Am so sorry I didn’t blog last night – It was a late one! Last night at 9 pm we had a Senior Staff meeting that went on… and on… and on. We began with a “Celebration Circle.” I had put the name of each Senior Staff in a top hat and we passed it around, each person picking out a name and then writing a validation of that person. Then everyone read out what they had written, starting with: “I celebrate so-and-so for…..” After each we validation we did our Arowhon finger-snap cheer for that person… Then I exhorted the Senior Staff to follow this example, and over the coming days, to celebrate their staff and their campers.

After the Celebration Circle, I fuelled up the Senior Staff on Dufflet chocolate mousse cake and iced mochaccino’s and it was time to start writing.  They were writing their evals till late, and discussing them with their supervisors. We often (with great pleasure and pride) receive the feedback that Arowhon staff are particularly attentive and caring, and that we “walk the walk.” That doesn’t happen by luck, or just because we want it to. Pardon the corporate-speak, but we have lots of HR practices that get us to that goal.

One of the most important practices that keeps our staff on their toes and growing is evaluations. We evaluate every staff verbally once a week all summer and every staff gets a written evaluation three times a summer. The end-of-summer long eval is particularly important because 1) everyone deserves a summative eval and 2) given that we have so many staff who come back summer after summer, their end-of-summer eval is the foundation for setting next summer’s growth goals for all of them… This concretely means that I interview every returning staff during the winter. At that interview we sit down together and look at their end-of-summer eval, and agree on the growth goals they’re committing to for the following summer. I like this because it supports us growing our staff with a multi-year perspective.

Also yesterday evening was the first Point Large initiation, which went great. The boys learned to orienteer and then used compasses and waypoints to find their way through the woods to Hidden Lake, where trippers cooked them dinner on the fire… Then they had a reflection ceremony and each walked alone to another campsite in the woods and then back to the Point… Also last night we kicked off the Point Small initiation after dark. They heard a talk about coming into manhood and what it means and then each Point Small walked through a flaming arch on the Point dock (thanks to Lou maintenance for fabulous pyrotechnics). Then each Point Small was given a pocket knife engraved with Camp Arowhon Point Small… more to come later today on all this.