Campus Kids New Jersey Weblog - Find out what's going on at the Weekday Sleep-Away Camp!

March 26, 2010

Happy Anniversary!

As some of you dedicated CK blogheads already know, the CK-NJ weblog is 2 years old this month! That's right, 2 years ago Tom and I got back from the Tri-State Camp Conference and we started thinking about what everyone wanted to know about camp. We came to the conclusion that everyone (that means you) would want to know EVERYTHING about camp! So there began the idea of a camp weblog. We wanted to share with you all the things that happen to get camp ready, all the CK-NJ news and tell you a little bit about the things we do when we're not working on camp stuff (that's right... even camp directors have lives outside of camp). It's been a really amazing journey. Looking over the blog in it's entirety this morning, I let out more than a few chuckles and got choked up once or twice. Here is a brief rundown on some of the highlights:

Back in March of 2008, we got our first glimpse of Stu's grandson Charlie! Isn't he the cutest thing ever? Charlie's face can be seen throughout the history of blog. (This summer he's going to visit us at camp!)

In April of that year, Tom and I held our first announcements outside of the office. We sang the announcements song and got very excited about the night's evening activity, water balloon volleyball. It's just not the same, though, when you see Tom in slacks and not his trademark cargo shorts. Little known fact: Tom likes those cargo shorts for the sturdy pockets that allow him to hold notepads and an ample supply of pens.

In May of that year, many were quite surprised when they visited Campus Kids New Jersey website and discovered that somehow we'd all time traveled back to the fall of 2005. Oh man, talk about a surreal moment! Ryan even RSVP'd for the 2005 reunion!

That was the summer of the "Corny" blog. Every week, Tom and I went out and took a picture of him standing besides the Donaldson's Farm corn stalks. Each week Tom reflected on the happenings at camp while everyone got to see how tall the corn stalks had become. We always used to joke about how you could tell the summer was coming to a close when corn was almost ready to harvest.

In the fall of that year, we made the biggest announcement of all time! Campus Kids New Jersey was moving to Blair Academy! What a place! Everyone who came out for the open house that rainy September day was blown away by how amazing our new digs were. And talk about rain! It rained and rained that day. But foul weather could not stop the excitement. 250 campers and their families came out to check out Blair Academy that day. I think we all had a blast!

We had an amazing leadership planning weekend at the beginning of last summer. We had a whole new campus to explore and did heaps of prep work to make our first summer at Blair Academy a huge success. The pic on the left shows our first hike out to Lake Genevieve.

The summer of 2009 will certainly go down in CK History. It was amazing for so many reasons. We had a dynamite staff, a fantastic group of campers and an incredible new facility. Oh yeah... and Tom played drums in the D&G Show. Another favorite moment from last summer for me was the Week 7 talent show which the old timers call simply, "7". Ryan, Ste, Cheryl and Jase hosted the show via pre-recorded video skits played on our theatre's big screen.

After that amazing summer, nothing really exciting happened in the fall of 2009. Oh... except for Teri getting married! In September, Teri married her high school sweetheart, Jim Hansen at a completely wonderful wedding. Look at the beautiful bride at the lucky groom. As his best man, former CK staff member, Chris England told us, Jim couldn't do any better than Teri (however I won't repeat what he said next). After she got back from her honeymoon in Hawaii, Teri started to work year-round for Campus Kids. This was perfect timing because our supply closet really needed to be organized and there was no way Tom was gonna get me to do it!

And holy matrimony Batman! Stu's daughter Jody got married in November!. Ever think you'd see Stu in a tux? It made the booty shake even more impressive.

So far this year, we've all had a great time working together. We're really excited about the upcoming summer. It's been so great working with Teri. She's brought a lot of new ideas to the camp table and lots of spirit. Over the holidays, she brightened up the office with a Charlie Brown style Christmas tree (a present from Jim).

