Summer Camp Blog | Smoke Signals | Camp Merri-Mac for Girls » How to choose a summer camp

Returning Staff

Adam — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:43:52 +0000

One of the most important questions a first year parent can ask is how many of your staff return each summer? Counselors who love camp love sharing it with new campers. They do it for the same reason that we play our favorite music for friends, or talk about our children, or church, or anything else we care about. It is in our DNA to share things we love with other people. Counselors who love camp come back, and become insiders, and they love inviting others to become insiders too. Great camps are always about making first year campers become camp insiders, and returning staff is the starting place for this.

The good news is that we already have a fantastic group of returning staff for this summer…and a couple of exciting first-timers.

So Who’s On Board So Far?
In addition to our adult staff we’ve hired: Anna Herring., Amelia Wallace, Mary Becker Menendez, Anna Southard, Rachael Brouwer, Chassidy Smith, Mary Page Boyd, Renee Easterlin, Kelly Jeffries, Clare Sullivan, Laura Gordon, Elizabeth Powell, Meg Merritt, Kaila Lessner, Haley Fulford, Corbin Aiken, Madison Mirandi, Kelly Branning, Biz Schill, Sallie Gurganus, Lee Bolton, Casey LaBrosse, Mary Beth Lawrence, Natalie Brouwer, Anne Pellegrino, Annie Grace Shaffer, Kate Miller, Meredith Wilson, Jan Bellows, Catherine Custard, Morgan Sobol, Melinda Rankin, Robin Fearheiley, Mary Jarnagin, Jennifer Porter, Erin Fischer, Morgan Rutledge, Amanda Tappan, Claire Porte, Katherine Albanese, Ellen Valle, Falon Doutrich, Patti-O, and Anne Archer….And it is just January so are also a lot of other girls from last year just about to commit. Stay tuned for updates.

From This Haven…
Adam and Ann

Single Gender Camping

Adam — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:12:00 +0000

Not long ago I was having lunch at Merri-Mac with my friend George. He had recently retired from 15 years as a camp director and he missed camp. As we finished eating the girls cleared their tables and then the tribal leaders stood on their benches and began leading their tribe songs. First Iroquois would cheer, and then Seminole would answer, finally Choctaw rallied in response. George was stunned and he asked me what they were doing. Who was leading this? Was it a special day? I said simply, “George, this is lunch. After the tribe songs they will sing side by side, then the Princess Song, and finally the announcement song.” I then explained that at dinner we would sing cabin and state songs, and at breakfast the next morning we would sing breakfast songs. Of course there were also chapel songs, and Lakeside songs, and Final Campfire songs, but that was getting off subject. I got the impression that George had never seen anything like this, and I knew exactly why. George had directed a co-ed camp, and girls will not stand up and sing, at least not like they do at camp, with boys in the room. I think that is sad, because you have never seen a person have more fun than when they sing with their friends.

Most people agree that boys and girls develop differently. In general girls develop language more quickly while a boy’s develop in their visual/spatial abilities. Other studies show that boys focus when under stress while girls tend to take less risk in stressful situations. So it is no surprise that children consistently perform better in single-gender schools. Settings focused on their particular strengths are simply going to be more effective.

Camp, however, is different. We are not making our campers better students (though I suspect they are), we are making them happier, more adventurous people. Our strength is that camp is both an intensely social (we live together!) and a low stress setting. The result is a place where it is safe to try new things. It is a place where the girls live together in their cabins as families, and like a family, it is a place where they can cheer for each others’ success and encourage each other when they fail. This is why girls who attend single-gender camps are more likely to develop a healthy sense of adventure, make life-long friends and return year after year.

Adam Boyd

What Camp Offers

Adam — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:19:29 +0000

You have probably heard from a million different people the benefits of camping for kids. Or as you scour the web for the best camp for your child there are aspects of each that seem to “fit” what you think your child needs and then there are others that don’t. The fact is that there are so many types of camps (and so many types of children) that bringing the two together (your child and a camp) is not an easy! As a parent and a camp director I have found one common concern that I think most parents can relate to:

We want our kids to find success. Whether it is in a particular sport, the arts, social skills, or spiritually, there is nothing quite like seeing a child excited about something that they are personally investing themselves in. The problem I hear about from most parents (which I can absolutely relate to with my own family) is that their child has not yet found their best avenue for success. At this point the path of least resistance is often to gravitate towards video games where no one knows if you try and fail! Insert a good summer camp here.

A good summer camp will provide:

Plenty of activity options for your child to gradually invest themselves in. No child is the same and there should be a healthy variety of interesting possibilities to choose from.
The opportunity for each camper to measure their success within each activity. They need to see their own progress and be rewarded for their efforts.
An environment where failure is not a source of fear. Some children are so afraid of failure that the possibility paralyzes them from pushing ahead. Camp can be a unique environment to try new avenues of success without fear because:

Everyone is learning new things at the same time so it becomes part of the culture.
A child is in an entirely new surrounding both socially and physically. This offers them the opportunity to re-make themselves into a person who thrives in this new, uplifting camp environment.

Counselors who care about the children finding success. The greatest part about camp for me as a boy was the fact that these amazing, college-aged men actually wanted to spend time getting to know who I was. My parents had told me a lot of things about life that I needed to do (and what to avoid) but I heard those things only marginally. However, when my counselors said the same things I hung on every word and incorporated those things into my life immediately! The result was lifelong.

In the right camp setting, children can walk away from their camp experience with more ability to handle what life throws at them. They can know finally what success looks like personally. And they can walk unafraid of failure. This will help them when they go off to college, get married, make tough business decisions, make tough family decisions, and they might even learn how to tie some handy knots for wilderness survival in the process!

Dan Singletary

Director