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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
A Positive Psychology Primer
Capitalize on each team member’s signature strengths to promote authentic happiness and curb problematic behavior. This handout provides a conceptual map of positive psychology and a list of terrific camp-…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Appreciative Inquiry
Organizations such as are full of problems to be solved, right? Wrong. If you think this way, you’ll stagnate. This handout introduces the technique of Appreciative Inquiry and will reset…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Appreciative Inquiry: Assessment Exercise
The two versions of this assessment of mood and creativity is the ideal pre-post measure of how attitudes influence motivation to change. Give alternate versions to each half of your…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Assess Your Emotional Leadership Style (ELS)
This intriguing questionnaire, based on emotional intelligence and parenting research, will help your staff get a rapid glance at their emotional leadership style. Questions are customized to a youth population…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Breakthrough Advising Techniques: New Pathways from Awful to Optimal
Advising–by boarding staff or dorm faculty–is the relational foundation of student well-being. This handout provides conceptual and practical guidance for adults at all levels who share an investment in the…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Case Studies of Language and Culture
Are your staff ready to respond when campers casually drop words like “gay” or “fag” or “wife beater”? The four provocative case studies on this handout push staff to create…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Design a Successful CIT/LIT Program
Preliminary questions and an outline of ten perennial problems associated with internal leadership development serve as the basis for solution-focused design on this compact handout. Best used as the basis…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Effective Communication and Empathy: Building Connections with Parents, Staff, Campers, and Students
De-fusing emotional “bombs” is an essential prerequisite to problem-solving, but one that’s often overlooked. Learn how to promote connection and understanding with students, parents, campers, and peers. Includes a blank…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Four solid reasons you should Lead By Example on the Internet
The Internet is public space. How you behave in that space—like all other behavior—should set a sterling example for young people to follow. This focused handout gives adult leaders practical…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Giving and Receiving Effective Feedback
Providing feedback to one’s colleagues is an essential skill for leadership growth and development. This advanced handout describes how to preserve good relationships while providing clear feedback in ways that…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Independent School Health & Wellness Center Self-Audit of Essential Best Practices
Take an objective look at the strengths and weaknesses of your school’s health and wellness center by distributing this list of best practices to your leadership team. Then, aggregate the…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Internal Leadership Development
Handouts are available a la carte for $10 apiece, but you could save $800 by purchasing the entire Thurber Handout Portfolio for $199.
Thinking about an All-Camp Prep4Camp membership or an…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Interpret Your Emotional Leadership Style (ELS) – Key
This scoring key accompanies the “Emotional Leadership Style: Assessment” questionnaire and provides insight for your staff into how their style of dealing with campers’ emotions may be positively or negatively…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Junior Counselor + Unit Leader Scenarios: Balancing allegiance with responsibility
Internal leadership development is one of the keys to cultivating a skilled staff, but unique conflicts and quandaries arise with junior staff interact with senior staff (especially when their ages…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Kickin’ Kitchens: Re-engineering Your Dining Services Systems
The kitchen is the heart of you school, camp, or youth program. But a poorly run kitchen poses serious health and safety risks that cause illness and injury. This handout…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Leadership Pinnacles and Pitfalls
Here are the top ten ways for a cabin leader or bunk counselor to succeed. Based on Chris’s most popular staff training workshop, this roadmap to achievement also outlines the…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Letter Home from Camp
One simple way to inspire your staff is to read a letter that a young person might write near the end of camp. What have they achieved? How have they…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Mistakes Young Leaders Make: Coaching the Transition from Student to Proctor/Prefect
Who among your student supervisors is ready for all the immature and impulsive things other students do? This vital handout prepares newly minted proctors/prefects to identify and respond skillfully to…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Personal Achievement Letter
This clever “Letter to Self” forces staff to articulate personal and professional goals for the summer and closes with an opportunity for staff to write words of encouragement to themselves….
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Positive Leadership in the Workplace
Help your staff stop responding to negative behavior with more of the same. Learn to use a calm tone, effective praise, and a positive spin. Teach your staff to be…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Presentation Matters: Engaging Participants by Delivering Essential Content in Memorable Ways
In-service training is the backbone of continuous professional development, but not all wise adults are skilled presenters. This uplifting handout explains techniques to keep audiences engaged, learning, and inspired. Set…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Self-Analysis of Your Behavior in Groups
An especially useful handout for young staff or new hires, this exercise stirs thinking about behavior changes in different group settings. Promotes insight into competitiveness, concentration, creativity, and integrity. Includes…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Situational Leadership: Contextual Analysis and Adaptation
Contextual analysis and adaptation are essential for flexible leadership. Prevent your staff from pigeonholing themselves into one or another kind of leadership. Use this basic outline with film clips or…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
The Phone Call: Smart Strategies for Diffusing Emotional Bombs
Within seconds, you know it’s going to be one of “those calls,” so why not be prepared? This is a handout you’ll keep by your phone or laptop so you…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Things a “Problem Child” Needs to Hear
A pithy summary of how to make young people feel powerful, competent, and emotionally safe, without hurting themselves or others in the process. This handout includes six areas to challenge…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Wise Use of Time Off
Staff need to spend their time of wisely so when they’re on duty they’re ready for anything. If they return to camp exhausted or hung-over, they’re likely to burn out…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Working with Anxious and Overprotective Parents
We can’t arrest our anxious and over-involved parents, but we can do lots to soothe their anxiety and curb their micromanagement impulses. This practical handout helps staff help parents prevent…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Working with Difficult Parents: Partnering with Overwhelmed, Anxious, Bossy, Defiant, and Unhappy Caregivers
This essential handout summarizes the typology of difficult parents along with realistic and clever ways to respond…all without compromising your students’ or campers’ best interests. Partnering with primary caregivers is…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Becoming a Youth Development Professional: Your Example is Your Most Powerful Teaching Too
Day and overnight camps are powerful, positive developmental experiences for children. This honest handout explains how staff transition from focusing on themselves to focusing on the needs of the young…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Equity & Diversity, Part 1
Celebrating the differences among people introduces a new level of enjoyment to the experience of the day and overnight camp. It may be human to fear differences at first, but…
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Handouts (PDFs), Leadership & Parenting
Writing Leadership Jobs on Your Resume
This is the single most-requested handout because most of your staff need to move on to other jobs. Help them feel good about the work they’re doing at your youth-serving…