Support Staff

At camp it is impossible to have a terrible day; both as a camper and as a staff member. As a staff member your first thought is always the camper. Campers may get frustrated with communicating with a new group of people. Staff may get frustrated because he or she cannot make everyone happy. It is difficult for everyone to ensure all meds are taken, everyone gets to all the activities they want to participate in and everybody stays healthy and fit. We have to keep the proper camper to counselor ratios in addition to balancing days and nights off and rest and night duties. Even with all that, the word “job” doesn’t apply to camp. The work we do up here is much more satisfying than any other type of employment. Still, it sometimes gets stressful. That is why at camp we have a support staff in place. There are three people with at least four years of experience working with the campers that come to Camp Krem. Whitney and Padraig are the female and male counselor coordinators, respectively. One major part of their job is to support the counselor staff. Jen is the administrative assistant. She also is a great support to the staff here. Whitney, Padraig and Jen all work tirelessly on paper work, gazebo duty, communicating with parents, supervising the staff and so on. Together, the three of them make sure to spend time with cabins and individual campers to balance the ratio of staff to camper and to give the counselors a break. When one of these three staff members’ steps in, it frees up the counselors to spend time with other campers, time that is more individualized. Suddenly a group goes from one counselor and three campers to one counselor and one camper. It is in this time especially that remarkable breakthroughs occur. It is not always through an activity or a game and it is usually not planned. When it happens it does not matter how the day started. We can always count on that one moment when a camper smiles at us or gives us that big hug and everything else just seems to melt away.