems, is more than just “fun and games.” It’s beneficial for children in unique and lasting ways. Summer camps are dedicated to helping children grow, certainly also to have a good time, but perhaps most importantly, to gain valuable skills and foster personal development.

But what are the ways children grow while at camp? We’ve often said Rockbrook is “a place for girls to grow,” but what kind of growth can we expect?

Here are 5 powerful ways a summer camp experience fosters youth development and growth for children:

1. Social growth: Going to a sleepaway summer camp means joining a close community of people living and playing together 24/7. It builds inter-personal skills like sincere communication, conflict resolution, a willingness to share, and an enthusiasm for working as a team. Perhaps more importantly, the highly social nature of camp really encourages children to make friends easily. It’s a fun, down-to-earth, friendly environment that naturally draws children together.

2. Character growth: Summer camp, simply because it’s living away from home, is an ideal opportunity for children to become more independent. As they make decisions for themselves, for example when selecting their activity schedule, children learn to embrace the freedom (opportunities) and responsibility (consequences) their choices entail. With its non-competitive activities and with the care and support of the camp counselors and staff, camp provides children fantastic opportunities to succeed. It’s a real boost to campers’ self-confidence and self-esteem when every day includes accomplishment. Of course, it can also include setbacks and disappointments, but summer camp is always supportive and encouraging. It inspires resilience by providing role models of courage and determination.

3. Humane growth: An overnight camp like Rockbrook is also a great place for children to strengthen and develop greater humane values. Starting with a general warmth and sensitivity toward others, camp fosters cooperation and respect. Camp is also a place to meet children from different countries with perhaps unfamiliar cultural assumptions and religious traditions. It provides real world reminders, despite these differences, of our common humanity.

4. Practical growth: Residential summer camps provide an incredible variety of activities for children. They combine quality instruction, equipment and facilities specially designed to challenge kids’ sports abilities (like tennis and horseback riding), nurture their artistic and creative talents (painting, ceramics, and dance for example), and build their outdoor adventure abilities— all practical, real world, life-long skills.

5. Physical growth: Camp is chock full of action! Whether it be swimming, jumping, climbing, dancing, riding or running, Rockbrook keeps girls in motion. It introduces them to all kinds of ways to develop physical skills. With all the great food (made from scratch!), outdoor living, and big active fun, camp has important health benefits for children.

Everyone knows Rockbrook is super fun, but in these five ways, it’s powerfully formative as well.

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January 27, 2011February 8, 2024 • Horseback Riding • Jeff Carter

A Confident Equestrienne

If you’re a horse kid, an equestrienne (a girl who loves all things horse related), then you will love the equestrian camp programs at Rockbrook. You’ll of course learn a lot about riding and improve your horseback skills, but you’ll also gain important equestrian confidence. This photo shows a little of that. It’s a great shot of what it feels like to be comfortable in the saddle, to really know and trust your horse, and to build up a set of instincts about horseback riding.

The secret to all of this is not just great horses and great riding instructors; it’s also making the equestrian lessons fun for kids. With the right match of horse and rider and the right level of instruction, you feel good in the activity, not worried about anything and certainly not bored either. At Rockbrook, we’re riding, and learning, and becoming more confident equestriennes, and having tons of fun doing it.

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January 21, 2011May 30, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

How to Raise a Humane Child

Our friend Tom Rosenberg at Blue Star Camps recently turned us on to Zoe Weil, the author of several books on “Humane Education” and the president of the Institute for Humane Education. He quite rightly claimed that the experience of camp is a powerful and effective way to bolster this kind of education for children. But what makes education “humane?”

Camp Counselor teaches children to be human

Looking at the Institute’s Web site, you find “Humane Education” instills:

the desire and capacity to live with compassion, integrity, and wisdom, but also provides the knowledge and tools to put our values into action in meaningful, far-reaching ways.

Humane education aims to inspire children to be curious, creative and thoughtful in their approach to the world, and thereby fosters a kind of warmth and sensitivity whereby they can be better problem solvers, help others, and lead more meaningful lives. The Institute has developed a body of lesson plans, books, videos and articles to help educators incorporate these goals and principles.

Much of this revolves around the notion of community and that’s why camp is so well suited to encourage humane education. Coming to Rockbrook means joining a close-knit community where campers and counselors alike agree to cooperate and respect each other. We live together in cabins, share chores, resolve disagreements, and experience firsthand the importance of honest communication. It’s the power of community that heightens our awareness and inspires humane values while at camp.

Most children experience far too little humane education and as a result fail to respond to many of the issues and challenges of our day. Camp can be one way to help raise a humane child. It can be a real lesson in community, in compassion, and in respect. We already knew camp was a special experience; now we know another reason why.

Zoe Weil doesn’t mention camp, but you can get a great sense of what she’s doing from this TED talk.

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January 13, 2011May 30, 2020 • News • Jeff Carter

NC Camps Impact the Economy

There’s big news coming out about western North Carolina summer camps. Back in March, the North Carolina Youth Camp Association and the American Camp Association, commissioned researchers at North Carolina State University to study the economic impact of summer camps in this region. Using online surveys, Dr. Michelle Gacio Harrolle and Dr. Samantha Rozier-Rich led the effort to measure all of ways camps contribute to the local economy. Certainly the camps themselves purchase local goods and services and hire regional employees, but camps also bring to the area staff members and families who likewise stay in hotels, eat at restaurants and visit local attractions.

How much does all this add up to? There are approximately 50 summer camps in Buncombe, Jackson, Henderson and Transylvania counties, so how much do they collectively add to the local economy? Or put differently, if the summer camps were hurt, how much could the economy be hurt?

Back in 1998 a similar study (same counties in North Carolina) showed summer camps generating, each year, almost 100 million dollars for local communities.

Today, the results of the economic impact study show a dramatic increase. The total economic impact of summer camps on these four NC counties is 365 million dollars. This is the total of direct, indirect and induced spending by the camps, their camper families and employees over one year, and reflects just how vital the summer camps are for the people in western North Carolina.

The full results of the study will soon be reported on the North Carolina Youth Camp Association’s Web site, but here are a couple of points from the executive summary.

53,238 families were surveyed for the study
$33 million in annual tax revenues are created by camps
49,665 families visited the region specifically for camp
$2,096 is the average expenditure per non-resident family while in the area

The effect of summer camps on local economies is far greater and more significant than most people would likely guess. With this study, we can finally quantify the crucial role camps play in western North Carolina.

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