Episode 42
This episode, Soy is joined by long-time camper and current staff member Tripps. Tripps and Soy have a great chat about camp, connections, and how young she was the first time she came to camp! There’s also a friendship tip of the week, a joke of the cast, and a GACSpiration!
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Episode 41
The POG-Cast is back! If you found our podcast during the summer, when it is called Wadda Day, this episode will be a bit of a surprise to you. During the year, our podcast turns into the POG-Cast, which is a weekly podcast that features more in-depth interviews with staff members, parents, and campers. It also has some of the great parts of morning assembly, like Joke of the Day, Stat of the Day, and the Friendship Tip!
This week we have Gold Arrow Camp’s newest director, Heather “Cheerio” Veatch, who just joined our team year-round after 10 summers working at camp. Prior to working for camp, Cheerio was an elementary school teacher. She and Soy have a great conversation about education and camp, as well as some behavior management tools that we use at camp that you can use at home.
Submit WOWs and answers to Stat of the Cast to wow@goldarrowcamp.com
Here’s how you can make some breathing beads at home!
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Last night our staff and June Specialty campers partied down in Granite Grove for our Safari Dance! DJ Tank spun the records and our GAC family had the chance to show off their dance skills for the first time this summer!
Campers and staff enjoyed Footloose, Tragedy, and Move Your Body, among other favorite songs. There was a photobooth and a collection of fun games for those folks who needed a break from the dancing.
Following our dance, we closed the session with our traditional Appreciation Campfire, featuring performances from the Specialty campers and our staff members. It was a great way to end the session that started the summer!
June Specialty campers have been enjoying their week on our Shaver Island outpost. The week has been full of fun under the sun, with campers taking advantage of amazing weather to knee-board, waterski, wakeboard, and wakeskate! Evenings have been fun of laughs around the campfire (and s’mores!) as well as sleeping on the beach under the stars. Enjoy these photo highlights from the week so far!
Author and internationally recognized speaker Signe Whitson (Parenting the Challenging Child) spent the day yesterday training GAC staff on helping campers through anxious situations, identifying and preventing bullying, and understanding how to respond when campers are having strong emotions.
Signe, who took on her own camp name of “Ginger”, is a certified school social worker with 20 years of experience working with children, teens, and families. She presents customized training workshops for professionals, parents, and students on topics related to understanding and ending bullying, managing anger in children, and intervening effectively in crisis situations in schools and treatment organizations. She is an expert on child psychology, bullying (and bullying prevention) and managing anger and anxiety in children. She is also the author of 7 books.
Signe trained GAC staff to help them understand the challenges that young people face, and they can best respond to children who are in distress of any kind.
If you’d like to read more about Signe or look at her books, more information is available on her website.
You can also listen to Signe’s interview with Sunshine on the Sunshine Parenting podcast: Ep. 66: Is it Rude, Is it Mean, or is it Bullying?
Signe’s Psychology Today article: Is it Rude, Is it Mean, or is it Bullying?
Other Books by Signe Whitson:
The 8 Keys to End Bullying ACTIVITY BOOK for Kids & Tweens (and companion guide)
8 Keys to End Bullying: Strategies for Parents & Schools
Friendship & Other Weapons: Group Activities to Help Young Girls Ages 5-11 to Cope with Bullying
How to Be Angry: An Assertive Anger Expression Group Guide for Kids and Teens
Group Counselors received Mental Health First Aid training from former staff member and 2016 Coach’s Award winner, Kettle!
We recognize the need to prepare our counselors to intervene when campers are in emotional distress. To that end, we brought Kettle, who is currently a certified Mental, Emotional, and Social Health First Aid Instructor, back to camp to train our counselors, so that they could better respond to children who need emotional help at camp.
Kettle was able to use the training and her experience at camp to make the training very practical for our counselors. She was also able, outside of her training, to speak with staff about what she did that was effective when she was a counselor at GAC.
You can read more about Kettle here, or listen to her on the GAC POG-Cast here.