While it's great looking back through the blog and reminiscing over all the great CK moments, the future is what's really exciting! I can't wait until we're at camp and writing about all the cool things going on this summer. I can't wait to see what next year's blog looks like. It's so amazing being able to be part of camp year round. We love talking about camp and Tom, Teri, Stu and I certainly appreciate your interest in all things camp! Thank you for reading!

~Jeremy

P.S. If there is ever anything you'd like for us to blog about, maybe something you'd always wondered about camp, anything... just give us a call at 973-845-9260 or email me at jeremy@campuskids.com .

March 25, 2010

The Wedding

Seven summers ago, I had my first Campus Kids experience. I was a first-time counselor, and had never been to summer camp before. I participated in our week-long orientation, met lots of new people, loved being a counselor to a bunk group of Senior girls, and had a really great summer. But I will admit now that during those nine weeks, I was a little distant to my peers… I made a couple of friends at the time, but I had made up my mind that I was only going to be a counselor for one summer. Since few of my new friends lived near me, I figured I would probably never see them again. Fast forward to March 18^th, 2010. Not only do I still work at camp, but I’m on a plane going to Florida to be in the wedding of a person whom I met at camp that first summer in 2003.

If you’ve been keeping up with past Sundials, you probably know a lot about the Bride, as she is a consistent submitter of Sundial articles. For those of you who don’t know, I’m talking about Devon James! She is originally from Oklahoma, and after working with CK-NJ for 3 summers, she became a nanny for a lovely family in NJ. After a year there, she moved to Mississippi to attend graduate school. And last summer, she came back to Campus Kids for another wonderful summer! All of these stops in her life have made it inevitable that Devon would make many friends from many places. And at the wedding, all of these people came together for a fabulous evening on the beach! I had it pretty easy, because when anyone asked me “how do you know Devon and Sean?” I got to tell them “I’m one of those camp people you’ve been hearing about!” and was welcomed with open arms! It was so neat to meet all of the friends and family I’ve heard about for many years now, and put faces to those names and stories.

Devon and Sean Scrutchins (who was also a counselor at CK-NJ in 2005) were married on March 19^th, 2010 in Destin, Florida. I was honored to be a part of their wedding by doing a reading from the book “A gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The theme of the reading was how relationships don’t stay the same over time, and you have to accept them as they are, here and now. It was a very emotional reading for me because although we met as adults, Devon and I have “grown up together” as friends and have seen our relationship change year after year. After many years at camp, this moment was profound as it made me realize the power of camp. I’ve made lots of friends over the summers that I keep in touch with all because of camp; and although I have never been a camper, I truly understand how strong the bonds of friendship can be with someone you may only spend a couple weeks with out of the year. Needless to say, I cried a lot during the ceremony in between taking photos.

It’s no surprise that their wedding ceremony was beautiful, and that they arranged an awesome “party” for the reception. During the reception, you could easily see how both Devon and Sean are “camp people” – dancing, singing, eating (we do A LOT of that at camp!), enjoying the company of everyone there, making each guest feel welcomed, and giving impromptu speeches that were quite entertaining and hilarious.

On behalf of the Campus Kids community, we want to wish Devon and Sean a long and happy life together!

Teri

March 18, 2010

Hither and Yon

If you're planning to drop by our Madison office for surprise visit today, you'll be lonely standing our on the porch (with our sundial). Our "entire staff" is away. Teri's flown down to Florida with husband Jim to be part of Devon and Sean's wedding this weekend. We are very happy for the wedding couple -- both showing CK staff work on their resumes -- and wish them the very best. I'm sure Teri will return with photos and a blog for us next week.

Meanwhile, Jeremy and I have been here in Atlantic City at the Tri-State Camp Conference, sponsored by our local ACA chapters. This is the largest professional camp conference anywhere and we are really enjoying the educational sessions and meeting so many of our colleagues. We've bumped into some our former staff members who are now working at different camps (yes, CK fans, there are other camps!), including James and Dana and Ben -- all from our very early days.

Well, that's all for the moment. I've got to run off to a session about camp health. We'll share more with you next week.

