To say we are excited is an understatement. It’s already day nine of twelve days of staff training and it’s going extremely well. Counselors have taken an intensive lifeguarding course, gone on a hiking overnight, freshened their teaching and activity skills, and painted, cleaned and organized. Trisha Miller a noted area psychologist has taught two sessions on child development, a panel of parents is conveying parental expectations, a teacher is giving us hints on how to improve our teaching, and we have done endless scenarios and discussions.
Camp looks the best it’s looked this century. We can’t renovate it all in just a year – but we are already a year ahead of our improvement plan. A new rope swing is in place on the diving tower. A second new mountain biking trail is being completed. Two new mini golf holes are in (more to come throughout the summer) and the game room has been renovated. The girls have new steps up to their newly renovated bathroom and the boys have new steps down to theirs. We will keep going with improvements all summer long. Camp should look even better when you pick up your child than it does on opening day.
Alice is hard at work cooking in the kitchen. We are eating very well. But more important than the food, the campus, or the activities is the counselors; the mentors and role models that make Camp special and worthwhile. This is an incredible counselor team – super bright, incredibly committed, great role models – eager to get kids outside, having fun and making close friends. All of our cabin counselors are former Adventure Treks students. They completely get how to facilitate a culture of kindness and how to build a community. They are not strangers to hard work, either! We can’t wait for you to meet our Counselor team. They are eager to work their magic.
The program looks great. There is all kind of new equipment and toys. As busy as we will be, we have built in some time for free play in nature for our younger students and some blocks of free choice activities. Then there are our Ventures. Every camper who wants to will get to summit a mountain, whitewater raft, mountain bike on a forest trail, see DuPont’s waterfalls, camp overnight and roast marshmallows, and rock climb. And that is just the beginning. Not bad for just two weeks!
We will now move from our public Blog to our internal blog, Pinnacle Posts for our summer communication for parents!
Have a great Fourth of July. See you on opening day!
Dock and Jane, Ben, Cait, Charlie and Maggie