What Is A Wookie Award?

What Is A Wookie?

A wood cookie, also known as a “cabin award” or “Wookie” is a round wooden disk (cross section of a branch), which you decorate and personalize for each of your campers, celebrating what is special about them. Every camper receives one. When the wood cookie is presented to a camper, this is their chance to shine in front of everyone. They itch with anticipation to hear what you feel is wonderful and unique about them. On one side it says their name, the other side states what their award is. There is a hole at the top, a string goes through, and on Friday night at closing campfire you present their awards to them

The 4 Steps To Making Great Wookies

Step 1: Selecting Your Wood Discs

At the start of every session, you will need to select your 5 wood cookies for each of your campers. It can be helpful to select similar sizes for all of your campers, that way, if you are going to do a connected theme, they can all provide the same amount of room. However, if you decide that the point of your awards is that they are all unique, then it may make more sense to have 5 different sizes/shapes.

Once you have selected your wood cookies, you can get a head start on painting them with the names, and save time later in the session.

Things to consider when choosing your wookies:

Make sure your campers’ names fit across the wookies and draw with pencil or use a piece of paper before you start painting
You have the choice as to whether you want bark on the cookies, the bark removed, or even partially removed – it’s up to your own creativity to determine how the art is portrayed
There is a wood cookie drying rack in the staff house, each shelf slides out, so that you can preserve your wood cookies throughout the entire process…be careful not to leave them on the sofa, or the floor – lots of people use the staff house and you are increasing your chances of starting them all over again and making a puffy paint mess!

Step 2: The Background and Camper Name

On one side of a wookie award, is the camper’s name. This side can have an intricate design, or can simply be a colorful background with the name on it. Backgrounds can vary in intricacy from a multi- colored pattern with stars, moons, flowers, fields and rays of sunshine, to a simple swirl of two matching colors that are rubbed into the background with the tip of an index finger. Or, if you prefer the natural wood color, sometimes it can be just as cool to make the background a series of lines, designs and small shapes that leave the wooden color visible in between. There is no requirement for what this looks like other than it has their name on it.

It can be efficient to choose a theme for your wookies and incorporate that into your cabin planning. e.g. planets, trees, flowers, animals. This can help you define your award names more easily by giving it more direction. You can also paint the name side of your wookie to be the same for all campers, and then have individualised award sides.

Once you have one side done with the camper’s name and background all finished nicely, it’s time to put your awards somewhere safe to dry the first side (it usually takes about 8 to 24 hours per side for the paint to completely harden, hence the early start!!).

The art of puffy paint drawing is a fine one that requires a certain amount of care and subtlety. Here are some tips that may help you:

Always test squeeze the bottle on a piece of paper before applying it to your wood cookie. This way you can avoid little accidents…like a tablespoon of paint exploding on to your disc in one loud, unceremonious fart noise. Be careful!
Squeeze the bottle lightly and move your hand as smoothly as possible. This will assist in creating a nice, smooth line.
It is a bad idea to punch through dried paint at the tip of a nozzle with a pin or needle. It doesn’t work very well. It either ruins the tip of the bottle or pushes the clog further into the tip, making it more difficult to remove. Prevention is better than a cure; always put the cap back on so that the paint doesn’t dry out in the first place. When clogs occur, you can squeeze the tip of the bottle as you rotate it with your fingers to break up the dry paint or remove the tip and push the clog out from underneath with a pin.
If a puffy paint bottle is empty, or the tip too messed up to be used, please throw it away and ask your Village Leader to buy more if needed. The VLs only knows when to order new bottles when someone lets them know, and there’s nothing as painful as realizing that we’re out of puffy paint come Tuesday of a session.

Step 3: The Award Title

Now that you have your name and award background done (and hopefully thus far you have avoided any major catastrophes), it’s time for the most important part: the title of the award itself.

A wookie award is a name or descriptor that speaks to who the camper is and how they have grown throughout the session. It is a gift that when done well, gives the recipient the experience of being seen, known and appreciated. A wookie award is an opportunity to honor them, lift them up, and offer them something they can be proud of and want to share to their friends.

Finding the inspiration to create Wood Cookies for your campers can come from the most interesting of places. From a table-side joke, to a proud accomplishment, something inspirational or a camper’s most inspiring quality. The key is to be actively aware of what your campers are saying, doing, feeling and learning. Note-keeping throughout the session will be of tremendous help in being able to make the most heart-felt Wood Cookie.

If you have observed your campers carefully and have put some thought into what makes them tick, then it shouldn’t take more than a quiet hour of meditation to come up with five killer names that will sum up the strengths of their personalities that the last week or two have revealed. If you are really hurting for a great title, here is a list of suggestions. Remember, the best titles the community ever sees are the ones no one has come up with before.

Often, the more unique it is, the more your camper will feel special to have received it. Again, it helps to write the title out on paper before you put it on the award, especially if you have a long one, and especially if you want to have fancy or interlocking lettering. Your Village Leader will be a great help here as well.

