Dear Parents,

In less than 24 hours many of you will be doing the scariest thing you have ever done: sending your most precious possessions into the middle of the woods to be cared for by a bunch of  people you’ve never even met. There are a couple of things we want you to know.

First of all, we’re nervous too! We understand what an immense responsibility is being placed on us and we know we have huge shoes to fill. We’ve been training for weeks to learn how to support kids to make friends, teach them activity skills, and resolve conflicts in a positive way. We’ve role-played hundreds of “worst case” scenarios and learned more this week than we learned all year at school combined. Getting our campers is much more stressful than a university exam because the results are so much more important. We want you to know that we take our responsibility very seriously and will do everything in our power to live up to your expectations.

Secondly, we are here because we LOVE what we do. We could be making a LOT more money sitting at a desk in the city, but we’re here because we care about YOUR kids. This is much more than a regular job for us. We’re here because the sense of satisfaction we get from making a kid smile or helping them master a new skill is far more valuable than any paycheque.

We want to thank you in advance for putting what we know is a sacred trust in us to care for your children. We want to thank you for sharing the lights of your life with us. We promise to care for and nurture them as we would our own family. We promise to find out what is special about YOUR child and to really get to know who they are. We promise to help them up when they are down, to celebrate their triumphs, and to challenge them to grow into their best selves.

So really we’re not strangers after all. In fact, we have a lot in common: we both want your child to return from camp standing a little taller, feeling a little prouder, and smiling a little wider. So welcome to our team!

Sincerely,

Your child’s counsellor