Camp- Where Kids Find Their Best Selves!- What does that even mean?
For the past 10 years or so, kids have described their time at Camp Misahwaka as the “place they find their best selves”- or offered some version of this. This is new-ish. Alumni from decades ago talked about the skills they acquired, the adventures they undertook, and often, the hijinks they engaged in. Granted, the language of self-discovery is a fairly recent phenomenon, but I wonder what it is about the world outside of Camp, or a similar experience, that keeps kids from feeling good about who they are. What is it that time at Camp can reveal, expose, or allow that helps kids discover a version of themselves that they like?
I once proposed using this phrase (Mishawaka-Where KIds Find Their Best Selves) on the opening page of our website only to have a marketing consultant tell me this was too vague, too overused. But, it keeps bubbling back up, and not from me (or some enlightened consultant) but the kids themselves. In her recent piece “America’s Children are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?” journalist Jia Lynn Yang touches on what I believe is at the heart of this discovery that children find at Camp.
School is different than it used to be
It’s been years (decades even) since I have set foot in a classroom, or sat in one of those uncomfortable blackboard (smartboard?) facing chairs. It’s been nearly 4 decades since I have experienced what it is like to be in school, to navigate the halls, the homework, the social dynamics or the lunch room hierarchy, but I know enough to know that it is vastly different from the experience I had as a child. Yang states, “Starting in the 1980s, a metrics-obsessed regime took over American education and profoundly altered the expectations placed on children up and down the class ladder. In fact, it has altered the experience of childhood itself.”
Yang argues that despite the best of intentions, school has become a place where kids find anything and everything but their best selves. Outsized expectations, constant evaluation, and a schedule that can often overwhelm a developing brain only add to the difficulties. We’ve built perfect round holes and are wondering why all the square pegs don’t fit.
Staying in my lane
Before I veer out of my lane - I am not trained in child psychology, nor am I qualified to design a curriculum or the daily school schedule. What I can say, with some degree of expertise, is that summer camp is one of the only places I know of that is built specifically for kids, and aligns the developmental needs of a child with age appropriate program offerings and expectations. Maybe that’s the secret sauce to helping kids find their best selves?
I am not so naive to think that helping kids find their best selves was ever part of the mission of schools. They have other utilitarian and pressing directives. But the teachers and administrators I talk with confirm that schools are now tasked with providing so much more than was envisioned: breakfast, lunch, and sometimes even dinner, and independent education plans galore. All of this at a time when funding is sparse and the need for support never greater.
This is not an indictment of teachers, or even administrators who face incredible challenges every day. Rather, I just hoped to echo an honest question posed by the author- are schools helping children find their best selves, or at least allowing them to do their best work? The answer will vary for sure, but the question bears repeating, I think.
Camps are uniquely positioned to care for the whole child. It provides not only the depth and breadth for a child to explore their strengths, it gives them the time and the space (and oh how kids need space!) to play, and burn off excess energy. It gives them time to be a kid in a world that expects adult behavior from adolescents and tolerates juvenile antics from its leaders.
Help me reconcile that!
Let’s do lunch…
My wife often comments that we eat too fast at Camp, and I generally agree, but the 30 to 45 minutes we take to eat lunch each day seems like a leisurely feast when compared to the 20 minutes many kids get to eat at their school. This may also be the only time of day when a student finds time to use the restroom, or just pause and reflect. As campers leave the dining hall - headed off to rest-period before their afternoon activities - no one is rushing. If they are, it is only to maximize the time on their bunk reading, writing, or resting. For many, I think it’s the first time they have encountered a schedule that actually aligns with their needs, needs for adequate rest, necessary play, and perhaps most importantly, time for reflection.
As I think about it now, maybe I did find my best self at Camp all those years ago. Maybe I only lacked the words to describe it that way at the time. Truth be told, I think I still find some version of that self each summer. Maybe these kids have “schooled me” in a way that is just what the doctor ordered.
