Staff Training Is Underway

We're well into our staff training here at Camp Sloane... last week was our supervisory and specialty training (lifeguards and adventure/ropes staff) and it was full of fun discussions, lots of learning, note taking, many many group bonding games, and a lot of time to just generally get our areas prepared for the coming summer. It was nice to have the time in a slightly smaller group of staff to get to know the new people as well as to get all my lesson plans written for my media classes, get my media room moved and reorganised, and have more of an overall sense of how the summer is going to go.

 The weather last week was pretty poor, so respect to the lifeguards for getting in the (really cold) pool and lake everyday without any complaints at all! In fact, everyone all week has been quite impressive, there haven't really been any complaints about anything, everyone seems to be working to their absolute best and it's looking like this summer is going to be pretty spectacular! I think this staff group is one of the best ones we've had to a while and I'm super excited to see everyone in action once the kids arrive at the end of this week!

On Friday we all had the night off and it was great to get off camp and get to know one another under different circumstances - it's always fun to get out of the camp 'bubble' every now and again. And then on Saturday a whole bunch of new (and returning) staff members finally arrived! It was super exciting to see lots of people whom I haven't really even spoken to since we all left camp last summer... there were lots of excited squeals and hugs going on!

Then yesterday was one of my favourite days at camp so far this summer... a bunch of us were taken down to our new climbing tower (check out a photo of it in last week's post) and were then formally trained and certified so we can run it this summer and in our Fall season too. We basically spent the morning tying knots, learning about the ropes and different safety measures and the afternoon saw us belaying and climbing. It's a sport I never really got a chance to do much until my second summer here at camp and now climbing is one of my favourite things ever! And I'm super proud of myself too because I managed to climb to the very top of the 'hard' wall, which is actually really hard!

Putting up tents!

So it's all go go go this week as it's only 6 days until the kids arrive! Wow, that's come around quickly!