For summer camps, there’s never been a better time to change
Let’s start with an obvious caveat right at the top. COVID was terrible. It cost most summer camps 2020 and created countless challenges to overcome to bring camp to life in 2021. We can’t change the fact that COVID happened though, and since we can’t…let’s take a minute and think about the opportunity this virus unwittingly brought to bear. That opportunity? Change.
You know who LOVES change? Camp families. It’s their favorite thing (narrator: it is not). The kids want exactly what they had last year. The counselors want what they had as campers. The parents want what they had as kids. For camps in times of normalcy, alterations = altercations.
But with COVID, we all had to give our camp directors and programmers a wide berth to alter their plans just to get the gates open for the summer, and emails filled with CAPITAL LETTERS and exclamation points!!! sat silently in (most) people’s draft folders, because, really, how could you complain? Maybe your camp was doing something unusual, but they were giving you a break from your children for a moment, weren’t they?
As we close the books on 2021 and begin looking to summer 2022, camps have a once-in-a-lifetime* opportunity to do a full-blown reset. The world has changed, and given what we’ve been through, any deviations they make for the future seem awfully insignificant in the grand scheme of things, don’t they?
*please let this be once-in-a-lifetime
Here are a few things some camps experimented with this past year they should make permanent, regardless of the backlash they (are sure to) receive:
No more dropping your kids at their cabin and helping them unpack.
Dropoff at camp this summer was the most efficient process I’ve ever seen, and that’s WITH getting COVID tests done in the midst of it. Some people might have nostalgia for making sure their children’s clothes are neatly arranged at least once before they become a pile at the end of the bed, but the truth is it made it way easier for the camp to get on with the show. I think it's unlikely parents will see the inside of their child’s cabin ever again, at least at the start of the summer. The assembly-line format we experienced this past year was a great way to rip off the saying-goodbye bandaid and send the kids straight into their session, boiling what used to be a chaotic, needlessly long process into a neat-and-tidy 15–20 minutes.
Camps can still figure out a place for alumni parents to gather with each other out of the way of the new camp session, so there will still be plenty of reasons for parents to look forward to the first day of camp (aside from the joy of giving their kids away for a while). This one’s a keeper.
Fewer photos for social media
Pardon me while I put on my glasses and raise my cane, but BACK IN MY DAY camps didn’t dump a metric ton of photography online every day so parents could spy on their children’s every move. BACK IN MY DAY, my parents had no idea what pictures I was in, and because they didn’t, they didn’t then spend countless hours trying to decipher why I might not be smiling in one of them.
Due to a lack of staff availability this past summer I’m told some camps had to cut back on their social media/sharing activities, and I for one would love to see that trend continue, which is to say I wish they would cut it out altogether.
Camp is supposed to be a chance for kids to be away from their parents’ helicoptering ways, and posting photos of them doing literally every activity every single day makes that damn near impossible. It also opens an unnecessary door to parents complaining to the full-time staff about all the things they want to control but can’t. Why is my child wearing the same shirt two days in a row? Why aren’t they wearing the long-sleeve swim shirt I gave them for the pool? Why are my kids’ lips purple, did they have an allergic reaction??? Why why why why why why?
Can you imagine how much more productive camp staff would be if they could focus on the actual campers instead of meddling parents? You know who you are (gestures very widely). Knock it off.
Fewer visitors
Another one I know will sting a little bit, but hear me out. The job of summer staff is to create the best environment possible for campers to thrive, and every time visitors come to camp it takes time and energy away from camper care. I admit some bias with this one; the camps I grew up at had no “visitor days” or anything like that. You saw your family when they dropped you off at camp and you didn’t see them again until you went home.
This past summer there was no in-and-out visitation, which was a huge asset to camp staff trying to deal with the most difficult circumstances of our lifetimes. It allowed them to give the campers all of their attention. That’s probably as it should be.
Staff days off at camp
Okay I’ll be honest, when I first heard this one I cringed, but the more I think about it the more sense it makes. Because of COVID staff had to take their days off at camp this summer, and those days likely ended up being actually restful, as opposed to the Bacchanalian affairs that normally took place when we went to places like New Orleans or Target.
I loved a good day off from camp as much as anyone, but I rarely came back from one less tired than I was before I left. I’m not saying staff shouldn’t be allowed to leave camp, but maybe a hybrid of time off at camp where they can still spend quality time with each other but get some actual rest in addition to a quick jaunt to recreate a rave in Ibiza is worth considering.
Here’s the thing about change at camp. No matter how much people rail against doing something — anything — different, the truth is it only takes one summer for any change to become the norm. Every year, a new crop of campers and staff members arrive on the scene, and whatever they experience is how things have always been done as far as they know. In two years' time, barely anyone will remember it ever being otherwise.
So everyone, please — let’s learn the most important lesson we could possibly take away from this year and put things in the proper perspective. We saw what it was like without camp for a year, and it was devastating. So in that context, any changes camps make, as long as they open for our kids and keep them safe and supported, should be easy for us to deal with.
There’s never been a better time for camps to make some changes, and there’s never been a better time for us to all collectively shut up and let them do it in peace.
Micah Hart is the creator of the game show Who Knows One? and hosts the summer camp podcast Campfires and Color Wars. His page-a-day 2022 desktop calendar 365 Things To Remind You Of Camp is available now!
