Coaching emotional skills at camp.

You bet you can!

Have you ever thought about camp as a place where we could coach emotional skills just as we teach athletic competence? Why not spotlight self-esteem as the touchstone of the camp experience? Or empower your staff with tools to motivate good behavior? If you target self-awareness competencies, you will embrace the paradigm shift that is occurring in the camp field.

You can be on the cutting edge by helping your campers recognize their own emotional strengths and identify their goals. Camp is a place where children practice growing up by developing self-worth and dignity, integrity and control, empathy and citizenship - by belonging, learning, and contributing. Camp offers the perfect environment for courage to surge and choices to unfold.

Can you do it? You bet you can!

Actually, most of your activities are already in place. You can focus on the emotional fabric of campers' lives by weaving a core vocabulary into their experience. What better time to talk about courage than before that first dive into the pool? The cognitive frame gives campers, counselors, and parents a new pattern for success. Before you know it, you have woven self-esteem into your program.

If childhood is the window of opportunity for emotional growth, then camp is the consummate setting for young people to identify their talents and pursue their goals. Camp is not just a place, it is an attitude. It is an exceptional village where cooperation and independence flourish, friendships are nurtured, teamwork is paramount, and self-discovery is at the root of every activity.

Why not introduce an inspirational message as the underpinning of summer fun? Try heralding a theme, such as "You bet I can!" and watch self-esteem soar! The strategy is simple: establish, then talk about and implement your objectives with campers, staff, and parents. And do not forget to include the media!

Remember, camp is a vital part of young people's total education because it provides experiences and opportunities that school cannot. Camp's youth-centered milieu enables every camper to achieve, fostering emotional intelligence - regarded as the most significant predictor of success today. Camp professionals can validate their roles in youth development while providing that special atmosphere where campers can find their wings and live their dreams.

Laying out the pattern

What, besides fun, do young people want from camp? They want to make friends, feel welcome and included, be treated with respect and fairness, develop trust with peers and counselors, and feel emotionally secure and physically safe.

What do parents look for in the camp experience? A recent American Camping Association survey found that while parents want their children to have fun, they also seek help with values training, positive supervision and personal attention, broadening experiences, and friendship skills. They also list safety and year-round child care as key issues.

What are staff goals? Camp staff want to positively impact campers' lives, enjoy the outdoors, and build job skills. They also want to have fun and enjoy the camp community's camaraderie.

Is there a common denominator among these three distinct markets? By hooking the concepts of self-esteem and self-awareness into camp activities, you can stitch a partnership with parents and staff.

Threading the theme

Announce a slogan, then make it come alive with programming buttressed by staff development. Often, all it takes is a slightly different focus to highlight the self-esteem objective. There are six vital ingredients you can easily weave into the camp day.

Instill physical safeness

Instill physical safeness by creating an envelope of safety, a metaphor for boundaries. Instead of just building a cocoon, talk with parents, staff, and campers about promoting a protected environment. Stress responsibility and cooperation as qualities essential to campers' successful development. When defining your camp's philosophy, espouse freedom within limits. Promote positive discipline techniques along with communication skills.

Build emotional security

Encouragement builds courage and self-esteem. While self-esteem is a deliberate, cerebral function, courage flows from the heart and forms the foundation of personality.

Try redefining some adages. Redefine winning to mean giving maximum effort to achieving your personal best. Focus on individual fulfillment. Teach camp staff unbiased methods for choosing teams.

Build a library around book titles that champion the themes of friendship, perseverance, respect, integrity, and empathy, such as George and Martha and Amazing Grace. Identify private places around the camp where groups can read these stories and celebrate their own uniqueness.

Create a sense of identity

Create a sense of identity by developing traditions and embellishing legends. Make every person feel connected to the camp's origins. Designate special days, such as "I Make a Difference Day," and ask each to acknowledge everyone's contributions. Use a ribbon or other item as a tangible commemoration of the event.

Encourage making good choices and being responsible for those decisions by incorporating age-related options into activity programming. Identify these as "club" or "elective" times.

Teach campers about their unique talents through lessons that can be adapted to weekly camp sessions. "Free the Horses" is a multimedia adventure designed for first-through third-graders. It targets thinking and acting skills that help build high self-esteem. If every second grader participated in "Free the Horses," each of your campers would learn how belonging, learning, and contributing create success. Augment the teaching manual by using your own ideas. Lead a treasure hunt through the "Swamp of Can't Do" or conduct a search for the "Key of Cooperation."

Develop a sense of belonging

Ask each group to write and uphold a code of living. They should draft the document using positive statements such as, "We will respect everyone's feelings," instead of, "Don't tell others that they are wrong." Have members sign the agreement and distribute copies to all. The counselor keeps the original and refers campers to the code when issues develop within the group.

Celebrate camp with activities that unite youth in a magical place. Create traditions such as the Pow-Wow Circle, a ritual where campers gather and listen to tales in a place where everyone is equal and friendship reigns. Choose games that link arms and lives, where cheers extol the bonds of living and working together. Teach the following chant to campers: everyone slaps their knees, claps their hands, clicks their fingers twice, points, and shouts "Yea!"

Nurture a sense of competence

Nurture a sense of competence by tying self-esteem into special events. Give campers opportunities to muster their courage and focus their attention on new coachable skills; then watch their emotional strength rocket! Week-long workshops in areas such as circus arts intensify the experience by enabling campers to immerse themselves in self-esteem building activities, such as juggling scarves or tumbling through a hoop of fire! What other venue offers such a hands-on validation of children's competence, concentration, and commitment?

