The kurse of Kumbayah: five camp stereotypes that derail new staff

Camping Magazine, May-June, 2003 by Jon C. Malinowski

Break the kurse

To break the hold of this curse on your staff, consider the following strategies:

* Make sure that your training teaches multiple ways of dealing with common problems. Role play a fight between campers where the counselor must break it up using an upbeat demeanor or humor. Then redo it but require that the leader be stern or disappointed. This allows your staff to see that common situations can be dealt with in a variety of ways.

* Emphasize that different age groups might require different leadership techniques. Goofiness might work with pre adolescents more often than it does for teenagers. In fact, teenagers will often react better to a counselor who is more realistic in his or her personality. The fifth rainy day in a row can still be fun, but let's not try to convince a child that it's the best thing that's ever happened.

* Make sure that you express a range of emotions with your staff. Show the happy, goofy side of your personality that makes camp fun, but also talk about the emotional importance of camp in your life or how it helped you get through a tough time. This shows new staff that the camp environment in which they're working is one in which a range of emotions can be expressed.

Camp Crappy

Camp Crappy is another stereotype of the industry. This camp is run-down and operated by an uncaring, often absent stale The finest example of this may be the "Kamp Krusty" episode from The Simpsons. In this episode, Bart and Lisa go to a corporate run camp that is advertised as heaven-on-earth. When they arrive, the place is falling apart, the staff ignore their pleas for help, and they are fed gruel in the mess hall.

Variations on this theme show up repeatedly. In some movies or show's, the camp is bad because the staff is apathetic or absent. In the 2001 movie, Wet Hat American Summer, a camper drowns after a counselor ignores his pleas for help. Granted, this movie is meant as a comedic parody, but it still reinforces the stereotype. In Friday the 13th, Part 2, a staff trainer actually says to a counselor on the first day of training, "We worked a few seasons together, right?" Talk about apathetic--a senior staff member who barely remembers that he worked "a few seasons" with another staff member shouldn't be senior staff.

At other times, a camp's physical plant is woefully lacking. For example, in Ernest Goes to Camp (1987), graffiti and sub-standard plumbing are clearly evident, and a group of new campers is moved into a cabin that would not pass a safety inspection anywhere in the country. The song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh," by Allan Sherman, which no camping expert can escape when on television or the radio, also reinforces the bad camp stereotype. Even if the end of the song makes things look okay, few people remember those verses.

This curse is dangerous for three reasons. One, it may reduce the number of children that come to camp. Second, it creates an attitude among the staff that rundown buildings and grounds are normal at camp, thus promoting a careless attitude with equipment and infrastructure. Third, it trivializes safety issues that often topple excellent camps through lawsuits and bad press.