ACA Home Forums Cedarledge! Let's Beat Last Year's Record!

I'm on Ad Staff, and so I help with pre-camp planning and training. I work in the office. But my main job is to help the unit leaders and unit staff. I plan the scheduling meetings and work with the Program Director on the CIT/WIT schedules and making sure each program is fulfilled (like one water unit gets to learn to snorkel in the pool - so we have to make sure that happens). And then I also help unit staff with any issues they may have and I'm the first person that talks to homesick kids (we kind of set up a tier system).

I evaluate unit leaders as well, so I plan on going to visit each unit during an in-unit activity once a week to see how the unit leaders are doing. I also plan on recognizing the strengths of unit staff and acknowleding them and such.

I'll help a lot with programming events as well since I work in the office.

Ok I get you! At the camp I was at we had 2 Ads who did this between them as well as AD stuff! And sometimes I would get really frustrated cos my first summer at the last camp one of our ADs had only been unit staff for 1 summer before becoming an AD and the other had never been unit staff - and they were supervising us - and I had more camp experience than either of them and they often completely ignored this!

It'll be my twelfth summer at camp and my fifth as staff. But I'm really lucky because the person who had my job for the past two summers will be here and our camp director is a former UL and the assistant camp director (my boss) has tons of camp experience. So hopefully it'll be okay! But I definitely want to make sure I don't ignore people with experience.

I wasnt saying that you didnt have experience - but the summer I was talking about it was my 5th at summer camp (even though my first at that camp) - and one of the ADs had 3 summers at camp and the other 4 years and sometimes they treated me like I had never been at camp before which was so annoying!

Oh I know you weren't saying anything about me --- sorry, I didn't take it that way at all. I was just trying to sympathize that people who work in the office should have experience but at the same time recognize others have experience/ideas/methods.

And I think it totally sucks when people are treated like new staff because they are new to our camp. Camp experience is camp experience no matter where it was gained!

Exactly I totally agree - and experience at other camps brings new and fresh ideas to a camp - I think that when camps become too set in their ways they start to stagnat - I have seen that - one of the camps I worked at would say things like "we dont sing that here" "thats not a camp ***** song!" which I found bother really frustrating and stupid - I mean why hire people from other countries and who have worked at other camps if you are not going to value their imput!

That's so true. There's a song a new staff member brought a few years ago that became an instant hit. And for those of us who have been at camp forever, it's nice to have new songs to sing!

It's also cool to see what unit activities people come up with and then you see it spread that summer. It's good for new ideas and activities to be used.

Plus new staff just bring an outside perspective and maybe something we thought was working well, new staff can show us that it isn't really effective or needs to be reworked.

Definately! Every year I was at my last camp I sugeested a nightly cleaning rota for our staff room - cos it had worked at a previous camp at this camp we needed to do something cos the staff house was a pig sty and it was never taken up - meaning that the first year shopper/driver/archery instructor had to do it and it could take her over as much as 2 hours to do, and the second year i was there it would only be done at the session breaks and could take a group or 3 or 4 staff as much as hour. Yet at the camp were I had been were it worked - one night a session you were expected to turn up at the staff lounge (they had rota) to clean it 15 mins before all camp lights out - and it didnt take more than a few minutes - the longest job being to sweep it - but because people knew that eventually it would be their turn to clean theykept the place tidy! And if you didnt turn up for your turn you had to clean out the slop buckets at the end of the session (except when I missed my turn - but I hadnt been feeling great and often did things I didnt need to during my TO).

We have all camp kapers everyday. And the unit that hops lunch and dinner counts that as their camp kapers and the unit that does flag counts that. But otherwise, right after dinner the entire camp does all camp kapers. Each unit is assigned an area that everyone on camp uses. And if there's a staff area in the area your unit cleans - then the staff are required to clean it. So like if campers are cleaning our rec porch and the meadow - then their staff cleans staff house. If your unit cleans the meadow outside new dining hall and then the staff cleans the staff bathrooms. So that idea also works at our camp! They should have listened! Haha!