By the way, we have a record number of families taking tours of camp this Saturday and Sunday. I can't believe it!
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Enjoy this spring-like (camp-like) weather.
Tom

March 12, 2010

Working Hard at the Retreat

I wrote about my anticipation for this weekend (below), but couldn't have hoped it was going to be as amazing as it turned out. It was a "hard working" orientation/retreat, but in the true spirit of camp our work rarely seemed like work, and it was never too tiring or boring. It was challenging, interesting, inspiring, invigorating and fun. No wonder we love camp so much! Here are a few of the highlights.

We started the weekend with a mass interview. Everyone spoke to everyone else and learned something they didn't know about him/her yet. Then each person sat in the middle while everyone shared their one fact about that person. I figured that we learned at least 306 new facts in a very short time. Not bad.

We broke into groups, each one inventing a company that would manufacture a product or service. Each company identified ideal qualities for their employees, which launched us on a discussion of what it means to have a job and to work with supervisors. Of course, we then transferred our discussion to the specifics of camp, realizing that even though being at camp as a staff assistant is fun, it's a real job and very important for the successful operation of our camp.

That naturally lead to small and large group discussions about changing roles at camp. Nine of our "staffies" will be first-timers in a staff role this summer and other six will be "returners" for the first time. So we talked about the top differences, challenges and concerns that we will face.

I'll pause here to let you know that the most important goal of our weekend was to create a strong bond of trust, support and communications among our staff assistants and their support-supervisors. By this point in the weekend, I think we had already achieved that goal . . . and it was only Saturday afternoon!

In the evening, we shared what we had written for our "homework questions". Yes, we each had homework to prepare! Each person shared what specific kind of support they would offer to the team this summer and also what they needed from the team to be successful. The group responded to each person and affirmed its support.

Our bunk meeting featured a question jar. Each staff assistant asked something about camp that they didn't know about yet. That took us into some of the history of our camp and some of the more unusual topics.

Our returning staff assistants had written up some scenarios -- "sticky situations" -- that Team A, Team B and Team D* each discussed on Sunday morning, sharing with all of us some of the best ways to deal with these.

We also covered a wide variety of other topics. Some of them were:
-- friends and siblings in camp
-- professionalism and maintaining our reputations (including the online world)
-- rules staff must live by
-- job descriptions, and more.

By Sunday afternoon I could say that our 15 staff assistants had put in a hard-working weekend, accomplishing all of our goals and more. I want to thank them all for their dedication, focus, hard work and love of camp. It's going to be hard to wait another 3+ months before the staff assistants can arrive at camp and start working.

Tom

*You may have noticed that there is no Team C. Wonder why? This is a piece of camp trivia known only to staff assistants and a few others! Perhaps you can find one to ask.

Having Fun at the Retreat!

Yeah, we worked hard at the retreat, but we also had a lot of fun! These staff assistants are an amazing group of young people! All weekend, we enjoyed their stories, jokes and company.

One especially fun thing we did was play a sort of guessing game that revolved around a mix tape CD we'd made for the weekend. This has become sort of a tradition at retreats. The way it works is that everyone contributes a song (secretly) that is meaningful to them in some way or describes how they feel about camp. At the retreat, we played through the CD. The guessing began about a minute into each song. Everyone tried to figure out who picked which song and when we've discovered who they explain why they chose that particular song for the mix tape. Everyone who participated got a copy of the CD mailed to them this week. You can view this year's CD below. Click on the pic to see a larger version.

We also played one of Tom' favorite retreat games, "Psychiatrist". The way this game is played, you sit around in a circle and decide a pattern in which you will all answer your questions with and the Psychiatrist needs to guess the pattern. During our first round we all answered as if we were the person on our left. Stu was our first psychiatrist and did very well. The later rounds included us answering questions in an alphabetical fashion and answering questions in a certain number of words. It sounds goofy, but it was hilarious and lots of fun.

