One question we often receive from prospective parents is, “What distinguishes Kingswood from other camps?”

And while there are many aspects of Kingswood that are unique and make Kingswood such a great place for boys to spend their summer, we always lead with the same answer: Our staff.

Our first point of emphasis is on our administrative team, how many adults we have at camp, and how many professional educators work at Kingswood (if you don’t know, this summer we will have 25 current or former teachers on our staff).

The second point of emphasis is the quality and experience of our staff as a whole: this summer we will have over 900 years of Kingswood experience on our staff, and 80% (38 of 48) of our cabin counselors are “homegrown,” meaning they are former campers and graduates of our Counselor-In-Training (CIT) program.

With this experience comes deep institutional knowledge – about our community values, about our daily structure and routines, about our games, trips, and special events, and so much more.

Having so many veterans on our staff also gives us tremendous flexibility and adaptability; if the weather takes an unexpected turn and we decide – at the last minute – to run  cabin carnival instead of morning clinics, there is a counselor in every cabin who knows EXACTLY what that means.

Another benefit of having so many homegrown staff is that we know our staff incredibly well. We have watched them (and helped them) grow up and become the strong leaders they are today.

We, as directors, recognize the important role counselors can play in a camper’s life, and we take very seriously our job to hire staff who will be positive role models – who will be kind, supportive, empathetic, patient, fair, and fun.

During orientation, we ask our homegrown staff to think back on their experiences as campers, to try to remember which counselors were influential to their Kingswood experience, and to draw upon those experiences to identify how they want to interact with their campers and the camp community. Many of them can immediately identify not only the counselors who significantly impacted their Kingswood experience, but what it was specifically that made that individual so central to their positive camp experiences….and they are highly motivated to create that same culture, community, and connection as counselors themselves.