As summer 2022 rapidly approaches, camp directors are deep in the process of planning for the unique challenges associated with a third pandemic summer. Unlike last summer, we are not thinking as much about the sometimes exhausting logistics of weekly testing and the social distancing  of hundreds of exuberant children. Although illness is still an important topic, it has receded into the background and become the essential wallpaper of our current lived experience. Consequently, camp directors are thinking, more than ever before, about the psychological health of the children we serve, both campers and staff.

Many of our pundits and politicians have told us that kids will simply reset as their freedoms increase and the pandemic ebbs into the background of our collective awareness. We have been told that the heightened anxiety and increased suicidal activity will fade away. We have been reassured that our kids aren’t suffering, aren’t changed; that what worked in the past will now work again. 

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For some of our kids, this may be true. They may have reset. They may feel okay. But both anecdotal and scientific data tells us that many of our children are more fragile, less able to learn, less emotionally grounded. Flooded with and impacted by the heightened vigilance and increased vulnerability of the last two years, many children are struggling widely across a host of milieus – academic, social, and recreational. 

Teachers tell us that lessons that used to take a day now take a week, and that they are often forgotten over a weekend. Our ability to retain information is lowered. Our emotionality is heightened. Our kids aren’t learning the way kids did two years ago. Teachers report this phenomenon stretching from preschools, where basic social skills and speech and language acquisition have regressed, to colleges, where students can’t process information or make social connections the way they have in the past. Anxiety is through the roof. There aren’t enough hospital beds for the kids who need them. 

The camping world is not separate from this psychological maelstrom. We exist within it, and our participants – both staff and campers – are impacted significantly. So how do we prepare for camps? Most of our direct service providers, bunk staff, are children themselves. Our culture, assuming and hoping these young people are okay, has expected them to jump back into high school and college. We’re still pushing achievement goals. But these children are not okay; how could they be? Reality as they knew it has been and will continue to be upended. They need more than “going back to normal.” What can we provide them?

In an effort to address this question, the Foundation for Jewish Camping (FJC) has beefed up its Yedid Nefesh program, getting more mental health experts into camp settings. These professionals are essential to support staff and counselors as they help kids navigate this summer and process the last few years.

At In The City Camps in Atlanta, we are attempting to answer the question and pivot the conversation. This summer we are piloting a strength-based program for all staff. Proposed by director Eileen Price and MESSH (Mental Emotional Social and Spiritual Health) specialist Danya Maloon, and written by Dr. Betsy Stone and Ellen Rank, this three-session model will focus on helping counselors identify their own strengths and positive character traits and think about how they might use these “superpowers” to help campers. The sessions are designed to avoid deficit-focused thinking. Instead, we hope that we will empower our staff to celebrate what they do well. 

This strengths-based focus will be the theme of the summer, as we return again and again to questions of how we use our strengths and how we support strengths in others. Through focusing on the questions of “Who am I?” “How do my strengths help me persevere through challenging situations?” and, crucially, “How do I use my strengths to foster the strengths of the young campers in my care?,” our goal is to help our counselors, our campers and our community shift their thinking around hard things. We want them to understand themselves as capable, flexible, and empowered. This curriculum is designed to jumpstart these conversations and these understandings.

We cannot help our children to rebuild by ignoring or making light of the impact of these past two years. We can best build when we build on strong foundations. Our strengths have helped us manage the ongoing COVID crisis, and they will help us not only become our best selves, but foster the best in those around us. 

Betsy Stone, Ph.D., is a retired psychologist and an adjunct lecturer at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
Eileen Price is the CEO and founder of In the City Camps, a Jewish day camp with multiple locations in Atlanta, GA.
Danya Maloon is a social worker and school counselor in the Atlanta area. During the summers, she works as the camper care director for In the City Camps.
Ellen Rank is an educational consultant. She mentors graduate students in Jewish education, writes curriculum and has authored numerous text books and teachers’ guides.