Another highlight was a rather unplanned activity. The lodge we were meeting in had a slick wooden floor covered in a thin layer of dust and dry earth tracked in for outside. It was the kind of floor that is ideal for slipping, sliding and jumping, especially off and onto the raised stage. The SA's took turns running and jumping. Some of the cooler jumps included spins, fancy dancelike footwork followed by long slides. They even jumped over each other. Again, it sounds ridiculous, but we had a blast!

Another fun surprise was getting to test out Fairview Lake's brand new indoor ga-ga court. It did not take much arm twisting to get into the game!

We also got to celebrate Lizzy's 17th birthday, complete with cake and traditional CK-NJ Birthday Shout. Not many camp folks get their non-summer birthdays celebrated in such official camp style.

We're all really excited to work with this group of staff assistants and it's becoming harder and harder to patiently wait for camp to begin.

See you all soon,
Jeremy

It's hard to separate the work from the fun, but you can see it ALL of it at these photo galleries.

Don't know what "staff assistants" are?
This web page has information.

March 5, 2010

Anticipation

It's the night before our Staff Assistant Orientation Weekend. I've finished packing and should be getting some sleep, but it's hard because I'm so excited. We have nine first-time staff assistants and six returners who will be working together as a team for the very first time tomorrow morning. They all know each other because they are former campers, but this is a brand new relationship. This weekend we'll be focusing on team building and learning about what it means to work at camp. I had the privilege of interviewing each of these young people for their jobs, so I know what this means for them and how excited they are. What makes me happiest, I think, is that each one of them wants to give back to the camp -- and our current campers -- what they have received from their camper experiences.

In one short weekend, 15 individuals will become a team, supportive of each other and focused on the mission of Campus Kids. After all of these years, you might think this would get a bit boring for me, but it hasn't in the least. The energy, dedication and enthusiasm of these young people is invigorating and uplifting. It's an amazing experience and I'm glad we are about to end the anticipation and begin the experience.

Teri, Jeremy, Stu and I will be facilitating the orientation. We'll report back to you next week. Have a good weekend (though I know it can't be nearly as good as ours).

Tom

March 1, 2010

For the first time ever...

I was able to park in my garage! My wife and I did not go snowboarding this weekend. Instead, we stayed home, organized and unpacked all the stuff that's been cluttering our garage since we moved in back in November. It was such a momentous occasion, I asked Vanessa to video tape to first drive out this morning. Now this historic moment will be forever immortalized in cyberspace and this blog!

On a more serious note, we've got lots of camp news to catch you up on!

First, we've been busy getting ready to mail out the March issue of the Sundial. You can see some actual footage of the risograph machine in action, churning out some 100 pages of Sundial excellence per minute! The clip also offers a rare glimpse of our year round CK office staff (the authors of this blog) working hard to get camp ready for all you wonderful campers and staffies!

Also, if you don't already know, we've published the information about the 2010 Weekend Adventure program. If you're going to be entering 7th grade or higher next summer, you are eligible to attend and the information has already been mailed to your house.

However, all the info can be viewed online here. We've got 4 amazing trips lined up and we've already received several sign ups. A big shout out to Eric C. for being the first camper to sign up for this year's adventures!

Weekend Adventures are amazingly good fun! We leave camp on Friday afternoon and go camping for the weekend! The days are filled with lake swimming, fishing, games, outdoor cooking, hiking and boating. We also go on a special daytrip each trip. For the first one, we are doing a scavenger hunt in NYC. The second trip is a trip to Camel Beach water park. On the third we're going to Mountain Creek water park. The last trip will feature a day at Point Pleasant Beach and the Jenkinson's Boardwalk! At night we sing songs, sit around the camp fire and have delicious camping snacks like fried Oreos and banana boats! Call the office or email me (jeremy@campuskids.com) if you have any questions.

Coming up in future weeks, Tom and I will blog about the Tri-State Camp Conference and Teri will be writing about Devon's wedding! Don't forget to be sending us your bunk group name suggestions here!

Hope all is well!

Jeremy