You Did It!
This week, everyone had the chance to get their feet on the ground. It was a chance to learn about what to expect and to see and experience the unexpected.
Now that you have had a chance to truly dig your hands into the curriculum and meet your campers, you can start to adjust and hone the activities, your behavior management plans, and your routines to better match what will work best for your summer camp for the rest of the summer.
Each week will continue to improve and you will eventually find your groove just in time to say goodbye.
Know that with all of the ups and downs that come with week 1 -- you did great! Remember we will always aim to follow our motto "flexibility within a plan" and seek to see all of the good we have accomplished and find new ways we can learn and grow.
Take some time this long weekend to rest and recuperate, and maybe consider these reflection items:
Where do I feel like I succeeded this week?
Where do I feel like I can try something new or different next week?
What is something within my control to change or make happen?
What is something that is outside of my control to change or make happen?
What is specific and solution-focused feedback I can provide to CAN so we can improve summer camp for next year?
Announcements
July Babies--It's almost your birthday!!! If you see someone with a birthday, send them your birthday wishes!
Bennine Al-Anssari (Bryant Summer Program Facilitator), July 7
Sherrie Greenleaf (Bookkeeper), July 7
Paige Swanson (Year-Long VISTA), July 13
Seth Poirot (Bryant Summer Program Facilitator), July 26
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Upcoming Staff Meetings- For the summer, our org-wide meeting schedule as of right now will look as follows:
Friday Gatherings- Every site will be gathering with their teams on Friday to debrief on the week and prepare for the following week / unwind as a team. These times and agenda for each Friday will vary by site/week.
July 8 - Management Meeting (10am)
July 15 - Mid-Summer Check-In: 10am, Bryant Community Center - All CAN Summer Camp Site Staff! (More info coming in an email and on CAN Calendar next week)
July 22 - Management Meeting (10am)
July 29 - Management Meeting (10am)
August 5 - CAN Closed
August 12 - End of Summer Celebration! (more details to come)
Upcoming CAN Summer Holidays-
July 4- CAN Closed
August 5- CAN Closed
All of our staff meetings and CAN holidays are up on the CAN Google Calendar. If you are in our Google Group listservs (canvistas@googlegroups.com, caninterns@googlegroups.com, canprogramssistants@googlegroups.com, cansummerstaff@googlegroups.com & canmanagement@googlegroups.com) you should receive an invitation to any relevant staff meetings, events, etc.
If you are not in one of these listservs, please email klampen@canwashtenaw.org so you can be added!
You can find a link to the CAN Google Calendar at www.can-academy.org/staff-resources (CAN Calendar).
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Accessing Educational Summer Camp Training & Camp Materials-
Tips & Tidbits
Dealing with worry
Understanding worry and developing healthy management strategies can reduce the negative impact that excessive worrying can have on your life.
Worry can be uncomfortable, but it's a normal part of life. You might feel worried when you're thinking about a future event, like a job interview, or a current event, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Worrying can help us prepare for expected or unexpected life events and it's common to feel worried in situations that are new or unusual, ambiguous or open to interpretation, and unpredictable.
Unhelpful worry
However, worrying too much can leave you feeling anxious and apprehensive about life. This sort of worry can feel like a chain of thoughts and images that progress into unlikely, irrational, or 'catastrophic' directions. For example, you might worry that you might lose your job every time your boss arranges a meeting.
Worries like this can become uncontrollable, taking over your thinking and preventing you from moving forward in your life. It can also lead to physical symptoms like muscular aches and pains, restlessness and inability to relax, difficulty concentrating, difficulty sleeping, and feeling easily fatigued.
What can I do about worry?
Identify your unhelpful worries. Consider what might be a real problem or a hypothetical worry (a possible future problem you can't control or solve). The following are some mindfulness strategies for responding to worried feelings:
Call them out - take a deep breath and consciously tell yourself 'my mind is focusing on a problem that I can't solve right now'.
Make time for you - Whenever you notice the worry, do something that makes you feel good. Try moving your body, getting outdoors, or getting in touch with a friend or family member. Activities that produce strong, positive emotions can disrupt our anxious thinking patterns.
Postpone the worry - Try setting aside time to think about your worries each day. Allow yourself a half out to feel all of the worry and then spend the rest of your day worry-free.
Focus on the present - Focus on the gentle movement of your breath or sounds you can hear around you. Use these to act as "anchors" to bring you back to the present moment as your mind wanders away.
Have you ever heard of a "Worry Decision Tree"?
This has been a helpful tool in my own life and I'm grateful to have learned it.
This strategy is designed to help someone to either develop an action plan or make an effort to refocus their thoughts/mental/emotional energy away from something that they do not have control to change or that have already done what they can to change.
It's not an easy thing to accomplish and is a mindfulness strategy that takes practice and is something meant to be implemented over and over again. It's also not intended to minimize the worry, but simply to help us to redirect our thoughts away from spiraling or catastrophizing and to give us an outline for making a plan to respond (either with an achievable action or choosing to refocus our thoughts toward something else).
This strategy also might not apply in some scenarios and that's okay too =)
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Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or comments (or highlights, announcements, etc.), please email Katie at klampen@canwashtenaw.org.
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