Meet Your 2021 GAC Staff!
We’re thrilled to introduce you to the 2021 GAC Staff!
They’re trained and ready for an amazing summer guiding campers to have fun, make friends, and grow! Visit the Meet the Staff Page for individual pictures and bios.
June Specialty 3 Session Slideshow
We had so much fun during June Specialty 3! Enjoy these memories and we cannot wait to see you next year!
June Specialty 2/GACpacking Session Slideshow
We have so many great memories from June Specialty 2/GACpacking session. Here are some highlights as recorded by our awesome media team (AKA the “GACarazzi”):
Session 1 Outpost & Events Schedule
June Specialty & GACpacking Start Today!
Can you believe it? Camp has officially begun! Today, we’re welcoming our June Specialty & GACpacking campers to Gold Arrow Camp. Our June Specialty campers will enjoy an action-packed week of waterskiing, wakeboarding, and kneeboarding, while our GACpacking campers will enjoy a week of backcountry hiking skill building. Shaver Specialty is held on our island outpost in the middle of Shaver Lake, where campers sleep under the stars after spending fun days on the lake.
June Shaver Specialty Menu
GACpacking Menu
Want to learn more about June Specialty? Click here.
Want to learn more about GACpacking? Click here.
2021 Dance Themes!
One of the highlights of each session is our camp dance.
Dances feature favorite group dances, like Footloose and Tragedy. There’s also our photo booth for some pictures with friends, special snacks and drinks like the “Soy Rogers” and “Shirley Chipmunk,” as well as a wide selection of games for those campers that prefer playing games over dancing.
Each of our dances has a theme, and campers and staff are encouraged to dress up to match the theme. Some people bring costumes from home, while others improvise using their clothes or making something at Arts & Crafts. Whatever you choose to do, we know you’ll have a great time at our dances.
This year’s dance themes are:
June Shaver Specialty: Hollywood
Come as your favorite celebrity or dress to impress as one of your favorite movie characters for this fun SoCal themed party!
Session 1: Pirates
Shiver me timbers matey! Session 1 campers will be walking the plank to fun with their peg-legs, eye patches, and other pirate accessories.
Session 2: Groovy Hippies and Tie-Dye
Let’s have some far-out fun in Session 2, when we enjoy the dance with our best hippie costumes, or your tie-dyed favorites.
Session 3: Halloween
Having a hard time coming up with a costume for Session 3’s Halloween dance? Any costume will do as we celebrate the one night of the year when people love costumes as much as we do on dance night.
Session 4: Winter Wonderland
It’ll be the end of August, but we’re going to dress like a blizzard is on the way for our Winter Wonderland dance for Session 4.
Mini Camp and August Shaver Specialty: Candy Land
It’s a night for sweet treats as we end the summer with a dance celebrating candy, or the board game Candy Land!
Meet the 2021 Staff
We are so excited to be back at camp for another summer of fun, friends, and growth! Our staff is a big part of what helps make camp the special place that it is! Check out our Meet the Staff page to learn a little bit more about all of our counselors. Be sure to check back often as more staff members continue to join the team!
Be sure to also follow us on Instagram and Facebook for fun content! Every Monday is “Meet the Staff Monday” where we feature a few counselors and a little information about them. You can also find all of the past featured counselors on Instagram in the 2021 Staff highlight bubble in our profile.
Homesick and Happy Book Discussion Guide
Every child has to practice being independent and every parent has to practice letting his or her child be independent.
-Michael Thompson, Ph.D., Homesick & Happy: How Time Away from Parents Can Help a Child Grow
Most kids feel some apprehension before going on their first adventure away from home without parents. Many parents are also nervous about the separation from their child, especially if your camper is expressing anxiety about going away to camp.
The biggest source of parental concern is often how your child will handle the separation from you and if they will experience negative emotions, often referred to as “homesickness,” while at camp. While most kids do not feel extreme symptoms of homesickness at camp, many experience emotional challenges during their first (and subsequent) experiences at summer camp and other away-from-parent experiences. These feelings are normal and are something that we have helped many campers work through. Campers feel a great sense of accomplishment when they successfully overcome the challenge of homesickness, and we encourage you to view this experience through the lens of the long-term positive outcomes for your child.
