The 2018 Fall Akeela Circular for our Wisconsin campers and their families!

In this issue of our camp newsletter:

• Letters from your new directors, Kevin Trimble & Mike Deutschman.
• A recap of what we heard from campers and parents on our post-camp surveys, and what you can expect in summer 2019.
• Relive your best camp memories with photo highlights from the summer, and get a sneak peak of the Beyond Akeela program.
• A HUGE thank you for helping to raise more than $15,000 for the POISE Campership charity!
• Upcoming birthdays, and more!

The latest Camp Akeela (WI) newsletter, the Akeela Circular, is here!

This jam-packed newsletter includes a lot of important information for camp parents, introductions to a new senior staff member, details on communication from camp, and much more. Here’s a quick look at one article, What To Expect On The First Day of Camp.

Dear Akeela Camper,

Summer is almost here and we hope you are excited about camp, even if you’re also feeling a little nervous about it. Many kids go away for part of the summer. Some visit family, some go on teen travel or community service programs, and some go to sleep-away camps. Almost everybody worries about how they will like a place that’s new to them. It’s OK to feel that way and we’re here to help make your transition to camp as easy and smooth as possible. We think that one way to do that is to help you know what to expect …

If you’re taking the bus to camp from the Chicago suburbs,, you and your parents will meet some of our counselors at the bus pick-up location. They will be there to welcome you and to introduce you to other campers. They will help you find a seat on the bus with a new friend and will be there to answer any questions you might have. The travel time to camp is about 3.5 hours, and you will bring lunch with you from home for the bus ride to camp.

Those of you flying to Chicago on Opening Day will be met at the airport by Akeela staff members. They will be there to greet you and to introduce you to other campers who have also flown in! You and your new friends will be driven by our staff in a camp van directly to camp. It will take approximately 3.5 hours to get to Akeela from the airport, too. If your parents are driving you to camp, you will be dropped off at between 1:00pm and 2:00pm. Your counselors will be there to meet you at your car and help you carry your luggage up to your room. You, your parents, and counselors will go to your dorm room, maybe meet some other bunkmates who have already arrived, and put your stuff down in your room. You’ll then say goodbye to your family and begin your camp adventure!

Regardless of how you get to camp, here’s what you can expect to happen the rest of that first day:

• You will have a chance to see what campus looks like and enjoy some planned activities with your bunkmates. You might take a tour and play some games.
• You’ll also meet our nurses so that they can give you a quick “health check” to make sure you’re healthy!
• There will be some time after everyone arrives for each bunk group to start spending some time together before we meet for dinner. This is a great time to get to know your bunkmates and counselors, and talk about “bunk expectations,” so you know what to expect from each other.
• We will all have dinner and Evening Meeting together as a community. You’ll eat dinner with your bunkgroup at the same table, just like you will for all your meals at camp! Evening Meeting will be at the amphitheatre and you’ll get to hear from Dave and Katie, and have a chance to make announcements about the new friends you’ve already made!
• Then it will be time for our opening campfire and evening snack. We’ll sing songs and do skits as a community by the fire. It’s one of our favorite parts of camp!
• Before bedtime, you will preview the next day’s schedule and then Dave or Katie and your head counselor will stop by to say good night. Before you know it, your first day will be over and we will all be getting ready for bed!

Many campers worry that they might be sad or homesick on the first night of camp. That is very normal. All of your counselors will be right in the dorm with you to help you. In addition to talking to them, you might want to look at photos from home, write a letter to your family or read a book. We know that after a short time, you will be having such a great time at Akeela, it will feel like your second home.

We’re so excited for an amazing summer at Camp Akeela. See you soon!

Check out the entire newsletter here!

Social Skills Summer Camps & Critical Life Skills

For generations of campers, summer camp has been teaching critical life skills. Camp has always been so much more than a recreational experience or simply a “fun” way to spend the summer. Are many camp activities recreational in nature? Sure. And is living in a cabin with a group of peers, supervised by attentive and passionate counselors, a lot of fun? It’s the best! That’s what makes camp such an incredibly unique and powerful educational setting: kids are learning without feeling like they’re learning. They’re having the time of their lives while ALSO growing in ways that will shape who they become as adults.

In recent years, camp professionals have been working to better articulate the value of the camp experience. This effort has coincided with a movement to introduce the concept of 21st Century Skills to the dialogue around the American education system. Other educators are coming to realize what camp directors have always known – but too rarely talked about: that “soft skills” like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, resilience, empathy and self-awareness are actually better indicators of academic and professional success than mastery of traditional academic subjects or even other intelligence measurements.

Surprising thing Google learned about its employees

We recently came across an article in The Washington Post, titled “The surprising thing Google learned about its employees — and what it means for today’s students”. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/12/20/the-surprising-thing-google-learned-about-its-employees-and-what-it-means-for-todays-students/) The article contains a post by Cathy N. Davidson, who summarizes the findings from two research projects conducted by Google: Project Oxygen in 2013 and Project Aristotle in 2017.
Ms. Davidson indicates that Google’s founders originally concentrated their hiring on candidates with great academic success in computer science and other “hard” skills. By 2013, they had enough employment data to analyze which specific talents correlated with the most success and best leadership at work. Here’s what they found:

Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

That paragraph is striking to me because it so accurately describes the skills we teach at camp. We’re shooting a new promotional video for Akeela this summer. In preparation for that project, we’ve been working a lot on articulating. A few key messages to potential camp families: What makes Akeela unique? What will a camper’s experience be like in our community? What can parents expect as a return on their investment in our camp? To that last question, I can hardly think of a better answer than what appears above.

The post goes on to discuss the results of Google’s 2017 research on teams, Project Aristotle:

Project Aristotle shows that the best teams at Google exhibit a range of soft skills: equality, generosity, curiosity toward the ideas of your teammates, empathy, and emotional intelligence. And topping the list: emotional safety. No bullying. To succeed, each and every team member must feel confident speaking up and making mistakes. They must know they are being heard.

By way of conclusion, Ms. Davidson says,

STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone. As Steve Jobs famously insisted, is not enough. We desperately need the expertise of those who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as the computational.

Here’s a list of the key concepts from those findings:

• Communication and listening
• theory of mind (perspective taking)
• empathy and emotional intelligence
• curiosity, critical thinking and problem solving
• emotional intelligence
• kindness, generosity and respect for others
• confidence and the ability to learn from mistakes
• belief in one’s own value and voice

The skills on that list are what camp is all about! Because we’re a camp that specializes in kids who need a little extra social support. We’re particularly intentional about building those life skills lessons into everything we do at Akeela. Our counselors know that they’re preparing children for a fulfilled and successful life … And it’s good to know that Google agrees!