Cleaning your cabin with campers. It doesn’t need to be as painful and boring as it is!
Welcome to episode 13 of First Class Counsellors!
Don’t you hate it when you watch people litter? Or how about when people leave their shopping cart in the middle of the lot? It probably makes you think, “dang, I bet that person didn’t go to summer camp!”.
One of the biggest lessons that we can teach our campers is the value of serving their community. We have the incredible opportunity to help them understand that their actions have the ability to make other people’s lives easier through simple acts. When we have campers collecting the plates after a meal, doing a camp-wide chore, or even cleaning their cabin, we teach them that they are responsible for taking care of their neighbours and camp through acts of service.
That’s all well and good, but cleaning the cabin can still be the WORST. Right?
We hear you. If parents around the world struggle to get their kids to clean their rooms every day, then we’ve got to muster all of our camp magic and creativity to make it happen at camp. Let’s do this together! First Class Counsellors is here to help.
Tune in to this episode. We’ll guide you through:
The standard of clean that every cabin should keep itself to
How to get every camper on board with cleaning - even the ones who HATE it!
Creative ways to make the cabin cleaning process a little less painful and a lot more magical
Some pro tips for deep cleans, things every camper/staff miss and how to keep your local health and fire inspector happy
A shout out to MTV cribs - and a super cool program idea for your cabin!
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As usual, we hope that what we offer to your staff is incredibly useful. If you do send this along, we would be happy to hear about it. Please let us know by emailing Matt at matt@gocamp.pro
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Get Ready - Counsellors, do this NOW to level up your counselling skills
Oliver:
Take time to draw a picture or pictures of camp. Send them on to your camp director and they can post it on social media as a counselor art contest. It can be a game - can you guess what the picture is or which staff member drew it?
Matt:
Get your application and/or paperwork in. This time of year is the time when the keeners can shine. If you can get all your stuff in and even start on any pre-training, your directors will love you for it and know that you are someone they can count on.
Host Links
Oliver Gregan, Summer and Families Camp Director at YMCA Camp Jewell
Matt Honsberger, Executive Producer of Podcasting at Go Camp Pro
What is First Class Counsellors?
Camp Directors, this Podcast isn’t for you. It’s time to delegate! First Class Counsellors is for your counselling staff, the ones who are on the ground, playing with kids and changing lives.
Each week, we’ll cover practical and accessible tips that will level up your camp counsellor skills. These are things every counsellor should know, but that you may not have time to teach in staff training.
Our two hosts, Oliver Gregan, Summer and Families Camp Director at YMCA Camp Jewell and Matt Honsberger from Go Camp Pro are excited to be able to provide this resource to camp counsellors and up and coming staff, who they believe, have the most important job at camp.