I have the Best Tzrif (Bunk) Ever!
In the immortal words of John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, “it is not what you teach, it is what you emphasize” that matters most. Our primary objective is to provide high quality care for our chanichim (campers) and also for our tzevet (staff).
One way to make the camper experience awesome is to make each and every chanich feel that they are part of the “Best Tzrif (Bunk) Ever!”
During our training time this week with our Hanhallah (lead staff), camp co-director Michelle Sugarman led a session on what leads to chanichim to feel this way. Our Hanhallah sat around a medurah (campfire) and shared their own camp memories and stories. Michelle facilitated the conversation to draw out the feelings that these memories evoked. Often, these memories were about times when they felt happy, successful, part of something bigger, and just good about themselves. More important than the specific activity where the memory was created, the lasting memory was about how they felt and who they did it with.
At camp, there are so many opportunities to create great memories. When we are intentional about the setting and how the experience is shared and when we reinforce our key values, we can take an ordinary medurah and turn it into a setting that creates lifelong memories – memories of how we all felt when we sang our favorite songs around a campfire with the people we cared about. Even during the summer, we realize that we were part of something very special – even the best tzrif ever!