One of our favorite resources for first-time camp parents is Michael Thompson, Ph.D.’s book Homesick and Happy. Parents will find this book helpful not only as you prepare to send your child to GAC this summer, but also as you think about and prepare your child for other future adventures away from you (like college!).
We know many of you are busy and won’t have time to read the whole book, so here are a few ways to get a quick overview:
• Read through our summary notes (sent with the book)
• Listen to Sunshine’s 2020 interview with Dr. Thompson on the GAC POGCAST.
• Listen to Sunshine’s 2017 interview with Thompson on the Sunshine Parenting podcast.
Book Highlights
The following selected passages will help you understand and communicate with your child about why this experience – even if they feel some (or a lot of) homesickness – is important for their development and growth into a thriving adolescent and adult.
Why parents need to “step aside”: p. 8-9 starting at “I believe…”
Eight things parents can’t give children: p.11
Why kids try more things with a camp counselor than they will with you: p. 19
Why kids need to master homesickness: p. 68-70
What parents can do to prevent or lessen homesickness: p. 89-92
Ten elements of a camp experience that create emotionally powerful experiences for children: p. 202-233
“Childsick” and Happy (info for parents missing their kids at camp): p. 238-251
Quotes from Homesick & Happy
Children want to be independent, and they realize that they cannot be truly independent until they beat homesickness, even when they have a painful case of it.
At sleepaway camp, campers send an average of zero texts per day. Into the space created flows a bunch of old-fashioned human behaviors: eye-to-eye contact, physical affection, spontaneous running and jumping, or simple wandering.
Sleepaway Camps Permitted to Open in CA!
We received good news this week. The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has included “sleepaway camps” (resident camps like GAC) in businesses that are permitted to open (with COVID restrictions in place) this summer in counties that are in red, orange, or yellow tiers. The Director of CDPH also told a group of camp leaders that we can expect guidelines for resident camps by the end of this month.
Unless an unlikely shift occurs in COVID-19 transmission rates in Fresno County, Gold Arrow Camp will be permitted to operate this summer. However, until we receive the state guidelines for sleepaway camps, we still don’t know the specific procedures we will need to follow this summer, and we won’t have all those details until the guidelines are released.
We are encouraged by reports of increased vaccine availability and the dramatic drop in COVID-19 transmission rates across California. We are optimistic that these trends will continue and will lead to eased restrictions and a return to more normalcy for all. Our US summer camp staff have been included in the CDC tier with education and childcare workers, and most of our staff will be fully vaccinated before camp starts.
We appreciate your continued patience and flexibility. While we would love to provide you with all the details about modifications we will be required to make this summer, we cannot do so until we have the guidelines. Be assured that GAC will continue to meet the highest standards in the industry for our camper and staff members’ health and safety.
Head to our COVID-19 update for updated answers to FAQ families have about camp this summer.
March GATA Webinar
For this month’s Gold Arrow Teacher Academy (GATA) webinar on Wednesday, March 10 at 5pm PT/8pm ET, we are focusing on Growing Grit!
Grit, which is another word to describe the important character trait of “resilience,” is predictive of student well-being and success. In this webinar, we’ll cover ideas and strategies for helping students grow the grit muscles they need to thrive both in and out of school.
We know from decades of research that one of the most useful predictors of student success is how persistent they are when faced with a problem. This was catapulted into the public conversation by Angela Duckworth and her groundbreaking research on grit. Many of you have probably seen her TED talk in a professional development meeting! In this webinar, we’ll share what we’ve learned about teaching kids to develop grit at camp and share ideas for how you can help kids develop grit and how you can recognize kids for using grit in your classroom.
This webinar is free for all GATA members! If you are not yet a GATA member, you can join here or register just for the webinar here. Even if you’re not able to attend the live webinar on Wednesday, you’ll be able to access the recorded webinar and the accompanying resources.