Step 4: The Presentation

Finally, when you have finished all five awards and they are nicely dried and ready to be handed out, cut five equal lengths of yarn and attach them as loops through the convenient little hole in the top of the wood disc. Ensure the yarn is long enough to go over your campers’ heads without difficulty.

Now it is time to present! On the last Friday of a session, each village will gather in their common areas around their own campfire, and each counselor will have the opportunity to present their wookies to each camper in their cabin, with an intentional speech offering the meaning of their award. You will have around 10 minutes to speak to your 5 campers about the meaning of their award, in front of the rest of your village, and then allow them a moment in the spotlight before heading back to get your photograph taken in front of the bench. This process is also known as the wood-cookie presentation, the cabin award presentation, and the wood-cookie sell.

The wookie sell is where you explain the award name you chose for your campers, share core attributes of their experience at Augusta, and honor them in front of their peers. The wookie sell is celebratory, happy and an opportunity for gratitude. Though the wood cookie sell is heart-felt, meaningful and important, this does not mean that is has to be ‘serious’. Sharing a funny memory with the entire village, or a comical situation, can be an effective way of communicating the play, joy and wonder of your cabin. Humor can also demonstrate (and reinforce) the communal bonds shared between the cabin and the entire camp.

As a caveat, sarcasm or humor at a camper’s expense can be especially cutting at closing campfire. It may be a funny story about a specific camper, yet it may also be at that camper’s expense. Slams, cuts, and put-downs can get a laugh, and they can also erode the positive aspects of the award. Instead of this type of humor, consider sharing a story or moment that brings all together in the joy of laughing.

The 3-Part Wookie Sell

1) A general observation about your cabin as a whole
Avoid unintentional speech i.e. Manzi 5 was an amazing cabin and we had fun. Instead, perhaps ‘Manzi 5 set individual goals to be leaders at the beginning of this week, and followed through on these goals, achieving a strong leadership presence in the community.’

2) The Sell
There are 3 orders in which awards are commonly presented:

Read the award → explain the award → say the camper’s name
Explain the award → read the award → say the camper’s name
Say the camper’s name → read the award → explain the award

After which either put the award around their neck or hand them the award.

3) The Summation
One last (intentional) statement about the cabin as a while, and then stop for a cabin photo!

Remember, this is their time to be honored for something at the core of their being. Intentional, heart-felt, direct speech, combined with a thought-out and meaningful awards, will create a memory that lasts a lifetime.

An Example Thought Process For A Wookie Award

Your camper is a returner of 3 years, knows camp and knows which clinics they like the most. From day one when you ask them what they are looking forward to, they tell you how they learned archery at camp in their first year and their goal is to earn their level 5 bracelet for Archery this summer. Throughout the session they sign up for archery every day, keep you informed of their progress, speak to randy about offering the level 5 clinic this session, and even get all their cabin mates to sign up for an archery session with them. It turns out they didn’t get level 5 this session, however they got level 4 and were very proud of that.

During evening embers, you notice that they are very engaged in their cabin mates’ answers, usually asking them follow up questions and seem to have a genuine interest in their experiences, enriching the depth of discussions the cabin is able to achieve.

At the start of the session, you decided to try having a planet theme to your cabin. The name sides of your wookies are different space related things, and you were able to get buy in from your cabin and they were excited to theme aspects of cabin life to be space themed (cabin activity with astronauts on gravity zip with asteroids, embers around space suits and the mask you wear etc.).

When thinking about names, you wanted to incorporate archery, planets and how they are able to bring the cabin together in discussions.

Option 1: Space Arrow

In your wookie sell, you talk about the fact that they love archery, and tried hard this session but didn’t get level 5. Space is because the cabin was space themed.
Hopefully it’s obvious that this award is likely not going to speak to the camper very well. It’s basic, doesn’t really get at anything but surface level experiences. They like archery and you chose a space theme. In 3, 5 or 10 years from now, when they look back at this wookie, the will likely not think much of it.

Option 2: Space Captain Aiming For Bullseye

You talk about how they took on the role of captain in your space team, how they displayed leadership in bringing the team together well in group discussions and allowed your cabin to grow closer as a group. You tell them how much you admired their determination for trying to reach level 5 archery, and encourage them to keep aiming for whatever they desire because with their resilience and positive attitude, they will continue to grow.

This award may resonate very well with a camper, and with a strong sell, could be something they feel represents them. With a younger camper, this is likely going to be at a level they understand well and have a good concept of.

Option 3: Super Nova Piercing The Core

You explain that a super nova gives off incredible amounts of energy and light, and that they are one of the brightest things in the universe. You describe that during the session, you have witnessed them consistently being a source of energy and fun within the cabin, and have helped bring the cabin together, just as a captain would do on a space ship. You highlight their determination in their pursuit of archery level 5, and how they had their sights set on a goal, and worked diligently towards it. Not only that, they are also able to pierce the core of a conversation, and think about what they can ask in a discussion to understand someone to their core in a way that you have admired.

