Summer Camp Secrets

So you want to know more about me and this blog?

Well hi, I’m Roo, a traveller, writer, Early Years Teacher and total Summer Camp nut. I started Summer Camp Secrets purely just to share the camp love and help all of you get to camp and become the best counselors you can be!

My summer camp experience began back in June 2011 when I set off for what was going to be the best summer of my life. Although I didn’t know it then, Summer Camp would become my driving force in life, so much so that I have spent the last 8 years finding things to do in the months between when I leave camp in September and return to camp in May, just waiting for summer to come back around again.

My camp story has led me through a number of roles. I started in my first year working partly in the office, while the rest of my time was spent  building a previously fairly non-existant Media program – teaching Media and working as the camp photographer and videographer.

Then in my second year I continued my work in the Media Department (which consisted of just me), whilst also being a live-in counselor with a group of 10-12 year old girls. This meant that I lived in a tent with them (yes, we live in awesome platform, canvas tents), ate my meals with them and was generally responsible for their well-being during their stay at camp.

My third year at camp saw me promoted to the role of Media Director, basically meaning I did my job as before with all the social media, photos, videos and media lessons, but I didn’t live in a tent with the kids, so had more time to complete all the tasks that the Media Department required of me.

In my 4th summer returning to camp I reprised my role of Media Director, with the Media Department finally seeing some growth, as I actually had a staff member! This was a pretty fantastic summer, as the addition of an extra person meant I could get so much more done in my role to help grow camp’s media presence and create some really great videos that I’m very proud of.

I continued to return to camp each summer, taking on new and different responsibilities every year – 2018 saw me step into the position of Program Director and since March 2019 I’ve been at camp full-time as the Assistant Camp Director. I’m responsible for a lot of the day-to-day running of activities and general camp programming, as well as working with and supporting our amazing team of supervisors. Who’d have thought that when I first arrived at camp all those summers ago that this is where the journey would lead me?!

I LOVE my job at camp. I love camp. I love the place, the kids, my friends… I love everything about it. And if I could spend my life at camp, or at least in the camping industry then I would. Well that’s the plan, anyway.

Camp is my life and I wanted a way to feel connected to camp during the off-season, so that’s where this blog comes in. It’s a way for me to write down all the summer camp stories I haven’t yet written, give tips and advice to people who are thinking about working at summer camp, and just generally spread the summer camp joy!