However, as a camp administrator I firmly believe that we must further this curriculum to include our camp staff as well. Camp is the perfect environment for teenagers/young adults to learn life skills. The very term counselor-in-training combines the acknowledgment of being a learner, with the responsibility of being a teacher. Like you said, some circumstances at camp involve matters of safety, so there are times everyone must be in top form. Yet, other times issues may be less intense – arriving on time, appropriate body language, or speaking to a parent. These are the instances where we as administrators can offer our young staff guidance that will allow them to become well-rounded adults in the future.

I run social skills groups for kids on the spectrum and find that many can tell you what a social rule or norm in when things are calm but have an execution problem. Teens can be the same way with inconsistent execution. Seems that is almost worse than my spectrum kids because I know not to let them go without proper supervision but I sometimes get lulled into a false sense of security with my high functioning teens, forgetting they will have lapses.

Can I ask you what widget/plugin you are using to get users to “recieve posts via email”. I've been looking for something like this for my blog.

Thanks!

A great advantage of the summer camp staff experience is that it provides a safe place – with plenty of back up – to make mistakes.

One thing that we drilled in to our staff (it became our most important mission-tool) was the “4 S's”. The Four S's are a decision making instrument that all staff and campers must practise.

In order to do anything at camp you must first answer Yes to ALL of the Four S Questions:

- Is it Safe?
- Does it Serve the others in the community?
- Does it build Self-Esteem?
- Is it good Stewardship of the environment?

Only then can you proceed.

That made a HUGE difference in our camp culture and made it easy to trust the decision making skills of our young adults.