Summer Matters Inspiring confident, kind kids & forever friendships Week after Thanksgiving, which means I’m contractually obligated to think about gratitude. Could tell you about all the things we’re grateful for at K&E. Opening act at Hollowpallooza, grilling on senior hill, Juniper 025 chants, laughing on the evergreen porch, Adventure Dave trips, fire trucks on the FOD, and so much more. All true. All real. Can’t wait for a whole new list this summer. But even after all of that, I keep...
10 days ago • 2 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring kind confident kids & forever friendships Dear Kenwood & Evergreen Families, With Thanksgiving coming up in 24 hours, I’m taking stock of all that I am grateful for. It starts with you. And your amazing kids! And this lifetime I’ve had of leading this inspiring community. As you know, with Jack and Sylvia stepping into the Director roles, I’ve now got some bandwidth to shift my focus even more to the wider world of kids, camps, families, and how decisions about our...
18 days ago • 2 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships Think about how you became friends with your closest childhood buddy. Probably looked something like this: Meet somewhere random ??? something happened, stuff went down, time went by, other stuff happened you can’t remember ??? That not-at-all clear, sort of confusing timeline make any sense to you? Maybe it kinda-sorta does. If it doesn’t, no worries because there’s actual math behind the ??? section. There’s a formula. And...
24 days ago • 3 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships Your kid probably knows this better than I do, but I’ll admit it: I play mobile games sometimes. You know that moment when you download a new one and before you can actually play, there’s all this…stuff? Login screens. Username creation. Permission requests. Impossible-to-skip tutorials. And you’re just thinking: “Can I please start having fun?” Some games get you playing in seconds. Others make you wait through five minutes...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships “Camp is not for lazy kids.” You’d think this would be some quote that came up at a program staff meeting or in an aside director convo, but nope. This is from an Evergreen girl we met with a few weeks ago at a family visit. She wasn’t complaining. She was proud. Said it like it was the very best thing about the place. One line and it sure does capture something essential about K&E that most camps won’t even bother saying out...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships It’s Saturday at home. The phones get collected. Everyone agrees to the plan. But then the world keeps buzzing anyway. The restaurant menu is a QR code. Homework assignments are posted in a parent portal. The carpool group text needs a response. Snapchat stories need checking. Ordering pizza means DoorDash. Even when kids aren’t on their phones, they’re still living in a world designed around screens. The infrastructure...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships Was trying to think of the simplest and most direct way to explain summers at camp which usually means going through all of the activities, schedules, and other pieces making up weeks at K&E. But really, it’s pretty simple. Camp is truly actually fun. You’re in it together. See, most places kids (and honestly, adults) spend time operate on a simple formula: Work first, then fun. Finish the homework, then go out and play....
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships Remember in The Sandlot when the Babe Ruth ball lands over the fence into the Beast’s yard? Summer screeches to a halt. Smalls, Benny, Ham, Squints and the rest of the crew stand there knowing what’s on the other side. They’ve heard the stories. They know there’s some risk. But they also know they have to get it back. So they start scheming. Building contraptions. Coming up with increasingly elaborate plans. All summer,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Summer Matters Inspiring confident kind kids & forever friendships Years of working with execs and business leaders, and I’ve noticed the most effective members of this group share a particular quality: High sensitivity to what’s really happening in a room. They can sense when someone has an idea they haven’t shared yet. They notice when the group is aligned and ready to move forward. They pick up on energy shifts during a meeting, even when nothing obvious has changed. This isn’t a skill you...
2 months ago • 3 min read