TEACHING (AND LEARNING) ALL SUMMER LONG

By Abby AURAn

There is no doubt that being a teacher in Fargo, North Dakota and a counselor at Ogichi Daa Kwe have simultaneously impacted one another. I initially believed that teaching would bring more lessons to my camp life than the other way around. Upon some reflection, I had a hard time distinguishing between what teaching taught me about camp versus what camp taught me about teaching. It’s a continuum. Although the locations and the modes of delivery are disparate, they are like parallel worlds.

While there are many lessons that the classroom brings to Ogichi, the most important one is to treasure and build meaningful relationships with those around me. Being able to create genuine relationships has helped me tremendously as a counselor in camp and particularly on trips. I have been able to help campers through homesickness, complete a never-ending portage that brought challenges at every turn, and ultimately help campers develop skills to build healthy and sustainable relationships with each other. Being able to provide campers with the tools they need to move forward in life and produce genuine and meaningful relationships in a camp setting, as well as outside of it, has given me a strong sense of purpose within this community.

I had the pleasure of being welcomed into this community as an LDAC instructor in the summer of 2021. Through the two summers I have been on campus it has been a delight to witness some of my very first LDAC campers become staff themselves. It has brought me immense joy to watch them use techniques and skills taught during our time together to build their own relationships with their campers. I truly believe that being a counselor has made me a better teacher, being a teacher has made me a better counselor, and both have made me a better person.

This article was originally published in the Fall 2022 issue of Songs of the Paddle.