Sponsor a Summer Camp Project

Sponsor a Summer Camp Project Completed by: YOUR NAME University of Outline 1. Introduction 2. Counseling as an important aspect made possible in summer camp 3. White’s thoughts 4. Baker’s thoughts on guidance in summer camp 5. Conclusion 6. Works Cited This paper presents a mission of the project of sponsoring a summer camp for high school seniors. We draw on references from the two works by White and Baker that illustrate the significance of the summer camp for children and high school students in particular. In order to make the project successful, our main objective is to start by depicting the great importance of high school students’ spending time in the summer camp. It is clear that a counselor has a direct responsibility for habit formation and character building. In a camper-counselor relationship marked by co-operation rather than coercion, the student merits respect. He has opportunities for growth in self-control and self-direction. Every camp should be proud of the calibre of its counseling staff. It has the opportunity of selecting its own personnel, and can refrain from having on its staff those persons who, although adequate in certain school situations, may be completely helpless in the freer, more relaxing atmosphere of a summer camp. Wise camping encourages a child to form new friendships and to establish an entirely new set of social habits. Since the camper's life is supervised for twenty-four hours of the day, the camp has much more to offer in socialized living than home, school, boys' club, or any other type of group organization. Freed from the possibility of competition and criticism of educational performance invited within a school, a camper, unhampered from feelings of inadequacy or fear of failure, can learn new skills with confidence.

While a social premium may be set upon intellectual superiority in school, it may be a distinct handicap in camp. By the same token inadequate school performance or sub-normal intelligence may not necessarily be the cause of censure, punishment or feelings of inferiority. Because the camping experience is essentially a form of social living, guidance, therefore, has two aspects: individual and group. On the whole, a theoretical formulation of the rationale of summer camping has been very largely influenced in recent years by sociological thinking. Consequently, the group approach has received considerable emphasis. However, greater attention must be devoted to a consideration of the individual camper in terms of his unique background and particular personality characteristics. And while the camper's adjustment may be brought about by manipulating the influence of the group there is still an important area of individualized guidance that must be explored before the camper can receive the fullest benefits offered by the group. We provide references to the works of White and Baker to illustrate what their characters’ summer camps’ experiences meant to them. E. B. White reveals in the essay “Once More to the Lake” about how his journey to a childhood vacation spot not only took him to the lake, but also sent his imagination back in time. As a child, White and his family would go to a summer camp at a lake in Maine. For the whole month of August they would leave the everyday troubles behind and take pleasure in the simple life along the shore.

They came back to this place summer after summer because, despite getting ringworms and rolling over canoes, “none of them ever thought there was any place in the world like that lake in Maine”(White 142). As time passed by, longing for the “placidity” of his lake, White came back with his son(142). During the trip there, his thoughts wondered about how time might have changed things. He dreamed about the clear early mornings, when the lake was cool and still, and how he would sneak out before anyone else was awake. The “sweet smell of the outdoors” also was present in his memory as he pictured himself canoeing along the shore. On coming he could state things were pretty much as he had left them; although the excitement of arriving was not as intense. As a child White and his family would make the ten-mile journey from the train station to the lake in a farm wagon. As they arrived, the “shouts and cries of other campers coming to help you unload your trunks” was a happy sound. “Nowadays you sneaked up in your car and parked it under a tree near the camp and took out the bags in five minuets,” says White (145). While fishing he discovered that “everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years” (White 143). The ducking of a dragonfly led him to this close. As he lowered the tip of his rod into the water he saw that “there had been no years between the dunking of this dragon fly and the other one- the one that was part of his memory”(143). Observing his son holding his rod White “felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod [he] was at the end of” (144). Baker reveals his thoughts on guidance. He answers the question of ‘what is guidance?

’ Is it more than beneficent supervision? Is it more than providing physical and recreational facilities which are beyond the camper's reach for the greater part of the year? According to the author, guidance is primarily an attitude or point of view determining the activities of all persons in a camp. It is also a systematically conceived program of objectives and practices interpreted by the counseling staff so that each camper may grow in physical stature, emotional security, spiritual insight, social maturity and individual responsibility, and at the same time learn new skills and develop fresh interests. It therefore involves whetting the observational capacity of campers and counselors, the interpretation of reliably collected information and the application of specific methods of dealing with each child, directed solely and unselfishly toward his optimal development. Essentially, it represents a broadly conceived educational experience, based on the assumption that, given favorable conditions, every child with reasonable intelligence wants to learn, has the capacity to learn, and possesses the ability to be a self-determining person with certain rights and seeds demanding respect; in short, guidance accepts the proposition that in the absence of such abnormalities as feeblemindedness, serious lesions in the central nervous system and psychopathic behavior, growth is inevitable. But guidance in the summer camp cannot succeed unless parents themselves are aware of what a camp has to offer their own children. There is no reason to believe that camping guidance is any different from guidance in general. But what cannot be accomplished during the year may now happen in the camping environment under intelligent direction.

A tentative summary of the objectives of guidance in the summer camp may now be in order: 1. Promoting and maintaining sound physical development and cultivating desirable health habits. 2. Co-operation in group activities. 3. Developing independence and the ability for self-direction so that the camper is encouraged to make decisions arising from his own needs with a clear recognition of his limitations and of his responsibilities to others. In conclusion, we have to note that Although directors and others responsible for the administration of summer camps recognize the values of guidance, certain considerations may prevent their effective realization. For instance, since any camp must be sustained on a financial basis, a director may be more interested in the undertaking as a financial investment. He can be easily tempted to stress certain features of his program which, from a guidance standpoint, are relatively uneducational although they are acceptable to parents and campers who have not known any other kind of experience. An expansion of plant and equipment to raise the level of comfort and to enhance the physical facilities for recreation may not necessarily guarantee the maximal values of guidance or that the real essence of the camping process is experienced by campers.