Camp Patterson
Fostering a Passion for Disablity Rights
In 2012, I started volunteering at Camp Patterson, which is an inclusive day camp for kids with or without disabilities where the ages can range from 5-21. In 2014, I was hired as a staff where I acted as a unit leader who is responsible for overseeing our group of campers throughout the day. My purpose at Camp Patterson is to provide a fun, safe, and engaging space for individuals with varying levels of abilities to engage in appropriate social interactions all while having the summer of a lifetime.
For five summers this camp helped to transform my own ideas of disability while also fueling a new passion for disability rights and justice. I made it my mission to ensure that all campers are engaged in the activities as much as possible because I want our camp to exemplify what inclusion in the community should look like. Inclusion should not just be making sure that all campers are able to actively engage in our activities, but to ensure that they are able to fully engage in their community once camp is over. I also worked on the idea that as staff, we must all hold ourselves accountable for not only supporting, but enforcing, positive and appropriate social expectations for our campers. I find self-determination to be incredibly important where you can make your own decisions based on your own values, goals, and beliefs. It is important for me to teach my campers that they can and should actively voice their opinions in order to encourage them to do the same out in the real world. Before this camp, I wanted to eventually go to medical school and become a pediatrician. However, this camp made me realize how much I value equality and inclusion and drove me to pursue a major in Social Welfare. From interacting with my campers, I find it important that they learn the skills to speak for themselves and stand up for their own beliefs. I feel that social work is a great avenue for me to pursue my passion for disability rights and justice, because disability rights are human rights.
Matching at the end of camp Disney themed barbeque!
Tasks Accomplished
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As a volunteer, I supported the staff in making sure all campers were engaged and safe throughout the day.
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As a staff, along with a co-staff, we are responsible for up to 20 campers while also being responsible for up to 4 volunteers.
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Making sure everyone is engaged and participating in the activities.
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As staff, I am responsible for deescalating any situation where a camper gets worked up or has become overwhelmed, including conflict resolution between campers and volunteers.
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I support fluid transitions from activity to activity to a set routine for the campers that ensures predictability and in a safe manner so no camper wanders off from the group since our camp is located at a public park.
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I am responsible for communicating with parents about any outstanding or troubling behavior that occurred during camp.
Competencies Gained
Inclusion
Productive Relationships
End of camp barbeque.
Problem Solving
During my first year at the camp, I noticed a camper who never participated in our rotations and the staff members all said that they tried but soon gave up since he was unresponsive to the activities. I value inclusion and believe that every member of our camp should be engaged to the fullest extent possible. I made it my mission to support this camper throughout the program. By my third summer working with him, he was talking and playing more with the other campers and actually participated by singing our camp songs during circle time, which he had never done before. This was the moment where I realized how powerful this camp is and that I was exactly where I needed to be.
Vision
Currently, Camp Patterson is dedicated to promoting positive self-esteem, developing healthy friendships, and making memories that will last for a lifetime. While I agree and will strongly stand behind these values, I feel like it’s missing an important aspect of self-determination. I have a vision that Camp Patterson should also work to encourage self-determination for our campers who will one day become adults responsible for themselves. A lot of our campers try and get the volunteers to have them do favors for them like carrying them to/from the beach because it’s a gravel walkway so it hurts their feet and they didn’t feel like putting their shoes on. A lot of the kids even try to use their disability in a way to convince staff or volunteers to do them special favors hinting they can’t do it because of their disability. While they are kids, they need to learn to be responsible for their behavior. I feel like this an incredibly important skill that should be reinforced even during their younger ages rather than expecting them to be completely self-sufficient the second they turn 18.
While supporting this camper, and many others, in actively engaging in our program, I realized that it did not matter how I would to a project or participate, but it only mattered how the camper would want to do so. For example, it is a rule of mine that each camper helps pick up the toys from Sports & Games before going to lunch. Instead of asking campers to pick everything up, I found that it was much more effective to ask the camper if they would help me clean up, making it seem more like a favor and a choice rather than a demand. By doing so, I believe our interactions became mutually beneficial and productive for both persons.
Verbal Communication
As a staff member, it is my responsibility to give weekly evaluations for my volunteers rating them on different categories and pointing out specific strengths and areas for improvement that I noticed over the week. When I first became a staff, this was an overwhelming task because I wanted to be nice to the volunteers and I wanted them to like me. However, this last year I realized that the purpose of this camp isn’t to get each camper, staff, volunteer, and parent to like me but to instead support the campers in building positive friendships and being safe. This last year, if I noticed something that could be done to improve performance for everyone, like being more aware of all campers instead of spending the whole day with just one, I not only wrote it down on the evaluation but would go out of my way to have a conversation about this with the volunteer. It is naïve to think the volunteer will know what to work on and how to improve unless anyone spends the time talking with them about it.
Last summer, I had difficulty getting a camper to participate in Arts & Crafts without throwing the materials at other campers or wandering off from his seat and trying to run away. This was also a new camper, so I wasn’t familiar with what he likes to do or typical strategies that will work for him personally. Eventually, I realized that whenever given the opportunity, this camper will naturally gravitate to anything that is green. So, instead of getting upset with the camper for not participating with the activity, I set it up so that his materials for the project were always green and he would willingly do the art project for the day. I found that it was much more useful to find a way to make the activity engaging for each child individually instead of expecting each of them to conform to one way of doing things.
"Camp Patterson offers a fun and enriching summer day camp experience for children ages 5 years and older, particularly those with developmental delays or physical challenges. Campers meet in age groups as they participate in arts & crafts, canoeing, field trips, music, sports and swimming. Through creative and fun activities we foster positive self-esteem, respect for individual uniqueness, friendship and respect for the environment."
Camp Patterson Mission Statement
Looking Forward
This camp has been such a transformative experience for me in so many ways. It has taught me what true inclusion looks like and how effective it can be. By acknowledging all the needs of all my campers, I felt that they were all genuinely happier because they felt that they were actually being listened to. This camp also showed me how important communication is. For example, it was important that when a camper did something inappropriate, such as hitting another camper, that we take the time to explain why the behavior was bad, explore what drove them to do it, and problem solve what could be done next time in order to keep everyone safe. This is a much more useful way to work with the volunteers and campers instead of punishing a person for not doing something right, it’s more important that they understand what they did wrong and why they did it.