Spring time is a happy time at Camp Runoia. It’s basically a celebration! We are excited about the summer season and everyone arriving and getting busy with camp fun. We are busy as bees buzzing around getting buildings spruced up, lawns and trails cleaned up and ordering equipment and supplies for the fun summer ahead.
New in 2014? Lots of things. Among them honey bees! You may have heard a buzz at Runoia and it’s true. We have two bee colonies located in two hives. Both hives are healthy and producing honey and taking care of their queen and producing more honey bees.
Our honey bees will be pollinators for local farmers (as well as our own farm and gardens) and hopefully they will produce honey we can all taste and share at camp! We are learning as we go and with the help of other bee keepers in Maine, we hope to keep our hives alive and healthy!
Honey bees are hard workers and aren’t the type of bees that want to sting people or animals. They are very busy doing their jobs which include guarding the hive, being field bees and pollinators, nursing the queen and other drone activities. If you are worried about a friend who is allergic, we will let you know where the bees are and how to avoid their area! Meanwhile, if you are a bee enthusiast, feel free to share anything with us at Camp Runoia about bees if you’d like to. We are all learning together!
This summer campers can don the bee costumes and learn more about bees. It will be a fun time on the Runoia farm!
I’m fascinated how I learn from old ideas revisited or from re-reading concepts I’ve thought about before. Maybe my grandfather (Roland H. Cobb of Cobb Summer Camps) summed it up with his dry humor, “I like reading the same books over again; I never remember how they end.”.
Today’s tweet from SCOPE was Morris Cohen’s article: The Social and Emotional Long-Term Benefits of Summer Camp. He wrote it for the Mental Health column of dnainfo.com. Cohen’s article was one of those re-reads for me. Even though I know and remember the ending, I loved reading about it along the way; the part about Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence and how summer camp helps campers build skills in Social Intelligence. Here’s a snipet – I quote Morris Cohen’s article:
Another Opportunity to Develop Social Intelligence
According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, who coined the term, social intelligence is broken into two parts:
Social awareness is the ability to monitor our inner world — our thoughts and feelings. Social awareness refers to qualities including empathy, attunement to others and social cognition.
Social facility, on the other hand, refers to how we use our internal social awareness to interact with individuals and groups successfully, such as self-presentation, influence and concern for others.
Camp is a key opportunity for kids to develop both sides of their social intelligence by offering them a way to practice becoming adept at socializing by offering them access to many new people and environments.
The more children can practice their social intelligence, the more smoothly they can incorporate the skills for the rest of their lives.
Senior Campers Chill Out Together
Thanks Morris Cohen for sharing this article with readers at dnainfo.com. We are sharing with our readers because we at Camp Runoia agree wholeheartedly! This upcoming summer will be another platform for our 220 girls to stretch and grow and add to their life skills. Camp Runoia – Building Lifelong Skills!
Introducing the Runoia Administrative Team to our Staff
At Runoia we work as a team. We connect daily about campers and families and staff. We like lots of reminders as we have a lot of people to keep track of in our jobs. We like to receive your questions. Contact any of the Director/Admin team and let us know what’s on your mind. If the person you emailed doesn’t know the answer, they will help you find the solution!
You’ll find a lot of other helpful leaders in your activity area when you get to camp. Meanwhile, feel free to email any of us with your questions and/or any concerns or if you’d like to share ideas with us or just say “hi”!
Alex Jackson
Primary responsibility during the summer:
Director of All Programs and Schedules (including your schedule!) Transportation to and from Camp and Staff and Camper Programs
Email: alex@runoia.com Fun Fact: I really like frogs and collected them growing up and now I own a Costa Rican black and green tree frog!
Abby Burbank
Primary responsibility during the summer: Abby joins us this summer as a Summer Resident Director.
She joins our team to help run camp this summer and will focus on Junior End staff guidance and supporting our health care team and program director. Her years of camp experience and serendipity-like timing to join us this summer makes for a great opportunity for Runoia and its families.
