So sorry I didn’t blog last night. We had a Senior Staff meeting that went on quite late. I’m telling you about it because once, when my own kids were young and we were on one of those necessary visits to DisneyWorld, we were lucky enough to be riding the monorail mid-day, at a quiet time, with a Disney staffer who was probably being too friendly for their rulebook. I (being a curious camp director) asked her about the rules governing Disney staff. She told us they weren’t allowed any visible piercings or tattoos, their hear had to be a certain length and wasn’t to be coloured, etc. etc. This all made sense to me – Disney said FAMILY! And needed to telegraph it all day every day.

Behind the curtain here at Arowhon, we do a lot of staff training and supervision. The majority of the training during the summer occurs in my cabin, which has a living room big enough for 45 people to sit. We also have a dedicated freezer full of Dufflet cakes, and an industrial blender. Why? Because when I was first camp director and brought staff to my cabin for meetings, they were either sullen or sleepy. Now, thanks to Dufflet cakes and snazzy blended fruit smoothies (mocchachino when it’s cold out) they’re delighted to come for an “In-Service” training meeting in my cabin. Which mostly have to happened after the campers are in bed.

Last night was the Senior Staff training session prior to our first Written Evaluations of the summer. We did Verbal Evals a week ago – everybody got one – and we had a a training session before that one too.  First we did a group checkin for them to talk about what they learned so far about being a leader and a supervisor. Then we taught these young supervisors how to write and deliver an Eval, we help them learn why not to sugar-coat it, and how to coach any struggling staff to a higher level of performance. We teach the Senior Staff to figure out, with their staff, if it’s a deficit of SKILL or WILL, and then how to help them problem-solve.

And that’s a small glimpse of behind the curtain at Arowhon.