Teen Counselors

Rachelle (TC) and Helen washing dishes.
 I told you that  our campers are awesome!

Our Teen Counselors(TC's) are awesome. They know this, but some of you may not. Actually all of our campers are awesome, but the TC’s are awesome with an extra bit of responsibility added in. The idea of our TC program is to not only to make our jobs easier and camp better, but also to give our kids an opportunity to develop their teaching and leadership skills in an environment where they will succeed. In some cases, the TC program also prepares campers to be actual counselors when they age out of 4-H.  This last responsibility may eventually become a problem:) TC’s are expected to set an example at camp, they are the ones that we expect to make sure new campers feel welcome, the tag system makes sense to everyone, dishes get done, and the cabins stay clean. They also help make sure that campers and dogs are ready and prepared for activities. Teen Counselors are also asked to prepare a lesson of their choice and teach this lesson.

All important things, but there is one important, and possibly unknown reason we keep them around. Pranks! If you haven’t figure it out, we love pranks at camp. We like the atmosphere they encourage, the mix of seriousness, competitiveness and fun. Pranks started out as red cabin vs blue cabin, the history of them is worthy of a separate post. But somehow they spread to camper vs counselor, which created a slight problem. We could have some input on cabin vs cabin pranks. But the whole idea of counselor vs camper pranks is that we have NO IDEA what the plan is. Enter the teen counselors. They are all returning campers, over the age of 15, and there are two per cabin. Some have been to camp for as many as five years. They have figure out what are acceptable pranks, and what are not, and have earned our trust.

I won’t ruin it for you, but when you read the (eventual) pranks blog post you will see why our teen counselors are awesome, and how they did a wonderful job planning and managing a prank that will be talked about for years, while still keeping everyone safe.  Our teen counselors are awesome and we keep them around for a reason! And no, it is not just because they can make excellent lemonade, although that might be what they’d tell you.

Teen Counselor Megan helping Cassady design a course

Photos and video courtesy of Liz Bailey