No matter what set of activities you sign up for at camp, there are two times each day when the lake is open for “free swim.” These are right before lunch and right before dinner. It’s up to you how you spend this free time, but it feels really great to jump in the lake for a swim after you’ve spent the day at other activities around camp. You might have been playing basketball with friends in the gym, or climbing the alpine tower, or just walking back from horseback riding, but chances are you’ll be at least little hot and sweaty. It’s summer after all! So head down to the lake, and you can meet up with some of your cabin mates and find out how they’ve been spending their day. The Rockbrook swimming lake is fed by a mountain stream, so as anyone will tell you, it’s guaranteed to cool you off.
The American Camp Association, the national accrediting organization for summer camps in the United States and American camp professionals is celebrating its 100 year anniversary. It was back in 1910 that it was founded under the original name of the “Camp Directors Association of America.”
As part of their celebration, the ACA has published a nice collection of historical photos, documents and interviews. It traces the history of organized camping to a particular event in 1861. Here’s how the timeline starts:
The Gunnery Camp is considered the first organized American camp. Frederick W. Gunn and his wife Abigail operated a home school for boys in Washington, Connecticut. In 1861, they took the whole school on a two-week trip. The class hiked to their destination and then set up camp. The students spent their time boating, fishing, and trapping. The trip was so successful, the Gunns continued the tradition for twelve years.
It’s nice to see summer camps so well represented, and interesting to think that Rockbrook’s founding in 1921 came so soon after the ACA. By the way, if you want to learn more about the history of summer camps, there are some great resources out there.
Head on over to the Chicago Tribune web site and read a fantastic article by Josh Noel entitled: Making a case for camp: This summer institution is old-fashioned — and as relevant as ever.
Describing a camp in Michigan, the article reminds us of why camp is so important to kids. As we’ve mentioned before, the benefits are so crucial given how most children these days find themselves at school and at home.
Anyone who has been to summer camp knows that the relationships are like few others. Friendships form quickly, intensely and with open minds. Even if camp friends don’t keep in touch long-term, what has been shared is long remembered. For many, it provides best moments of your life.
Camp is an open and friendly place. It’s where you can put aside your reputation from school, avoid a lot of the drama, and just relax into who you really are. That’s a big part of why you make your best friends at camp; you’re not trying to impress or be someone else. It’s just you, and you soon see, that’s just fine.
Once you experience it, you understand it, and you too will be coming back to camp for the friendships it provides.
If you could reform the common education of teenagers, change something about how teenagers today learn, or what they learn, what would you do? Looking around, what do you think teenagers need to understand? How do they need to change if they are to become happy, well-grounded, satisfied adults? Is there a skill, a personal value, some rule of thumb that you wish all teenagers today would adopt? Is there one crucial thing that today’s teens are missing, and as a result has placed them on a path toward trouble later in life?
You get the picture; the assumption here is that our young people are already having trouble, and aren’t measuring up to the ideal outcomes our education system, culture, and families define. It might be declining test scores, weak academic competencies (compared with children in other countries), unhealthy eating and exercise habits, poor social skills (e.g., difficulty making friends, disrespecting others), decreased creativity, or a general failure to overcome unexpected challenges. Any of these, or several, might be identified as the core problem facing our teenagers these days.
So what can we do to help? If your teen is slipping in any of these ways, how can you improve the situation, make a difference in some way? One proposal suggested, and increasingly so it seems, is to lengthen the school year. It’s claimed that organized classroom education provides the best chance to “reach” the youth and “make a difference in their lives.” As we’ve mentioned before, this is a weak, incomplete solution at best, one that fails to understand the complexities of youth development and the many dimensions it demands. It might be easy to understand and simple to measure, but extending the school calendar is not going to help our teenagers navigate their lives better. If your teen can’t make choices for herself, extra math homework isn’t going to help.
Again, what is there to do? How can we complement our current education system, augment what we already do in the classroom with learning that addresses the complete human being? What experiential gaps should we fill, opportunities should we create, models should we provide? What setting would best support these ordinarily neglected aspects of growing up?
One answer, we, and so many other youth development professionals, advocate is the benefits provided by summer camps. Camps are organized settings that encourage young people to reach beyond what they know, interact with others positively, take responsibility for their own decisions, physically engage the natural world, build self-esteem, and experience meaningful success. Summer camps are incredibly effective educational institutions, that camp parents will tell you, make a huge difference in the health and well-being of their children. Summer camps are just very good at helping children grow in these very important ways.
Yes, we should extend the education of our teenagers and children, not by lengthening the school year, but by providing greater experiential opportunities like those found at summer camps. Send your teenager to camp. That’s what you can do.
Can you do a handstand? Maybe not yet, but like all gymnastics skills, with a little practice, you’ll improve and be able to do it. Camps are the perfect place to try it, learn a few tips, and practice.
Here are a few tips to help you learn how to do a perfect gymnastics handstand.
First find a wall and use it to balance against. Stand back from the wall, plant your hands about a foot away, kick up, and lock your elbows.
Your arms should cover your ears. Your legs should be straight and together, and your toes pointed towards the ceiling.
Keep your stomach tight, and your back straight, not arched.
Look down at your hands, but don’t stick your head out too far.
When you feel your balance improving, you can try your handstand without using the wall. Here is where it’s good to have a spotter help you balance by holding your legs once you kick up.
