Stepping Stones Recreation Team Attends the Annual Mid-States Camp Conference!
Date posted: April 28, 2014
Hi Everyone! This is Bridget Rahill, the Coordinator of Recreation and Leisure-Given! The Rec & Leisure team headed to Chicago on April 9th to attend the annual American Camp Association’s Mid-States Camp Conference! Stepping Stones has been attending this conference for many years; however it was my first experience. Mid-States is a big gathering of different camps across the Mid-West where everyone meets to discuss their trainings, camps and best ways to provide a fun and safe summer for all campers.
There were some spectacular speakers featured throughout the conference. Michael Brandwein, an international camp and youth development expert, was a main feature throughout the three days we were there. He has written many books on camps and child communication, and has many inspiring ideas about motivating and professionally developing staff. The keynote speaker was Dr. Deborah Gilboa (aka Dr. G!) who is a well-known child development expert from Chicago. We all learned a lot from their presentations and took away a lot of great material and useful tips that we definitely plan on implementing in our summer camps and Fall Winter Spring Programs!
During the rest of the conference, the Rec team split up to attend various educational sessions on a huge range of camp topics including:
- Tips for Care of Campers with Diabetes
- Masterful Methods for Terrific Training
- Make More Magic: 50 More Tricks of the Trade Learned from Coast to Coast
- National Day Camp Conference
- Universal Design
- Kaizen Camping: Learning from Toyota
This year, Stepping Stones also had the privilege of presenting three educational settings of our own! Amanda Dotson and Meghan Kessen were the first of our group to present with a session titled “Active Activity Adaptations for All Camps”. They had a great turn out and were able to demonstrate different ways that activities can be adapted for all campers can participate.
Amanda Kay and I were the next presenters from Stepping Stones! Our session was titled “Don’t Let Behavior Challenges Ruin Your Summer”, and we were pleased with a very high turnout. We focused on the prevention, intervention and post-intervention of handling challenging behaviors and gave the audience some great tips that can be used at every camp. The last of our group to present was Meghan Kessen and I with an informative session on “How Autism and Sensory Needs Fit in Every Camp”. We provided the attendees with specific information on Autism Spectrum Disorders and focused on strategies and sensory inputs that can easily be included into every single camp setting.
We were very pleased to spread our knowledge on the topic of campers with different abilities and disabilities and hope that we helped other camps help each of their campers to experience an inclusive summer. We learned a lot and can’t wait to start planning how to put our new knowledge to use! We also had the chance to eat Chicago deep-style dish pizza, which I am officially a fan of! We can’t wait to return to Chicago next year for the 2015 Mid-States Conference!
Thanks for reading!
Bridget