Here’s more information about Mental Health First Aid.
We’re still looking to fill some positions on our 2019 team! We need wonderful people to help us provide life changing experiences to our campers and help them have fun, make friends, and grow.
Camp Nurse (RN)
Join our Wellness Center team and help take care of our campers and staff members’ health needs! Currently, we have one nurse position open for Session 1 (June 22-July 6) and for Session 2 (July 6-20). Openings are for either the first week of the session or both weeks.
Office Administrator
This is an opportunity to join the administrative team at one of California’s premier summer sleep-away camps. You will be working with our office team to provide world-class customer service to the parents of our campers, who come from around the world. The primary job duties include answering parent phone calls and helping to answer their questions as well as clerical work (attaching HR files to staff records, recording reports from counselors about campers etc.), and working in our camp store.
On May 19th, we had a great visit to Northern California as the GAC Runners participated in the Schoolhouse Rocks 5K to benefit the Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation and we then hosted a GAC Party at Holbrook-Palmer Park in the evening.
At the race, the GAC Runners had a great time running and participating in the expo after the race. We loved seeing the many campers and their families who joined us!
In the evening, we had a wonderful time meeting more than 100 campers and their family members. We enjoyed pizza for dinner, played some carnival games, and had a first-year family orientation. It was great to see so many smiling faces!
If you’d like to take part in our final first-year family orientation (online), you can join us on June 2nd at 4 PM Pacific time. The event is an opportunity to watch an orientation video and then ask camp directors your questions. You can RSVP for that event here.
Recently, a copy of Fast Forward magazine arrived at the Worldwide Gold Arrow Camp Headquarters (GACHQ) and we were thrilled to see that one of our campers, Henry Blum, had written an article about GAC for Fast Forward!
Ari Blum and Mead Wallace were both campers and counselors at GAC in the 1990s and early 2000s. Now Ari and Mead’s sons, Henry and Caleb, are continuing the family GAC tradition. It seems like GAC really runs in their family!
You hear from us about why camp is great, but it’s even better to hear it from a camper. That’s why we’re re-printing Henry’s article here on our blog for you to enjoy.
Gold Arrow Camp
By Henry Blum
Marin Primary & Middle School
5th Grade
Have you ever felt the urge to go outside, camp, tell stories by the campfire or go down by the water and play? If so then Gold Arrow Camp is the place for you. There are great experiences at Gold Arrow. The last time I went I discovered a love of sailing. I love the wind in my face, the spray of the water, and being outside. I chose sailing every evening during free time. Because I practiced so much, I qualified for the sailing trip to Willow. The Willow Sailing Trip is a six-mile adventure across Huntington Lake. Sailing to Willow took all day but it was a lot of fun. Now I love sailing. I started sailing on a team at home. Gold Arrow brought that out in me.
Gold Arrow is a place where you can be whoever you want to be. Your cabin mates are like your brothers. If you get homesick a counselor is right there to comfort you. At camp the counselors pick camp names. It’s fun to figure out what their real names are. The counselors are really kind. My counselors encouraged me to try new things. Sometimes you’re scared to try a new activity and then your counselors help you try it. You discover a new favorite activity.
Gold Arrow has water sports like waterskiing, wakeboarding, kneeboarding and stand up paddleboarding. Giant stand up paddleboarding gets a whole cabin of kids on two or three giant paddle boards. My cabin mostly spent giant SUP time jumping into the lake. Gold Arrow Camp is in the mountains on Lake Huntington. The lake can be cold but on hot days it feels refreshing.
The food at Gold Arrow is really good. I loved orange chicken. Around the end of every session we have a banquet with soda and very special food. And, everyone is super friendly.
That’s why I love Gold Arrow Camp.
Episode 40.
The GAC POG-Cast is over the hill! We’re also over the moon that April joined us to talk about her role as a photographer at camp last summer. She also had great insight on how to deal with the fear that coming to camp sometimes creates in campers. Soy is back to playing guitar and telling Dad jokes and there’s a GACspiration too!
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