Primary responsibility during the summer: Jai lives at camp in the summer and has the pleasure of being the Senior End Coach and Support for Cabin Counselors and this summer she will add: Director to the Runoia Kitchen
Email: jai@runoia.com Fun Fact(s): I have been known to eat an entire watermelon in one sitting!
Gines Satchi
Primary responsibility during the summer: Gines is the summer Director of Program – supporting key leaders to run safe and engaging activities. He is the Director of the Runoia Waterfront ensuring safety and fun on and in the water this summer. Email: gines@runoia.com Fun Fact: I have jumped out of a plane 76 times!
Pam Cobb
Primary responsibility during the summer: Supporting and guiding this amazing team of Runoia Directors. Business management of camp and strategic planning for camp. Come have a K-cup coffee or tea in my office this summer! Email: pam@runoia.com Fun Fact: I am the fourth generation in my family to own and operate a camp in Maine.
One of the grand moments of going off to camp is feeling independent and having the opportunity to reinvent yourself. At Camp Runoia you have the chance to be a different person than you are in school or in your neighborhood or with your parents.
Fitness is an Integral Part of Camp
I do not imagine any young girls are scheming about this prior to camp. “When I show up at camp, I am going to be a courageous girl who helps others and is always kind and respectful to adults.” Or “I cannot wait to get to camp where I can be the first one up in the morning to help others with their morning chores.” In fact, it’s not something we even bring up with campers. It just happens and most campers reflect on it at some point during the summer.
A transformation occurs when girls come to camp that is purely organic. The tendency is that within a short period of time, girls drop their “baggage” from the school year and leave it somewhere between the parking lot and beginning of the two mile road to camp. Layers of pressure unload or the steam slowly seeps out from the pressure cooker of life.
Within the first few days campers unpack more of their emotional “stuff and become a little more carefree. They try something new without fear of humiliation. They stand up for others without being excluded from groups. As the summer session carries on, more and more of this happens around them and they find that being their true selves is easy and burden-less. Hallelujah!
Camp Runoia, where diversity is celebrated, people are included and valued for who they are and how they grow and what they contribute to the camp community. This leaves a lot of possibility for girls to try being someone else when they get to camp.
Unlike famous 19th century female writers with pseudonyms “nom de plumes”, many who wrote with male names in a male-dominated profession, some campers truly try out a slightly different persona. They try behaving differently and receive speedy feedback in the form of gratitude, attention, cheers, acknowledgment and adding value. This phenomenon may come in the form of a personal victory of getting up in front of a crowd when they
Runoia Riders at All Levels can Excel
have previously had stage fright or they find themself climbing to a high height when they have been scared of heights in the past. It starts with talking in front of a small group when it’s their turn and builds to performing in the talent show. Or climbing a little bit higher on the climbing tower and then trying the Runoia “Dragonfly” zipline at the end of the session.
Small steps to success lead to large distances covered in life.
The daylight stretches into the evening hours now which means summer is just around the bend. We are seeing a lot of parents working hard on their forms for camp. Thank you!
Did you know on your Runoia Camp in Touch (CIT) dashboard you can find all your forms? In addition to the forms we need from you, your dashboard gives you some critical info for planning and packing for overnight sleepaway camp in Maine at Camp Runoia. Between the forms page on your dash board and the www.runoia.com page on FAMILIES, you will find:
There is an explanation of “What to expect on opening day” at Camp Runoia.
You’ll find the official Camp Runoia Packing List.
Check out the options for sending emails to your camper and where you can look at photos posted every 3-4 days during the camp season.
A link to the official outfitter of Camp Runoia – Lands’ End.
Looking for vintage Runoia gear? It’s classic and revered. Go to Amerasport.com and search for Runoia to order your throwback Runoia gear.
The Parent/Family Handbook – this is a handy document to peruse and bookmark for future reference.
The Camp Runoia app is also available on our FAMILIES page. The app allows you to keep in touch with picture posting in the summer, connect with your CIT dashboard and see scenes from around camp.
There’s much much more on your dashboard so be sure to check it out. Just picture us in the Runoia office eagerly awaiting your forms!
The end of February comes quickly with the short calendar month and the longer days in Maine’s winter season. Every day the sun shines longer and brighter and we dream of the days when we hear the screen doors slam, girls voices in laughter, song and friendship.
