Camp Should Be Diet-Free! A Camp Staff Training

We initially posted our Eating plan-Totally free Camp Culture Personnel Training in Might 2019. Then we posted it once more in 2021, for the reason that numerous summer camps opened back again up right after staying shut in 2020 thanks to the pandemic. We hope that all camp personnel functioning with younger youngsters can try to keep their camp diet plan-no cost! Be sure to share this submit and camp staff training with directors and staff of camps your kids show up at.

Down load our updated camp employees training lesson right here.  

A letter to my daughter’s camp counselor

In the summer months of 2018, I sat down to produce a weblog post late at night time immediately after I picked up my daughter from two weeks absent at summer months camp.  I had prepared to create a submit about straightforward summertime no-cook meals. But I was acquiring difficulty getting my words and phrases on paper. I opened a new doc and commenced composing what I genuinely preferred to generate. I wrote a letter to my daughter’s camp counselor. After I picked her up earlier that working day, my then 12-yr-outdated daughter had advised me her counselor was on a diet plan and “counting her steps” in preparation for a post-camp vacation to the Caribbean. My children’s camp is in the mountains. And the days are filled with swimming, kayaking, rock climbing, athletics, and operating up and down the hills of camp.

I hated to feel that a food plan interfered with anyone’s intellect and physique experiencing the joys of camp. Even though I was absolutely not shocked, it designed me sad that diet tradition had afflicted my 12-yr-old’s camp expertise. I also know that this is the norm in our tradition and absolutely the camp or the counselor hadn’t performed anything intentionally erroneous. 

My submit An Open Letter to My Daughter’s Camp Counselor was shared online over the summertime. It seemed to strike property for a great deal of moms and dads.

Summer months Camp Culture

I was a camp person. I went to summer time camp for 8 summers as a kid. And then I was a camp counselor for numerous several years in higher college and school. Summer months camp is this sort of a exclusive position. It’s a place taken off from the “real globe,” without the need of technological innovation. It is absolutely free of lots of of the social rules little ones encounter all 12 months. And camp is a area wherever acceptance and kindness are expected. Summer season camp focuses on character advancement, experiencing fears, getting independence, and attempting new points. When you are at camp, you are immersed in a new culture – Camp Culture. Camp Culture features singing silly tunes, providing heaps of hugs, encouraging other folks, treatment packages, wearing bathing suits for 50 % the day, crafting letters with pen and paper, and looking up to the counselors. And a concentration on fat or diets only interferes with the mission of summer camp.

Older youngsters and youthful older people, the counselors, are place in demand of the each day lifestyle of younger small children. There are no moms and dads there to make a kid use matching clothes. No just one double-checks that they brush their teeth very well. While cared for and safe and sound, the young children have a exclusive kind of independence with their younger counselors in charge of day-to-day daily life. The youngsters seem up to their counselors and want to be just like them. They listen to them if they are conversing about losing weight or dieting. Camp Tradition wants to be diet-totally free. 

Camp Staff members Teaching

As summertime methods and university semesters occur to a close, camp staff members members close to the nation are accumulating to get all set for summer time camp and the hundreds of 1000’s of young children who will be in their care. The counselors will have considerable employees training to master about the values of camp and the value of currently being a excellent job model for the campers. The personnel training will consist of protection procedures, leadership development, staff developing, music, eating hall rules, and schedules. It is my hope that camp administrators will include things like information and facts about the hurt of eating plans and diet regime converse in their workers teaching. Because meal plans are so commonplace, details about dieting is not incorporated as an critical section of teaching these who shell out time with our kids. Nevertheless, preserving food plan culture out of the functions our small children are associated in unquestionably suits with the values of numerous of these actions.

Absolutely free Camp Workers Instruction Lesson

We desired to offer you a short staff source that can be involved in summer time workers schooling in the coming weeks. Camp Administrators! Obtain our employees education lesson, Diet regime-No cost Camp Tradition, for your camp workers schooling.

Mom and dad, would you share this with your child’s camp? I imagine the very best way to make a change is via the voice of mom and dad. We inspire you to share this with the directors of the camps your youngsters show up at. We’ve accomplished that and we have emailed American Camp Association to share the education with them.

Camp Administrators, if you use this as part of your camp employees education or probably make your mind up not to, I’d adore to receive your feedback on how this information can access camps far better and extra evidently.  Remark under with your responses and strategies!

Obtain our staff members schooling lesson for your upcoming camp team teaching.