The Pine Manor group departed this morning for their Canadian camping trip, a 10-day adventure of lake paddling and portaging through Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. This trip has been a tradition at North Star for many decades, and has come to be known as our capstone experience in a camper’s final year. The boys are spending tonight at Canoe Canada Outfitters sleeping in their legendary 4-level bunk beds before heading out into backcountry in the morning. After not being able to have our campers cross the border, our Pine Manor group was ecstatic to be able to restart this important North Star tradition.
Back at camp, today was our first day of regular programming. One of the things that makes the North Star program unique is that we offer our boys a great deal of choice. We have five periods between breakfast and dinner on a standard day at camp. The first three periods are our instructional periods, which the boys sign up for on a weekly basis. They choose six electives for the week and take each of them for three consecutive days, for one hour and fifteen minutes each day. The fifth period most days is our Organized Free period, which is an opportunity for the boys to choose an activity that they want to do just for that day. They can also use that time to rest, read, shower, or just hang with friends. The 4th period is the one period that the boys don’t have individual choice, as that typically rotates between Challenge Games, Village Activities, and Green-White competitions. This all puts together a schedule for each child that has a great deal of structure, but also a great deal of choice within that structure.
We take great pride in being a community that supports campers with different interests, personalities and backgrounds. And we take great pride in being a place where the boys can explore their interests as their interests grow and change through the years.
Today’s Grace:
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”
- Desmond Tutu