So much happens at camp.
Wilderness Trips Build Lifelong Skills
There’s growth and learning, building of lifelong skills in activities and receiving support to navigate independently within the community of camp. Other aspects:
Becoming your personal best
Finding friends and building relationships throughout the summers of youth and beyond.
Working through the agony of defeat and experiencing the glory of trying something for the first time.
Guiding our Runoia campers are dedicated youth professionals; coaching, supporting, and making campers laugh when they thought they were going to cry. Basically camp counselors become the adults campers treasure and look up to for years to come. Counselors focus on campers building skills, increasing self-esteem, learning to advocate and being the “stand up girl”. They also create a lot of laugh-out-loud moments in the process.
Skill Building at Camp Runoia…… Happens All Day Long
Our parents are thankful Runoia is so much more than s’mores and fun. Sure we have that going on, but, the depth of camp: learning about yourself and what you contribute to the whole, intentional youth development and life skill building is farther afield for your every day camp program.
One parent sent me an email and this link this week:
A letter to a daughter which applies to all young girls and woman – so perfectly written and seems to fit with the Camp Runoia way so wanted to pass it on:
When I read Dr. Flanagan’s letter to his daughter I had to share as he so eloquently expressed the message my husband and I hope our 14-year-old daughter and 16 and 18-year-old sons live by. I only hope my husband and I are teaching these lessons daily by our example. I am a bit disheartened at the direction corporate culture has taken, not only increasing these societal expectations on young girls but also more recently targeting young boys as well. The eternal optimist in me knows we have wonderful examples all around our children – teachers, neighbors, camp counselors, scientists… to name a few. We simply need to help our children and ourselves understand these are the people we need to emulate rather then the false role models created by corporate marketers.
This week Camp Runoia recognizes National Eating Disorder week. We encourage parents to take stock in the Runoia parent’s declaration (above). Also:
Explore resources with your children that include media literacy*, including awareness of advertising and marketing manipulation of girls (and boys).
Help your children to understand how they are marketed toward to “fit in”, “feel good about themselves” and the falseness this perpetuates at the risk of their own youth and their self esteem.
Leadership Skills Happen at Every Age Group at Runoia
Hats off to camps around the nation that delve a little deeper into the camp experience; to the camps practicing 21st century skill building, youth development and creating communities to belong to without fear of prejudice, exclusive cliques, look-ism or humiliation.
Thanks to our Camp Runoia parent who brought Dr. Flanagan’s letter to our attention enabling us to share with our camp community, peers and professionals in camp.
And, finally, how many days before we are back in our camp “bubble” where our girls can take pressure off themselves, rub a little dirt in their palms and grow into the young people they will become? Not too many – its nearly noon and the sun is still high in the late February sky!
*www.hghw.org is a girl-serving organization teaching media literacy and much more – check it out!
Fair choice and commitment is part of everything we do at camp!
Interview with Lea Kone of Maine Camp Experience with Owner/Director, Pam Cobb
Self-esteem is such a buzzword these days. What do you think self-esteem means today?
You’re right, it’s almost an overused word. About ten years ago people began moving away from it and started using intentional youth development as a catch phrase. It was a phrase that meant helping kids develop in their youth — collaborative problem solving, initiative, creative thinking. A lot of things that schools are not necessarily teaching. So I think self-esteem morphed into intentional youth development, butnow I feel like that, too, has been almost overused. Now 21st century skills has really become the new thing. It addresses the question: What are we teaching kids to help them become not only great citizens, but business, government, social leaders, etc.? I think camps help develop all of these skills because camp involves community, a support system that isn’t coddling, and expanded comfort zones.
In what ways do you see the self-esteem of campers change from the beginning to the end of a camp summer? And how does it change over multiple summers?
Parents say their child is more organized, takes the time to think through what’s coming up, and is prepared. I don’t know if every camp is like this, but at Runoia there’s not a counselor in between activities helping kids get ready. They have the responsibility of changing from a bathing suit into horse riding clothes, and hopefully they hang up their swimsuit to dry. A camper learns these logistical and organizational skills at camp.
