[this is an e.mail I sent to a professor for an assignment but it sums up things pretty well so I thought I'd post it here too!]
I finally have a bit of time to tell you about my camp adventures! The population I worked w/ during the first session was the youngest boys on camp (other than Day Camp) and they were either 10 or 11. There were 3 of them in a bunk w/ myself, four other male counselors and 3 other female counselors. It may seem like a lot of staff but one of the males works with Day Camp so we only ever saw him @ our bunk meeting before bed, one of the women & one of the men had rest hour off to plan for their program, and one of us always had a day off. So it was good to have as many people as we did.
I don’t work w/ a specific group during the day but I go where I’m needed, I take photos and e-mail them to parents, I track the child’s goal progress and announce it before lunch when they complete goals, and I track this new program Camp Starfish is doing called Tag Up which is a way kids can earn badges like they would in Girl Scouts in each program area. I’m also with my bunk during meals, for Rest Hour and Evening Program, and for wake-up and bed-time routines. Camp Starfish also has two hours of Free Play a day so when I’m not assigned to a post to watch over a certain area I am with a camper for an hour in the morning & an hour in the afternoon.
This session (Camp Starfish has two two-week sessions, one three-day session & a three-week session!) I am with the oldest boys and it’s very challenging. Today two of the boys in my bunk were extremely close to getting in to a fight and two of the Administrators had to put one of the campers in a hold…This kind of behavior is what I would say has been the most challenging. The boys are 14 and nothing seems to work with them; at least not consistently. There is little rhyme or reason to what works with whom at any given point in time so even if we as the counselors in their bunk try to be consistent it is still chaos. Another challenge is that I’m also the only girl counselor in my bunk and the male counselors aren’t always very open to the female presence. They will either tell me to ignore a child when I think something I have to say might work or interrupt me/talk over me when I’m working with a child & take over. Too much of this has brought me to withdraw from the bunk and correcting the negative behavior of the campers but then sometimes I feel like I’m not engaging them enough. The dilemmas are also quite petty and childish and the two boys that almost got in a fight today constantly say (somewhat jokingly) that we’re racist because one of them is black and the other is hispanic and we like the white boy in our bunk the best. which…isn’t true. obviously.
I really enjoy being with these boys and the other campers when they’re being appropriate and not being incredibly immature but the bad times are really hard. It’s hard to get told to “stfu” (shut the fuck up) and having one of them call my name to only call me an “asshole” in sign language then stay positive about what you’re possibly doing to help these boys. The thing about these hard moments is that they make the positive times even better. We’re able to thank the boys and give them positive attention for the slightest bit of good behavior. Working in a residential setting is SO much different than seeing clients for an hour @ my previous internship but it’s really good experience to not only see the variance in therapeutic settings but also the chilren over two-week periods. I’ll definitely have a lot to tell when I get home!
take a listen…
