Psychologist Signe Whitson Trains Our Staff
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.
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Sunshine & Signe Whitson, holding each other's books.[/caption]
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, ... Read more
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 
Among this year's leaders...
9 are former campers.
21 have spent five or more years at GAC.
9 are from other countries.
9 play guitar.
19 are under 30.
11 are over 30.
6 are current camp parents.
6 are teachers (or former teachers).
Throughout this week, GAC leaders are preparing for the arrival of counselors (Wednesday, June 12), preparing training sessions for the staff, and getting camp and program areas ready for camper arrival on June 16 (Shaver Specialty campers) and on June 23 (Session 1 campers).
Facilitating this year's training is Debby Winning, an HR specialist who worked for many years at Marriott and more recently has worked as a consultant for AIG, rolling out their customer service program. Debby has been part of the extended GAC family since 1999, when she first trained our leaders and helped us come up with our first leadership motto, "Spirit to Serve." This year's theme, decided upon by the team and in keeping with the camp-wide theme of