There’s also a whole piece about taking care of other people. It’s about being the stand-up girl, helping others learn how to advocate for themselves, for yourself, learning who to ask for help or lobby for something that you want and are not getting — all without your parents doing it for you. I think parents really see how their daughter comes home and she makes her bed, how dinner is now run like a camp meal — everyone has to help set the table, clear the dishes, sweep the floor.
I think these moral imprints grow from summer to summer. The little campers learn how to brush their teeth, put their clothes away, get dressed. But when they get older they start to think outside of themselves. They think, “This girl needs help. She needs to know where to mail a letter,” or, “This camper doesn’t know how to get to the ropes course. I’m going to help her out.” Camp helps kids think about and do things for others.
And delayed gratification is a very real thing at camp. It’s the experience of living in a large community with a lot of other children. It’s the reality that you don’t get everything instantly and you don’t get everything that you want. I guess, in essence, you have to grow up at camp.
Activity-wise, which activities do you think grow self-esteem in campers?
I think different activities service different tools. When you look at progressive activities like archery, where you learn to shoot at 10 yards, and once you get past all the levels, you move to 15 yards and then 20 yards. It keeps getting harder. It’s like that in a lot of activities in camp. Tennis, riding, softball, canoeing, sailing. First you get the feel of sailing by being in the boat with people who are more experienced. Then you start to work the boat. You learn how to tie knots. Then you progress into skippering.
Progressive Accomplishments Lead to the Dragonfly!
It’s the same with our wilderness trip program. Our younger campers start with shorter trips and then by the time they’re older, they’re doing longer trips and harder climbs. So I think there are a lot of ways to build skills, and then I think self-esteem growth occurs organically. “I want to climb higher.” “I want to shoot further.” “I want to solo a canoe.”
Also, having victories and defeats without your parents being there is important. If something doesn’t go well, you say, “Okay, that didn’t go so well. How can I make it better?” Your parents aren’t there to console you, to tell you you’re really great. Sharing victories and defeats with other adults outside of your family is a good thing.
Like finding your own voice…
Yes, that’s a great expression.
How do you see the approach to self-esteem changing in the future?
We could probably “Google” what’s next. But I think the 21st century skills are really good ones. People are coming out of the best colleges, but they are not able to succeed in collaborative problem solving or participate in things outside the norm. To allow someone else to be successful over your own ego-driven persona — that’s a big thing companies find people lacking, but camp is teaching these skills.
What is something you would say to parents as they prepare their kids for camp?
Camp is a microcosm of the world. It’s not utopia. There are struggles. But because of the ratio of adults to children — at MCE camps specifically — kids must overcome adversity. However, before camp, kids must get ready to go away. They must build skills by spending nights at a friend’s house, a relative’s house, making it through those new experiences so that when they get to camp they aren’t totally shocked. They must practice some independence beforehand.
How can camps promote the skills we mentioned throughout the year?
I think that parents can help their campers make their own decision about returning to camp and help them understand that it is a commitment and to stick with it. By addressing the things that they may be concerned with about returning to camp, we are helping children to work out their own problems and see the glass as half full. We don’t want to teach parents how to parent, but we want to encourage campers to stay in touch with their camp friends in meaningful ways, be it old-fashioned letter writing, texting or planning out of camp time together. Parents can remind campers to stay connected and help facilitate visits.
We have to remember, camp is a great place to try new things because there is a zero tolerance for shame or humiliation. Whether it’s singing a song in front of the whole camp, or acting in the talent show, or trying something new that you wouldn’t try at home because everyone else is already good at it. And at age 9 or 10, campers are getting an early experience of what it’s like to go off to college. It’s a very powerful thing to be disconnected from your family and then write or tell stories about your experiences once you get home.
The short days and cold temperatures of a Maine winter leave lots of time for indoor activities that we don’t usually pursue during the busier seasons. More time for catching up with books we have wanted to read, playing games and often at our house there is also a jigsaw puzzle on the go.
