The Staff Experience

If you are looking for meaningful work, pristine nature, great perks, and personal growth that will serve you for years to come, then look no further!

Camp Augusta’s vision is to reclaim and foster the beauty, wonder, awe, potential, and innocence of childhood and our staff’s experience is crucial to making that mission a reality. This page break down what is like to be a staff member at Camp Augusta in terms of mind, body, heart, spirit, schedule, and more. If you’re looking for a sign or two, we have those as well. 

We believe . . .

. . . that spirit, mind, and body must be nourished richly and simultaneously.  We value music and art just as much as sports.  We foster respect for self, for fellow humankind, and for the created world of which we are stewards. We find that the deepest community can arise out of the strongest individuality when trust, tolerance, and understanding prevail.  Above all, we love to have fun—because smiles and laughter and joyful optimism are the forge of community, relationship, and our own humanity.

Read on, fill out an interest form, and please let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or curiosities!

What will your mind’s experience be at Camp Augusta?

Your mind will be in full from the extensive onboarding process, to the 25 days of staff training, to then putting it all to use during the summer months. The practices, philosophies, and procedures are something our staff are expected to carry with them the duration of the summer require a lot of work and brain power. This might look like recalling and retaining:

  • The steps and strategies for helping campers through hard times
  • How to tie a figure-8 knot and set up high-ropes safely
  • Understanding the rules and game-flow of every evening program
  • How to practice clean and need-based communication
  • Each of your camper’s unique experience of the week so you can share it with their parent letter

Aside from learning the philosophies, clinics, and day to day flow of camp, an equally (if not more) important experience for your mind is the creative aspect of camp. Creative expression is why Camp Augusta can provide such a unique and impactful experience for our staff and campers. From thinking of a new way to wake your cabin up every morning, to making the activities you teach fun and engaging events, to helping your campers’ cabin activities ideas become realities; there is almost no aspect of camp in which you can’t flex your creative mind muscles!

What will your body’s experience be at Camp Augusta?

The ‘work day’ goes from about 7:30 in the morning to 10:00 at night. Free time during afterhours can sometimes extend your day to midnight. The daily temperatures are often in the 80s and 90s, and many of our activities are fairly active, meaning you’ll be moving around with your campers and clinic activities. 

In a single day you might…

  • Teach an aerial silks clinic
  • Climb a 50 ft pole for a high ropes element
  • Lifeguard for 40 minutes in the sun
  • Lead a mountain biking clinic
  •  And play a chasing-character in the evening program

Resting and refueling is vitally important for our staff and campers to make sure they are able to get the most out of their camp experience.

  • Rest: Every staff member commits to getting a solid seven hours of sleep each night, with a few nights of week of 8 or more added in. We play pretty hard everyday so enjoy the deep slumber of a hard day’s work!
  • Refuel: Our food is almost entirely made from scratch using whole, organic ingredients. Our meals are meant to both be tasty and kid-friendly, while providing ample nutrition. Even those with special dietary needs are handily taken care of by our alternative-diet chef.

As a general rule of thumb, if you would struggle to get up and run two miles in 18 minutes right now without keeling over, you may struggle at Camp Augusta. While not a sports camp, the daily temperature, layout of camp, and types of activities we offer make significant daily exertion tough to avoid.

What will your heart’s experience be at Camp Augusta?

When fifty amazing humans spend the summer learning, working, and playing together, the heart feels pretty dang full. Many lifelong friendships (and a few marriages) have sprung from Camp Augusta. As a community that values seeing and being seen, knowing and being known, vulnerability and intentional communication, there is significant groundwork laid out for you to live into your true-blue self and for that true-blue self to feel connected with other awesome Augustan staff. 

Beyond connections with staff, Camp Augusta seeks out individuals who have a passion for working with children and teens – for dipping into their world and helping them along their path to becoming a fully grown human.

So what are some of the more defining characteristics of our sweeties, sillies, and softies?

  • Fighting, grudges, angry words, talking behind people’s backs, gossip are all not their style 
  • They are warm and genuine – a people person. You can practically see their heart glow through their chest
  • They are upbeat and brighten people’s day. They find humor even when it is tough to find and laugh at themself handily
  • They are inclined toward the service of others and act with intention toward others

Three months in one place is too long of a time for anyone to try to power-through or put on a mask. No one needs to be perfect, but having a genuine, patient, and open heart makes a huge difference when spending the season at Camp Augusta.

What will your spirit’s experience be at Camp Augusta?

Have you ever thought about what the human spirit is? What your spirit is like? Or a child’s?

Even without a religious attachment, the human spirit is that bit of internal vigor and pop that flares up when we follow our passion, purpose in life, or somehow expand who we are as people. At Camp Augusta, we seek to create a more beautiful existence and part of that is listening to and cultivating our spirits. 

Sound a little woo-woo? Ultimately, the staff who find great success at Camp Augusta found it as part of their ‘calling’ vs ‘just a job’. A desire to work with children and foster the beauty, wonder, awe, potential and innocence of childhood has a spiritual nature to it and can’t be achieved by punching the clock.

Not every element of Camp Augusta needs to spark you, but to get that full-body YES of a summer well-lived, tapping into a deeper part of yourself is essential.

One of the most widely recognized challenges of camp is the lack of personal time, which can be hard to conceptualize if you have never experienced the day-to-day life of camp. Free time is most scarce and precious resource at camp, which means there won’t be time to process every event, take the nap you want, work on personal projects, and chat with your friends. Without that part of yourself that says ‘I love being here – dirt, exhaustion, glitter, and all” then your spirit has nothing to keep it afloat among the challenges of daily life.

Want To Know More About What A Summer At Camp Augusta Is Like?

Fill Out An Interest Form Today!

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