Originally posted by Mainer:
Privacy? I don't get the whole privacy issue with names and having a camp name. I mean as a staff person if you feel you need some privacy from the campers by keeping your real name private from the kids I hope you're not a teacher. It goes to figure that if you are worried about you're privacy with kids then you'd be worried about it at a school teaching kids. I.e, if you're worried about campers finding out where you are won't you be worried about students finding out where you are as well? Your campers are your students during the summer. Yes, as a counselor you are a "teacher".
Just a quick response to this. Campers get a lot closer to their counselor, than students to teachers. Counselors live with their campers, and there is a lot more conntact, you see these kids 24/7. A teacher only sees his/her students for about 7 hours a day, or less. I do think that if there was "stalking" issue, a camper would be more likely to "stalker" their counlser, and not their teacher.
I have had problems with privacy, and the camp names do help. Two summers ago I gave my e-mail address to two campers that I got pretty close to. We started e-mailing, and that was fine. On my e-mail, the topic heading said it was sent by Tina. So, those two campers found out my real name (they didn't ask at camp), no big deal. Then a few weeks later my cell phone rang with a number that I had never seen before... it was one of the campers, they had done a quick search on the internet... and they got all of my information. Then the campers gave my number to some of their other camper friends, and they started to call. One day I got phone calls from about four campers. This also happened with my aim screen name, so I had to change that. For the most part everything has slowed down, but I still get a phone call every now and then, so I ignore it. It's not like I don't like talking to campers during the off season, but this was an extreme... there needs to be some space.
I totally get the privacy thing. Not sure if this has happened to anyone else (with or without a camp name) but it is crazy.
- Teenster