It takes up space on a not often used desk or counter top and may sit there for weeks as we try to fit it together. Everyone in the family takes turns with it, sometimes pouring over it for hours at other times just putting in one or two pieces that caught our eye. We may all work on it together or take solitary time to figure a part out. These days we are up to 500 – 1000 pieces of fairly complex pictures, not too challenging for the little ones and engaging enough for the grown-ups. The puzzle may get left for days at a time with no solution seeming possible or too many pieces of the same color being too confusing and yet with time and perhaps a different set of eyes someone finds a piece that starts a fresh interest and more of the solution appears.
We know and trust that there is a solution and despite the fact that it sometimes seems impossible every piece has a place and will fit in perfectly. We never quit or put it away until it is complete because we believe that we can do it someday. It doesn’t matter who does the most work or who can fathom a particularly intricate part and we rarely remember who had the pleasure of fitting the last piece.
The end product is really irrelevant, it is the journey that we take to get there, the quiet work we do together or alone, the challenges and frustrations that we must overcome to find what we need and the ultimate satisfaction in a job well done.
As the days get longer the puzzles are forgotten and gather dust in the back of the closet yet the lessons they taught us and the time we enjoyed together resolving them become a cherished part of our memories.
A package arrived in the mail this week from a camper. The box was addressed:
Camp Runoia – the most wonderful gift of all
Inside was a beautiful tree ornament of a glass kayak. The family wrote a note describing how every year they pick out an ornament that represents something important in their lives. This year, the kayak symbolized camp and how important camp was to their daughter. They thought it appropriate to mail one to camp to show their gratitude and appreciation.
At Runoia, we are thankful for the thoughtfulness of this family and also feel the gift of camp is an amazing, life changing, skill building, educational and fun experience you can provide for your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. To all our families and all who believe in camp – thank you!
On a trip to the Midwest, I was struck by two camp connections I encountered. I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a fairly unlikely place to happen upon Maine camp devotees. Here an enclave of Runoia fanatics created by Camp Runoia’s Director of Equestrian Programs exist. While visiting new families and meeting staff last weekend, I had two striking conversations with two different people.
The first was a camp mom. Her daughter is a quiet and introverted person who made a huge leap to attend sleepaway summer camp in Maine. With the intrigue of riding often and being in a friendly place where she would be encouraged to try new things in a supportive place, she nervously arrived last summer to camp. In her quiet way, it was hard for us extroverts to know if she was having a good time – when asked she shyly replied “yes” and glanced away.
Months later as I’m chatting with her mom at a weekend horse show, I heard her perspective about how she liked camp from her mom: she rode a lot, met a lot of people, took a lot art classes at camp, excelled at archery and left Camp Runoia with a sense of confidence she didn’t know she had. Her mom asked her on a scale of 1-10 how would she rate it? She replied 9. What could have made it better? Attending camp earlier in her life. That conversation, with a Midwestern December blizzard carrying on outside the barn, left me warm and toasty in the cold and breezy spectators area next to the arena where the show was going on.
The second conversation that struck me was with one of our camp counselors and Runoia riding instructors from two summers ago. She also attended the horse show run by Mane Event. She rode a horse owned by our Director and was champion in her class this weekend! She was happy to see me and before she left the show to drive home in the snow storm – leaving herself plenty of day light and time to get back safely – she sought me out to say goodbye.
She shared with me how being a camp counselor helped her be a solid Resident Assistant at her college. She says camp training provided her with “tools in her toolkit” she uses all the time at college. She thanked me for giving her the opportunity to hold one of the hardest and most rewarding jobs she’s ever had and how it has prepared her for life.
In the midst of this snow storm, in a place in the plains, far away from camp and my home, I glowed with warmth from these messages about Camp Runoia. Whether you are reading this from your warm home on a cold winter day or from your office in a mild climate, you can be warmed by the thought of camp and all it has to offer people through its simple yet profound experience.
Spring time is a happy time at Camp Runoia. It’s basically a celebration! We are excited about the summer season and everyone arriving and getting busy with camp fun. We are busy as bees buzzing around getting buildings spruced up, lawns and trails cleaned up and ordering equipment and supplies for the fun summer ahead.