This award has many facets for you to be able to speak to different aspects of the camper’s experience. With a good sell it casts imagery and displays the thought you have put into it to think of something that really speaks to them. With a younger cabin, this might be a little bit over their head and may not be ideal, however catering your sell appropriately can help express the meaning behind the imagery.

Wookie Tips & Tricks

Sometimes counselors string together a seemingly endless chain of adjectives and
adverbs in order to attempt to capture a multi-faceted camper. Consider, instead,
uniting all of these adjectives in a symbolic noun that speaks towards these multiple
different aspects in a unified way. ‘Funny Happy Silly Goofy Wild Devoted Nice’ as an award does not meet the guidelines for intentionality as they speak more towards separate vague aspects of the camper in an unfocused way.

However, ‘The Gopher’ with a sell that involves the fact that the camper was always popping up at opportune moments, acting silly and goofy, and like a “go-for” they were always there to help in a devoted and friendly way, unifies all of these adjectives into an award showing more thought, creativity, and intentionality of speech.

The thesaurus can be both your greatest aid and your worst nightmare (a huge dinosaur that gobbles up your intentionality). Words in the thesaurus are not identical; they are similar, but like shades of a color (red, pink, rose, brick, adobe) each synonym has a slightly different hue. Make sure you know both the denotation (the dictionary definition) and the connotation (how people use this word) before applying the word to your wood cookie.

For example: the thesaurus lists the following synonyms for ‘beginner‘: novice, plebe, neophyte.

A plebe is a recruit in an army (a specific kind of beginner and associated with war.), which is also used as an insult in many cultures.
A neophyte is someone who recently converted to a new religion, or someone who was recently baptized and thus has religious connotations.
A novice is someone who has recently entered into a monastery, or someone who has recently acquired a new title.

Technically all three of these people are beginners (denotation) but they have specific connotations that you may not wish to imply.

Using synonyms for the sake of sounding more off beat and creative is a useful thing to do, and needs careful consideration to balance how a camper will understand it (especially important with younger ages, you don’t want the award to go over their heads because you chose a word they won’t be able to understand or remember the definition of).

A strong theme, intentionally chosen, can symbolize the unity of the cabin over a common experience. A theme chosen at random, applied to the cookies, regardless of the cabin dynamic can leave everyone scratching their heads. The below questions will help you to determine whether a theme is appropriate for your cabin.

Question 1: Is my cabin unified?
Yes – Perhaps a theme can represent this unification
No – Perhaps individual cookies will resonate more strongly with the campers

Question 2: Is there anything my cabin specifically shares? Hobbies? Feelings? Interests?

Yes – Perhaps a theme can highlight this similarity. The closer to common heart bonds, the more in line with guidelines of Wookies.
No – Perhaps individual cookies painted with a common color scheme will resonate more strongly with the campers

Question 3: Is this theme camp-appropriate in both its denotation and its connotation?

Yes – Full-steam ahead!
No – Perhaps individual cookies.

Examples of themes with camp-inappropriate denotations: TV shows, Companies, Celebrities, Brand names, themes to do with body/ethnicity/class.Examples of themes with camp-inappropriate connotations: cuts of meat, wild animals (sometimes, especially with older cabins), nationalities (when using stereotypes).

Does anyone else in the room know this camper? Often the staff-house and community room are full of people on Thursday night. These people have probably taught clinics with the camper in it, or made an observation during an Evening Program, or a Playstation. What about your Village Leader? Have they noticed anything about your campers?
Check the Camper Confidential. Maybe the camper says that he’s afraid of heights in his letter, and you watched him do the High Zipline. Honoring this achievement (and the growth) can make a strong component of a powerful Wookie.
Carry a notebook and write down moments of fun, moments of emotional presence, moments of challenge, unique moments or experiences with that camper, and moments of epiphany.
Consider focusing on campers that are more difficult to connect with for a day. Sit next to them at meals. Target them in your embers and ask them open-ended questions. Check-in with them during Rest Hour. See how the cabin activity that day sits with them.
Consider also making a schedule for yourself to get to know more about a specific camper, i.e. on Wednesday I’m going to be engaged with the whole cabin, and my personal goal is to learn more about David in particular. On Thursday I’ll focus on Tom.
Save your clinic-slips or create a clinic-tracker on your computer. This will help you see patterns that you may miss when trying to keep track of a week-worth of schedules.
Do clinics with your campers. If all five of your campers sign up for Giant’s Swing, consider requesting to be in that clinic. This will give you a valuable hour to bond with campers (especially quiet ones) as they are (potentially) thrown out of their comfort zones (literally!).
Consider taking 10-15 minutes after embers to journal your reflections/thoughts. 15 minutes of writing every night would create an hours-worth of reflection on your campers by Thursday.
Consider asking your Village Leader to sit with a quiet camper during a meal. He/She may be able to gain additional insight into your camper during an hour and/or maybe your Village Leader already has a strong connection to this camper from a previous year, or from a clinic, and can help you with insight. The same can be said of returning counselors that were counseling that camper in previous years.