Creating a Virtual Summer Camp Staff Training

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

Thankfully we already had lesson plans for each topic with the information that we plan to cover at training. This made the next step a lot easier!! For those who are interested, I am planning to share another blog on creating lessons for in-person training.

3. Creating the Presentations

At first, my plan was to just have conversations surrounding each topic, but thankfully, I realized that would have been a disaster. While there will be lots of conversations had during the training, I decided that I needed some sort of presentation for each topic to keep us on track. I chose to use Google Slides to organize my information as I had a couple of other staff involved in the process and this was the easiest way for us to be able to collaborate. 

While it might not make a huge difference, I like my presentations to look put together. While I have skills in graphic design, I save myself a TON of time by using slide templates. I was even able to find a few super cute camping-themed templates. 

This one is my favorite from Teachers Pay Teachers and the best part is that it is free! I made sure to give credit to the creators of the templates when applicable. 

When it came to the information and presentation of the information, this step involved a lot of adapting. I had several different activities that I wanted to include and I had to get creative to make the activities work virtually. 

As I mentioned in the previous step, I had already created lesson plans for my in-person training. This was also a huge time saver as I was able to copy and paste information directly from the lesson plans. I also incorporated a few short videos that I had already planned to use in my regular training. 

4. Incorporating Opportunities for Participation

Something that was really important to me when creating this training was ensuring that there were plenty of opportunities for participation.  I feel that I accomplished this in several ways:

• 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 

Here are a few things that I learned and plan to incorporate into the day 2 training:

• 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.

All-in-all, day one was a huge success! It was a lot of fun and I felt like the staff had a lot of good take-aways. 

8. Day 2 Training Summary

Day 2 also went well, however, this group was a bit quieter, so engagement was more difficult. 

Here are a few things that I felt went really well:

• 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. 

Here are a few things that I learned and will incorporate into future virtual 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

9. Summary 

All in all, I felt that this training went extremely well and is something that I would like to continue in the future. It is not the same as in-person staff training, but it did provide my staff with some of the knowledge that they will need when they get to camp. There will still be some in-person components needed, however, a lot of pressure will be taken off knowing that they got a good chunk of information prior to arriving at camp. 

I will be sending out a survey to the staff involved to get their feedback. I will be interested to find out what they thought about the training.