A lot of people have had questions about the process of creating a virtual summer camp staff training. This is something that is new to me and I have learned a LOT along the way. I'm hoping that by sharing my process I'll be able to help other people more easily create the pieces of training that they need. Below are some of the major steps that I took when creating a staff trainings
1. Planning in-person training
This step is huge! When I first considered the option of virtual training, I wanted to just dive right in. After a lot of consideration, I realized that to be most effective, I needed to match my virtual training with some of the key components of my in-person training. This meant that I had to first establish our schedule for in-person training. While I was able to pull quite a bit from last year's training, I am also in the process of re-vamping our in-person training, so this step took a considerable amount of time.
2. Narrowing Down the Topics
This step was difficult, to say the least. I feel that everything we cover in staff training is important. I worked with my Assistant Director to pull the topics that we felt were most important. Some consideration was also given to which topics would transfer well into a virtual setting. There were a few things that are important, but will just need to be addressed at camp. We ended up narrowing it down to the following topics:
- Being a Good Counselor
- Boundaries at Camp
- Homesickness
- Active Listening
- Camp Parents
- Setting Consequences
- Diversity Equity and Inclusion
- Practice Scenarios
- Adding discussion questions throughout each training
- Using Padlet to track responses: https://padlet.com/dashboard
- Encouraging staff to use the chat feature in Zoom
- Encouraging staff to un-mute during discussion opportunities
5. Creating the Schedule
Once I had all of the content created, I needed to create a schedule. The schedule helped me figure out how much time the training would take as well as planning for how much time each particular topic would take. I actually ran through a few topics with my Assistant Director to get an idea of how long they might take.
We ended up deciding that it would be best to try to knock everything out in one long day rather than breaking up topics into multiple days. We knew that this would likely be easier for scheduling and we felt that staff would get more out of the training when they set aside a day for it versus trying to fit it into their already busy schedules.
Since we knew the day would be very long, we took breaks into consideration when crafting the schedule. We also gave ourselves a bit more time than what we thought we would actually need. We figured that it would be better to end a bit early than run late. We also figured that the extra time would allow for more questions and longer discussions for some topics.
Here is the schedule that we created.
While not everyone is lucky enough to have an Assistant Director to work with this on, I would highly suggest collaborating with someone when creating the schedule. It was super helpful to bounce ideas off of each other and run through a couple of the topics.
6. Picking the Dates
Honestly, this was the most challenging part of the entire process. My Assistant Director and I presented the training together, so the first thing we did was look at our schedules to find dates that worked for both of us. Many of our staff are still in school, so we knew that the date options would have to be on weekends.
After we compiled a list of possible dates, I used Google Forms to send out a poll to my staff that would need to attend the training. I had my staff select ALL of the possible dates that would work for them. I did not have them select their preferred date as it would have been nearly impossible to coordinate everyone's schedules.
Once I received a response from most of the staff (of course, there are always a couple that doesn't respond), I picked a date that worked for everyone according to the poll. Of course, after announcing this date, it suddenly did not work for half of the staff involved.
At this point, I moved to the next best option, I selected two different date options and sent a sign-up form. Staff could sign-up for one of the dates. This gave them some choice, but it also still worked with my schedule. I decided that it would be best to get everything done in one weekend, so I ended up with two groups. One group went on Saturday and one group went on Sunday. The nice thing about this was that the groups ended up being fairly even. I had one group of three and one group of four. This allowed for some great participation.
7. Day 1 Training Summary
Overall, day one went really well. It definitely exceeded my expectations. The staff were engaged throughout the training and asked a lot of clarifying questions.
Here are a few things that I felt went really well:
- Engagement: all of the staff were engaged throughout the presentation
- Group Size: The small group size was perfect. It seemed like all of the staff were comfortable with the small group
- Collaboration: My assistant director and I collaborated well throughout the entire training. It was a nice change of pace to switch on and off
- Ending Discussion: We allowed time in the end for staff to ask questions. The questions did not need to relate to the training. They had a lot of great questions and we were able to discuss their arrival day
- Timing: We were able to get done a little early and still had time for breaks. All staff were on time which was helpful
- More Examples: The staff did really well with the examples that we had. I think incorporating more examples would be helpful
- Location: My voice tended to echo in the location that I was at. I might try a different location.
- Longer Introductions: I felt like our introductions were really short. It would be nice to give staff a slightly longer opportunity to share about themselves, especially since we had additional time at the end.
- Group Size: The group size was great again. While I originally had planned on one larger group, if I did it again, I would keep the small groups. We had a couple of very quiet staff and I don't think they would have participated at all in a larger group setting.
- Collaboration: My Assistant Director and I collaborated well again. We changed up some of the presentations to play to our strengths and it worked perfectly.
- Timing: The timing was good. We did get done a bit earlier than the first group.
- Location: I chose a different location that had better lighting and less of an echo. This helped me to better focus on the staff in the training.
- Creating alternate ways for participation: I think it would be nice to incorporate a variety of ways to participate such as Kahoots. With my quieter group, it was a bit harder to tell if they were actually comprehending the information. I think a brief Kahoot quiz after each section would have been helpful here
- More Lessons: It was difficult to predict timing. If I had known that we would have extra time, I would have incorporated a few more lessons that I also felt were important
