Philosophy

The young people we serve are bright to extremely intelligent. They have a tremendous amount of potential, but are currently not achieving – socially or academically - to their fullest capacity. One reason for this underdeveloped potential is that our campers have difficulty making choices that will effectively meet their needs. We firmly believe that one can learn better ways to meet his or her needs. We have designed our program to help these young people do just that.

Program Design

Camp Buckskin is a cognitive, behaviorally based program. In general, we subscribe to the Reality Therapy and Choice Theory approach where people make choices to meet their basic needs (love, power, freedom, fun, and survival). We believe this approach most closely mirrors how the real world works. It is vital that they understand cause and effect. Few, if any of us receive a bonus for getting to work on time or not getting into arguments with our colleagues. These are a just a couple of the many choices we are all expected to meet each day. Granted we can choose not to meet these expectations, but we understand there will probably be some repercussion from that choice.

The 3 Rights

Every camper or staff at Camp Buckskin has three rights: the right to be and feel safe, the right to learn as much as possible, and the right to enjoy themselves. We define a poor choice as one which infringes on someone’s right in one or more of these areas. Our campers are not always fully aware of how their words and actions impact others. They can have real trouble deciphering the gray of the world into black and white. We can help them learn to better assess how they affect others by using the Three Rights to show them if a choice was good or bad. This will help them become more conscious of cause and effect. By first strengthening their social awareness and then helping them learn social skills they can become a more successful person.

Choices and Consequences

Choices are usually the result of attitudes and habits. The more entrenched the habit, the harder it is to make a different choice. We strongly believe in accountability and responsibility. At camp we strive to employ natural and logical consequences. This helps children develop an understanding of how the real world will work.

 We understand that no one is perfect and that mistakes will happen. Mistakes actually are an important part of the learning process, as they produce ‘teachable moments’ where our campers can learn a new skill or better way of meeting his or her needs. We give our campers opportunities to fix their mistakes or 'make things right' – and our staff encourages and guides them in the process. This puts it back on the child and enables them to work on their 3 R’s - Responsibility, Resourcefulness, and Resiliency.

Positive Reinforcement

Last but certainly not least is the extremely important concept of positive reinforcement. Our staff are constantly trying to catch our campers ‘doing well’ by recognizing them for the good choices they make. Campers are reinforced daily for the achievements they make not only in activities, but also for the gains in their interpersonal and intrapersonal skills. This is vital in helping our campers increase their self confidence and improve their overall self concept.