Achieve a sense of mission

Before long, campers, staff, and even parents will echo the emotional themes of summer. "You bet I can!" will become the rallying cry among your clientele. Highlight self-talk, the encouragement you give yourself by telling yourself that you really can accomplish your goals, and discuss courage when motivating children to approach new vistas or accept new challenges. Remind parents that your goals include coaching friendship skills. Train staff to model positive behavior and communicate emotional competence. Affirm your theme by creating a ceremony or special event: physically free the horses from your corral after finding the keys to success and courage or write an original "Courage Show," starring camp staff. Self-confidence will triumph with every activity!

Matching the seams: partnering with parents

Identify your objective: to partner with parents to help their children grow into successful adults. In a world of uncertainty, show parents that they can count on the camp director and staff and that you share their concern for values training. Demonstrate your commitment to youth in your newsletters, press releases, and by inviting staff development speakers to conduct evening or preseason parent workshops.

Set up seminars that manifest your valuable role in their children's lives. Promote topics such as "How to Motivate Great Behavior in Children" or "Top Ten Dilemmas Facing Parents Today." Remind parents that riding an elephant is an act of courage when you bring these gigantic animals in for a special event. Publicize your commitment wherever you can. Explain your staff development workshops in a letter to parents, on the Internet, or through your local newspaper.

Sewing the darts: staff orientation

How do you make it happen? Deliver on your promise by focusing your staff orientation and training on emotional skills. While programming supports your theme, instruction guarantees it. When you arm your staff with tools that nurture emotional competence, you forge a bond in your camp community that empowers your counselors to have a profound, positive effect on campers.

Staff orientation should focus on camp's impact on campers' success. Counselors should know they have the ability to instill character qualities, such as friendship skills, stress management, delaying gratification, controlling impulses, and decision-making, by building on strengths, showing confidence, having reasonable expectations, and fostering independence. Staff training is the foothold for implementing the emotional quotient or E.Q. model. It can emphasize the four qualities that help children thrive: responsibility, cooperation, courage, and self-esteem.

Consider inviting experts to lead orientation or staff development sessions. Include local mental health professionals, motivational speakers, community leaders, and educators in addition to child development experts. The American Camping Association's National Public Awareness Committee can send speakers to talk to local ACA gatherings on building self-esteem in camp. ACA's video Camp Gives Kids a World of Good presents fundamental messages that introduce the emotional opportunities available at camp.

Conduct workshops during the camp season. You can avoid overloading everyone with information during orientation by providing summer-long learning opportunities to discuss managing positive behavior, developing responsibility, and winning cooperation. Also, consider offering a corresponding educational seminar for parents, which will help create an alliance and explain the camp's philosophy.

As you become more comfortable with the emotional intelligence theme, devise a toolbox of staff handouts. Many excellent staff training resources outline positive motivational approaches to emotional literacy. They cover making good choices, utilizing logical consequences, active problem-solving, modeling a positive attitude, group dynamics tips, key strategies, secret signals, and defining winning. Outline these concepts and photocopy them onto index cards or create bookmarks staff can refer to regularly.

Putting it together

Want a visual reminder? Make buttons that read "You Bet I Can!" for campers and "You Bet You Can!" for staff. Badges can be ordered or made during arts and crafts. Encourage everyone to wear their buttons daily.

Use your imagination! Challenge your staff! Incorporate self-talk and goal setting into everything you do at camp. If you show a movie on a rainy day, pick one that supports perseverance or respect. If you bring in an entertainer, select one whose songs target honesty or anger management. If you present a musical, select The Wizard of Oz. If you give camel rides, emphasize the courage required to take a known risk for a known purpose. During campfires, tell tales about integrity, citizenship, or friendship. Build your own traditions and legends around emotional skills and watch them weave their way into your camp's essence.

Ready to wear

Once your camp commits to the thesis, let the neighborhood know! When promoting your camp's juggling workshops in news releases, quote the visiting artist as saying, "Juggling is just my cover. What I really teach is success." If you plan circus arts workshops, quote the director as saying, "The circus opportunity enables campers to believe in themselves by accomplishing goals they never thought possible!" You might expand the theme by inviting children from the Fresh Air Fund or another local charitable organization, building on the idea that camp is for everyone. Then send out a news release that centers on teaching empathy and citizenship and that concludes with the statement, "They've shared their experiences and our campers have a new awareness and appreciation of themselves and others."

Once the theme actually becomes the camp culture, you will find that fun is the foundation that builds self-esteem and courage. You will have carved out a valuable and vital role for the camp experience because you will have created the ultimate climate for success - a place where young people feel safe, loved, and capable.

References

Ditter, B. Lifelines and Safety Nets. Martinsville, IN: American Camping Association.

Ditter, B. (In Press). In the Trenches: Answers from the expert to the toughest questions you face. Martinsville, IN: American Camping Association.

Evans, F. & Sanborn, J. (1996). Beginnings and Endings. Camping Magazine(68) 5.

Popkin, M. Active Parenting. Atlanta: Active Parenting Publishers.

Popkin, M. Free the Horses. Atlanta: Active Parenting Publishers.

Young, B. How to Develop Self-Esteem in Your Child.

Marla Coleman, owner/director of Coleman Country Day Camp in Merrick, N.Y., is a member of ACA's Public Awareness Committee.