Teen camp in Tarifa, Spain

  • campamento de adolescentes, monitoras y participantes se despiden en el aeropuerto

Teen camp in Tarifa, Spain

Teen camp in Tarifa, Spain

What does counselors do after the summer camp has finished and how do they feel?

Most people work 8 hours a day. On a normal day, counselors start early in the morning and finish up late at night.

And then, all of a sudden, a frightening silence fall over them. That quietness that settles over the campus is one of the saddest moments of the summer. It’s then when everybody realizes the teens are gone, and that the summer camp really is over. The camp counselors find themselves wishing they could still hear all the sounds and laughter that defined it; mealtimes surrounded by so many teenagers, living together, sharing different experiences.

A strange phenomenon happens in a summer camp; everyday noise pollution is just not perceived in the same way, in teen camps it seems to become pleasant background noise.

And then- back to reality; everyone is gone. All of the Camp stuff is packed up and stowed in the garage and the counselors meet up for their last dinner together before they go back to their everyday lives.

What the counselors have observed sounds strange but true. After becoming so intertwined with Camp life and the teens, it takes a while to get back into the rhythm of their regular day-to-day.

So the first step for group leaders working in teen camps certainly is the return to reality and of course, their own age! What remains are fond memories, and the countdown for going back to Tarifa next summer begins.

What do counselors work as in their “real lives”?

Lenguaventura can only talk about their own team of course, but I guess the same is probably true in all summer camps. Most of them come from a pedagogical background and already work with young people during the school year. During their summer holidays they choose to become temporary summer parents/sisters/brothers and join the Lenguaventura Camp and disconnect from daily life and thinking or planning ahead. Camp-life teaches you a very important lesson: how to keep things in the now.

By |novembre 8th, 2015|Blog|0 Comments

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