Exeter, NH (January 21, 2008)—Phillips Exeter Academy’s school psychologist Dr. Christopher Thurber has recently introduced a new website designed to train summer camp staff. Using video, online quizzes, and downloadable handouts and training materials, Thurber’s “Leadership Essentials” website http://elearning.campspirit.com offers tools for camp directors to train staff as soon as they’re hired.

The future of preparing staff to work with campers could well mean using video training modules streaming over the Internet from anywhere in the world. Thurber’s site offers camp directors, who are hiring greater numbers of international staff and facing more accreditation standards of counselor education, tools that will be useful to all day and overnight camps. “Ultimately, the goal is to provide a better camp experience for our children. And the quality of a camp experience hinges directly on the quality of the staff,” says Thurber.

Typically, camp directors have less than a week to bestow their staff with the multitude of child development, leadership and safety topics required by accreditation standards. Thurber’s answer to this growing need of greater preparation is video modules “to fill the gap and give every camp a jump-start on training.” Thurber, who has 27 years of experience working at camps, says each module lasts between six and nine minutes, covers a specific topic, and is followed by a quiz to test counselors’ comprehension. Camp directors can monitor their staff’s completion of training and test scores.

The modules include: “Becoming a Youth Development Professional”; “Bullies and Targets”; “Camp Staff and the Internet”; “Campers with Attention Deficits”; “Classic Problem Solving”; “Safe Touch and Safe Talk”; “Skillful Discipline”; “Tolerance and Diversity” and “Treating Homesickness.”

Thurber, a graduate of Harvard and an expert on homesickness, provides training workshops to camps across the United States and Canada.  He is the host of “The Secret Ingredients of Summer Camp Success,” a homesickness prevention DVD produced by the American Camp Association, and co-author with Dr. Jon Malinowski of The Summer Camp Handbook, a preparatory resource for new camper families.

A complete list of upcoming events is available on the Phillips Exeter Academy public events line at (603) 777-4309 and on our website at www.exeter.edu. For directions to Phillips Exeter Academy, call (603) 777-4330.

Phillips Exeter Academy is a coeducational, independent preparatory school that was founded in 1781 and originated the system of instruction known as Harkness teaching in 1931. In the spirit of its charter to foster both goodness and knowledge, students come from a wide variety of geographic, economic, racial and religious backgrounds. The diverse student body comes from approximately 45 states, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and 23 foreign countries.