It works for the staff bathrooms/showers - which we clean when the campers are doing theirs but that is the only area where we could do that - even thought the staff house porch is used by campers it isnt included in kapers because it really doesnt get that bad! I think the CD didnt see how bad it got cos she never used it - and there for thought if it it aint broke dont fix it!

Incidentally her first ever camp that she went to a child was cederledge! We were walking to the dining hall one day past her yurt and she heard me saying to one of my friend that the I was thinking of going to missouri this summer rather than returning to chenoa and she asked me if the camp I was thinking of was cedarledge cos she had gone there - what a small world it is!

Wow! That's crazy...it is such a small world! Do you know when she was at Cedarledge?


My first counselor ever was so incredible and I lost touch with her (as little campers do!). And then my sophomore year of high school, I found out she was the new journalism/English teacher - but I only found out because I wrote a series of essays for my English class on camp and my teacher put two and two together and because of her I got to re-meet one of the most influential people in my life! Camp makes the world so much smaller!

What part of the UK are you from Smudge?

It would have been about 20 years ago because is about 27 and she said she was 6 when she was there.

That must have ben really awesome to meet her again after such a long time. Are you still in touch with her?

I am orginally from the south coast but now live in sunny (not) scotland on the west coast.

I am still in touch with her. She actually just moved to New Mexico - but thankfully there's Facebook! She's taking a summer roadtrip this summer with an old camp friend - I'm hoping they'll stop by camp when they reach Missouri!

Sorry to hear Scotland isn't sunny - haha. We've had a few staff members from Scotland. Most of our international staff are from England and Australia though.

That has been my experience too - oftern times thought it really depends on where the camp goes to a recruitment fair as to where most brits will come from - eg if they only go to edinburgh they will have more scots than if they go to london and vice ver!sa!

they probably will come by camp - when ever we are near my old camps we swing by!

I think it'll be fun to visit camp after I stop working there - it'll always have a piece of my heart and it'll be cool to see the new changes and all of the old familiar sites as well.

We get our international staff from Camp America - so it's cool that we get people from all over. We've had staff from Scotland, England, Ireland, Germany, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.

We've had staff from Iceland? Ooh, don't forget South Africa!

CA rock! (not that I am biased you understand!)

The camps that I have worked at we have had staff from places like azebyjan (ok I am spelling it as it sounds not how it is really spelt), Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, france, germany, spain, poland, denmark, russia, kazakstan (again spelling it how is sounds!), South Africe, Egypt, thialand, mexico, the UK, poland, turkey, hungray, columbia, jamaica - and lots of other countries too!

When I did Roughin' It in 2002 my UL was from Iceland - her name was Tigger. And I thought we had someone from South Africa, but then I thought I was crazy!

I think it'd be cool to get staff from other countries. I'm studying Azerbaijan for my Post-Soviet Politics class and it'd be awesome to have a staff member from there. I'm a Political Science major with an International Relations minor - so I'd love to work with people from all over the world!

Stretch was from South Africa. She was there the year before I was a CIT I think.

we've had staff from Australia, South Africa, England, Spain, Germany, Scotland, Mauritius (an island near Madagascar) and many other places I am sure, but I don't really remember right now!

The places I remember internationals coming from my camp was England, Austrilia, South Africa, Ireland and Colmbia

oh yes, we've had Irish staff too.

I know one of the irish staff was hard to understand. As the summer went on, either his accent started to go away or I could understand his accent better. During staff orintation, even though he was speaking english, the accent was so deep it was like he was speaking a forigen language

We have had irish staff too! Infact last summer we had a girl come to camp from County Antrim in Norhtern Ireland - and our camp in the town of Antrim New Hampshire!

i had stretch, that was a good yearm, staff from all over would be great!