Doing a handstand is one of those great camp gymnastics skills that’s fun to learn, exciting to practice, and super cool once you can do it.
One important mark of leadership for the staff at Rockbrook is their ability to model personal character for the girls at camp. We strive to hire cabin counselors and activity staff members who exemplify good character and thereby can serve as role models for the campers. It means a lot to children to see others they admire make good decisions. It’s just a crucial part of building character— having positive relationships with others who embody exemplary habits and attitudes. When we talk about “leadership” at camp, this is what we mean: being that sort of exemplary person.
But what is exemplary character, how do you recognize it, and how do you encourage its development? We’ve found the approach taken by the Josephson Institute to be extremely articulate and practical. It’s “Six Pillars of Character” is a well thought out resource. Essentially, the “pillars” are fundamental principles and values that serve as a core for ethical decision making. They are:
Trustworthiness
Respect
Responsibility
Fairness
Caring
Citizenship.
Without appealing to religion, politics or ideology, we strive to realize these six values in our camp community.
As a parent, have you ever felt you were driving around in circles, literally driving your kids from home to school, to sports or dance practice, to other lessons or weekly events? Would you say that your kids are scheduled and busy most of the time? Do they spend most of their time inside, and when they do have free time, how do they spend it? Watching TV, on the Internet, text messaging?
All of this is valuable, of course, with each activity exposing children to new ideas, information and challenges, but there’s a growing awareness that if overemphasized it can create problems as well. It’s becoming clear that children need time with nature too. They need the opportunity to explore the outdoors, to play outside without the time constraints of school, to feel the elements and reconnect with the wonders of the natural world.
The Children and Nature Network is an non-profit organization dedicated to researching this issue and providing resources for encouraging children’s health through outdoor activity and experience. It’s a great place to learn about the importance for children of direct experience of nature.
Summer camps, thankfully, are still ways for children to recover from the “nature deficit” they endure throughout the school year. Nature and camp just go together. Particularly at an overnight camp like Rockbrook, nature is a constant companion— the earthy smell, the feel of the weather, the surprising creatures, the plant life that’s everywhere you look. Sure camp offers crafts, adventure, sports and lots of silly fun, but every minute is also a chance to be with nature. It’s the greatest feeling, and is also, incredibly good for you.
Let’s not forget hiking! All the girls who come to Rockbrook can count on a hiking and camping adventure. It’s not required or anything, but just about everybody takes a special trip out of camp to spend a night camping out in the forest, either at one of our outposts (at the Nantahala River or nearby camp below Dunns Rock) or in the nearby Pisgah National Forest. Even the youngest campers look forward to being outdoors, sleeping in their sleeping bag, messing around with their flashlight 🙂 and of course, making s’mores over the campfire.
Hiking and camping like this is big fun for the girls, but more than that, it reconnects them with nature. Away from the ordinary distractions of being inside (home, school, car), they settle down and become more aware of the world around them. This makes it easier to appreciate the people around them too, and thereby to make friends. It’s amazing, but hiking and camping provides an almost magical context for girls to enjoy being with each other while at the same time growing socially.
Jeff Carter began his Rockbrook career in the 1980s. Over the years he has served camp in more capacities than most staff members. Hired by previous owner Jerry Stone, Jeff planned and led hiking and climbing trips in his first summers at camp.
During this time he pursued many education opportunities including his degree in comparative religions from Davidson College, where he was also an All-American high jumper on the track team. Then he received his masters degree from Harvard followed by his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He spent a year living in Nigeria on a Fulbright Fellowship completing his studies.
After marrying Sarah (at Rockbrook!) and teaching at Davidson College, he returned to Brevard to help Jerry start the Castle Rock Institute (a college humanities program run at camp). During this time, Jeff continued to work behind the scenes at camp leading trips, keeping us technologically up-to-date, and fixing everything!
While Rockbrook is in session, Jeff continues to be our “Jack of all Trades.” Combining his outdoor knowledge with his goofy sense of humor, he is always up to something new. During the off-season, he works on key staff hiring, website maintenance, health and ACA standards, camp improvements, and the list goes on. Also, when Jeff isn’t busy with camp director duties, he enjoys being outdoors: biking, hiking, and climbing. Typically he brings his two daughters, Eva and Lily, along for an adventure!
We hear this a lot, actually: that camp is a refuge. It’s a place where girls can escape the busy, sometimes overwhelming pace of their regular lives. For many young kids, each day is a bombardment of stimuli, new information and entertainment. There are school responsibilities, social demands, and activities at home all demanding attention. Increasingly, parents have noticed that the intensity of their children’s lives is making them more anxious, fearful, and worried. There’s so much going on, it’s difficult for kids to really connect with the people (family and friends) around them, adding even more to the burden of handling everything on their own. Everything around them seems to be shouting, and sometimes it’s just too much!
Thank goodness for camp. It really can be a refuge, a huge relief from all of this. Simply being outside, unplugged from rapid-fire electronic stimulation, is a powerful antidote. Having daily opportunities to engage creative talents, physical challenges, and deep social/personal relationships is so welcome, kids just blossom in a camp setting. It’s the greatest gift to simply have time to relax, to play in the creek, dress a little silly, or chat with a friend in the porch rocking chairs. The environment of a kids camp is a powerful healthy response to the extreme busyness of ordinary life. It always has been, and these days, it seems like it’s needed more than ever.
