We are incredibly excited to welcome our First Session campers on Monday! After our forced closure last summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this coming arrival day feels extra special to all our staff. And speaking of our staff, they’ve been working hard over the past two weeks to prepare for Summer 2021.
Educational sessions and team building exercises are key components of our staff training.
Over 90 staff have traveled to Johns Island, all of them eagerly awaiting our campers’ arrival in just a few days. Staff members have been busy pitching tipis, setting up program areas, learning and practicing outdoor skills, completing their wilderness first aid and lifeguard certifications, and building community. Staff training is an incredibly busy time on Johns Island, and for good reason!
Pitching tipis and tents requires a lot of elbow grease!
More extensive than many other programs’ training modules, our staff training is an intensive time of group education, practical instruction, team building, and personal and interpersonal growth. Training sessions include safety and risk management role-playing scenarios, child development seminars, workshops on how to give and receive feedback, and experiential opportunities to practice camping and outdoor skills. In addition, our staff have been working tirelessly to set up their department areas, pitch tipis and tents, distribute bedframes and mattresses, plan activities for their campers, and ensure that our facilities and grounds are safe and clean.
Tipi pitching brings teams of staff together as they learn to communicate and cooperate with one another.
Even amidst all the activity, our anticipation has been growing as the countdown to the start of First Session continues. We can’t wait to put all of the things we’ve been learning and practicing into use when our campers get to Johns on Monday. Stay tuned for more updates as Camp opens and Summer 2021 officially kicks off!
Once the canvases are up, there’s still work to be done setting up bedframes and mattresses inside all the camper tipis and tents!
A note about our Summer Blog: We’ll be updating our Summer Blog a few times a week throughout the summer season. Expect to see a photo or two of camp life, read about session highlights, and join us in spirit as we celebrate another wonderful, surprising, challenging, and life-shaping summer at Camp Nor’wester.
We continue to uphold our commitment to providing an independent experience for our campers, and so our blog is meant to offer a short and sweet snapshot of what you can expect to hear about much more fully from your campers when they return home. It is their story to tell – and we encourage you to ask them to tell it! For now, we remain committed to giving each camper a special place and time in which to experience, process, and write their own stories.
We look forward to sharing these glimpses into the summer with you – and extending a bit of the Nor’wester magic to you in the process!