Leaving your mark
Monday, September 26, 2011 at 11:00PM Last week I went on a tour of two great camps - Becket Chimney Corners YMCA & YMCA Camp Coniston. Both camps have a retention rate that would put other summer camps to shame.
I noticed they had a few qualities in common. One was how their campers were able to leave their mark in the cabin. Both camps allowed each cabin group to make a sign for their session. Those signs decorated and painted by campers, hung proudly each cabin.
Campers must love coming back after a long school year to find their name on last year's cabin untouched. They had campers decorate on a separate piece of wood to hang in cabin so it wouldn't just appear like grafitti.
It's a tradition I'm considering starting at my camp. Do you let your campers leave their mark?
Chimney Corners
Camp Coniston
Reader Comments (3)
What a great idea. I love creative ideas like this that become even more valuable over time.
I would love to be able to go back to my camp and see a sign with my name and the names of my cabinmates. If nothing else so I could remember their names and make fun of the '90s aesthetic that would have made its way onto the sign.
I think it's a great idea! I have seen it work in lots of camps.
Our camp has an 80 year tradition of plaques for each summer in the dining hall but nothing in the cabins.
I think that a cabin sign would also help cut down on graffiti.
In 2007 I brought my son to Becket for his third year. We moved into his cabin - which was my cabin when I was an 18 year-old first-time counselor in 1984 - and found the cabin signs I'd made with my campers back in the day. He asked, 'Is that your signature from when you were a counselor?' And I quietly answered, 'Yes.' What a powerful and utterly cool moment that was.