Adirondack Camp Summer Staff Overview
The Incredible Troupe of former children who make Camp Shine –
If children are our life force, our staff is some combination of brain and heart. One can have a philosophy. One can have the facility and the offering. But without caring, experienced staff members with a high degree of love for children, a keen sense of urgency and accountability and pied piper qualities – there is no true summer camp experience.
At Adirondack we are blessed with a core leadership group of educators and childcare specialists, most of whom are parents as well, who care greatly about children and who are deeply committed to the principles upon which we stand. This group meets several times during the off-season to plan for the next summer and forms the nucleus of the nine day long leadership training course that all of our staff must attend each year before Camp begins.
We recruit approximately 35-40% of our counselors each year -- typically, young adults, usually college and graduate students or else recent graduates. Often they will be Adirondack alumni. A healthy number apply from abroad -- from as far away as New Zealand. Selection criteria are high in all instances. Apart from the normal background checks and referencing, a staff applicant to Adirondack will need to survive multiple interviews aimed at understanding much more about that applicant than his or her fencing or water-ski teaching skills. The emphasis is on common sense, quick thinking, role modeling, mentoring and motivational capabilities, maturity and selflessness, hard work ethic (it is 24/7 at Adirondack) and, of course, above all, a solid memory for what it was like to be a young person growing up and a love for children. Authoritarian role models need not apply.
And neither should any reclusive personalities apply. At Adirondack, our counselors lead a life of total immersion. Teaching the J stroke in canoeing or a power serve in tennis is the tip of the iceberg. Our counselors live and breath the Adirondack dream with their campers. This means, among other things, a shared faith in old, bedrock values like…
Responsibility, Creativity, Spirit, Growing, Independence, Effort, Courage, Sharing, Leadership, Cooperation
This means, too, that our counselors and campers live together in our open-air cabins and share in the attendant community privileges and responsibilities. They are guardians, these pied pipers -- accountable for the safety and needs of each and every camper. They are expected to assure that Camp remains a safe place, not only physically but emotionally and psychologically, so that each of our campers may dare to reach for who it is he or she really is. Rather than “reclusive” or “authoritarian”, the Adirondack counselor will need to be, at once, the fun seeking and fair minded best friend, the extra caring, sensitive and creative big sister or older brother and the challenging and charismatic mentor, whose range stretches broadly as a real live, close-up role model for everything from reasoned decision making to personal hygiene.
The range and number of applicants for Adirondack’s summer staff grows each year against a limited number of spots. It is still slightly harder to be admitted to Stanford as compared to Adirondack, but only slightly. We are immensely proud of our men and women, who make this choice -- above all the other choices they have – to make a lasting difference in a child’s life.
The rewards, however, can be huge. We have been told that when it comes to our staff, we should consider changing the Camp motto -- Strong hearts, strong character -- to Change a young person’s life – change yours! Both, in any case, are strong reminders of the serious side of our game and of the tremendous privilege there is in being appointed an Adirondack Camp counselor.
