Summer is done - let the countdown begin!

At the final camp director meeting just a few days ago, and only hours before the summer of 23 would come to a close, I joked to staff to get some rest for a few weeks, and then get excited for the summer of 24. Our twenty-something directors, exhausted from 10 weeks of relentless (and amazing!) camp work let out a weak chuckle, understandably. But it is true for me that over the years, the window of exhaustion from the summer that passed to excitement over the next one has steadily shrunk (coincidentally along with the mythical downtime for camp directors!). I never thought of it in terms of camp sickness, as this NYT article does but it makes a lot of sense. I long for camp all year.

I have always considered myself lucky, to have been able to build a life out of being in camp, and for my kids and family to have that experience. Admittedly, for my kids camp life is home life, perhaps why the experience is a little different for them than for children for whom this is a once per year experience. But I digress.

In a previous post I pointed out that many schools have adopted tricks of the camp trade that have made schools more responsive to students' mental and emotional needs, and different ways of engaging and learning. I happen to believe schools are only scratching the surface of what is possible - if only we would build our learning environments to be more experiential and joyous. (And for a moment, early in 2020 I had high hopes the pandemic would move us to reexamine how we teach kids. Alas. But I digress again.). The goal, however, should perhaps not be for school to be camp. School should be like camp, perhaps, borrowing elements from it, but not camp.

To have an experience so distinctly different from home and school is exactly what makes camp so powerful, and offers young people the opportunity to bring skills and values from one experience to apply them in another setting. I think this is ultimately what third spaces are about - another space outside of school and home to practice being human, and in the case of camp, to experience success and emotional support in a way that schools and homes cannot give.

This summer, we have had countless examples of the power of camp, but what has been really surprising to me is what young people themselves identify as one of the main reasons the experience is so powerful. It is not uncommon for campers to mention the lack of technology and phones as the main reason for their experience. To put a finer point on it -? kids don't say 'I miss having my phone', they say 'there are no phones' because they recognize how phone use keeps all of them from engaging with the world around them and each other.?

This problem is likely to get worse, as it is not only the device, but the underpinning technology that looks to support and take over our emotional ability to connect with others. Here is a good read on just that topic - artificial empathy - and I find it terrifying. But it also affirms my conviction that camp, in the midst of the advent of AI and other advanced technologies, is here to stay and will be a powerful place for young people to practice and experience empathy, especially when technology in school and at home steps in to do the hard work for us.

Again and again I have observed kids supporting each other, unprompted, through difficult tasks, almost effortlessly. At camp, while there may not seem to be an agenda, this is in fact the agenda. Camp really is the answer.

Here comes the summer of 2024. Happy camping y'all.