Educational Psychology in the Outdoor Summer Camp

Do you have experience and a passion for working with youth?

Are you looking for a summer that is going to be memorable, meaningful, healthy, novel, and filled with personal and professional growth?

Experience Child Psychology!

When you live with, care for, talk to, counsel, explore, play, and learn alongside youth, you build your comfort and connection with them. This role is an experiential role that has a significant amount of training and practice in relevant psychology topics including:

• Nonviolent Communication
• Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
• Ages and Stages of Child Development
• Humanistic Behavior Management
• Group facilitation
• Emotional Intelligence
• and much more…

At the end of a summer counseling at Augusta, you’ll have 1,000s of hours of practice connecting and understanding youth from ages 8-16, and feel more comfortable in your approach and connection with people in general.

More about that Personal & Professional Growth:

The training, mentorship, practice, and experience you will get working at Augusta (outlined below) far surpasses that of most (if not all) camps in the nation. We seek high quality candidates for our roles, and promise a high caliber experience.

Notably, our staff training and camp programs were developed by our director who has multiple doctorates in psychology, and our training has been offered as multiple accredited courses at Prescott University.

Here are some things that are included for all of our positions:

• 300+ Hours of Experiential Training: Pre-arrival preparation and 3.5 weeks of on-site training that includes:
• 90+ hours of experiential learning in psychology-based philosophies and approaches, including humanistic behavior management approaches, nonviolent communication, rationale-emotive behavior therapy, group facilitation, and more
• 70+ hours learning your choice of our 150+ activity offerings
• 140+ hours of learning camp by doing camp (programs, activities, clinics, cabin life)
• 9 Weeks of Summer Practicing: Being responsible for cabins of 5 campers at a time, and applying all the skills above to camp activities and discussions.
• A Skilled & Dedicated Scaffolder: With no more than a 1:8 ratio, this person emphasizes your growth and works with you to develop your skills working with kids

This is the place for you if you…

• Are overjoyed to build close relationships between and facilitate a meaningful overall experience for 5 campers, and especially if you have had and plan to continue to work with children throughout your life
• Have the depth of emotional and physical stamina to joyfully engage with a community of 95 campers and 60 staff members for 9 weeks in the summer, working from 7:00 AM – 10:00 PM six days a week.
• Love to play and are eager to explore the creation of magical worlds with enthusiastic character roles
• Are dedicated to guiding/counseling children utilizing emotionally intelligent, thoughtful counseling techniques (to be learned/practiced in detail throughout pre-camp and staff training)
• Love community, and the idea of supporting the growth, interests, and emotional well-being of the other counselors and staff within your village, as well as the camp-wide community, is exciting to you

Minimum requirements:

• Must be at least 19 years of age by June 1st, 2023
• Must be available during our summer dates: from May 16th to August 12th 2023

Must have two of the following:

• at least one summer of experience at a residential summer camp
• over 100 hours of direct mentorship work with youth
• A major or background directly related to working with youth
• Ability to commit to 5-10 hours of pre-camp onboarding work a week from when you are hired to when you arrive, and maintain open and prompt communication about that work

Preferred qualifications:

• A history of ‘meaningful’ work and a variety of experiences with youth
• A plethora of interesting hobbies, passions, and life experiences that you’re excited to share with us
• A GPA of 3.0+ with a true excitement for learning and writing

Internship?

Though an internship track is not required to work with us, it is available and can accommodate many majors (here is a page about our collaborative, individualized internships).

We work with you and your university to cater and fulfill any internship requirements or requests that you need – whether for course credit or otherwise. You get the paperwork to us and let’s figure it out:

About Being a Counselor:

After the training and preparation, the campers arrive for either 1 or 2-week sessions in our 9-week summer. Discover the wish, wonder, and surprise of living with and supporting five campers in a cabin in the woods, and learn more than you ever thought you could about relating to children in a manner that empowers their growth and independence. In a single day at camp, you’ll:

• Create magical, intentional special wake ups and evening connection-building activities for your cabin on a daily basis
• Facilitate camper ideas for a daily creative cabin activity
• Teach four activity blocks per day from the 150 clinics that you chose to learn in training
• Run a unique, themed daily activity that draws upon your personal creativity and skills; “sell” these activities through playful skits
• Play in epic Evening Programs, from full-camp capture the flag to immersive night time events. Be a character in our games and bring other-worldly magic to life.
• Create and offer two gifts from the heart per camper, per session: a special wood cookie honoring and a thoughtful Parent Letter

Counselors are the heartbeat of camp. Most counselors spend a session or two outside of the cabin as well, contributing to programming or other areas of interest. See our page on counselor life for more information on the role and how it differs from most other camps.

Imagining what it all looks like? Here’s a video of our summer shenanigans!

If you want to be one of those flag-running, costume wearing, oatmeal throwing, woodchip-loving Augustans… take the next step to meet us here. 🙂

Next Steps

Either apply through handshake and connect in messaging, or skip ahead and take 5 minutes to fill out our interest form so someone from our hiring team can reach out to you.