Nathan

At the camp I work at, out of around forty staff members last summer, five of them were girls, and only one of those girls was over 18. But, no problems ever arose; there were no romantic entanglements, and there was no untoward behavior. While it would seem that putting girls and boys together with little supervision would indeed lend itself to some obvious problems, that is not what happens. You can also not discriminate against girls working at a boy scout camp on the premise that some offensive results may occur. Such thinking is merely conjecture with little empirical evidence to support it, and I've also found that those girls who choose to work at a boy scout camp often know much more about the outdoors than a lot of the boy staffers.

Maybe it's a little late to offer any advice now, but seeing as it still is some ways until summer... I'm the first year camper director for Camp Olmsted (we call our program TrailsHead), and the number one most important thing you can do is to know every single scout's name in the program. If you know their name, the scout feels better about himself and is going to have a lot better time at summer camp (this is especially important as a great number of first year scouts are homesick). Knowing the scout's name also impresses the adult leaders and makes them feel a lot more confident in you. As a number of people here have stated, fun is very important in a first year camper program. But you don't need games necassarily; you just need to make the material fun to learn. This can be hard to do since some of the stuff does not lend itself easily to games, but when you teach the scouts, don't start talking in a monotone. Be energetic, move around a lot, make jokes, and even go off on tangents. Scouts also love sharing and listening to stories. And make sure your staff is well trained. First year, I made the mistake assuming they already knew everything (I was working with life scouts). But, I was wrong, and for the rest of that summer I found that I was having to do a lot of their work. So in your staff week, go over everything and make sure everyone knows their stuff inside and out. And don't take their word on anything; make them prove what they know. Also, you should cover how to teach scouts during staff week. For example, no speaking in monotones, no harsh comments, stay cheerful, and be funny. You also have to have accountability in your program. At the end of the week, each troop should get a list back of what their scouts have learned and what they haven't learned. Preferably, you should have each scout demonstrate to you their knowledge of a skill before you go and check them off on it. But, in the end, it's a great job if you got the mindset for it. You gotta be a goofball, willing to put up with the thousands of annoying things scouts do, and you gotta know absolutely everything about boy scouts (from Baden Powell to the J-stroke). It might be the hardest job in summer camp simply because the first year camper director has to personally deal with so many scouts, but it's also the best job at summer camp to have.