How many positions can you think of where your job’s primary responsibility is to play outside and have fun? While camping folks love the fun and excitement of summer programming, we also know it can be emotionally and physically exhausting. To combat this burnout, we schedule off-time (duh!). Over the past several summers and emphasized by unique Covid programming, we have noticed that the provided off time has failed to rejuvenate our frontline staff. Our staff were making claims about surviving the summer, rather than thriving.
With exclamations like these, we saw this as a call to action-how can we meaningfully balance off-time and still meet programing and cabin needs? Instead of “squeezing” in off time for our staff as an afterthought to programming, we began asking how we can provide our staff with more beneficial time that surpasses minimum requirements.
If willing, please fill out this 3 minute, 6 question SURVEY regarding counselor off-time. We will share the results in a following EOM! By reevaluating this programming, we are hoping our frontline staff will not state “I survived the summer,” but rather “I thrived this summer.”
Maggie Lewicki