Early on Monday morning, once my fellow interns and I arrived, the supply closet had already been ransacked for the day’s materials. We checked over rosters and names, put on our blue lanyards, and prepared to greet the new group arriving at Camp Sawtooth for the week.
Once 8:45 rolled around, so did parents and their campers. Mixed looks of sleepiness or nervousness filled the faces of all the children, ranging from ages 6 to 16, in unknown anticipation for the week ahead. As we, the interns, worked to get everyone checked in, the sight of equally nervous or hurrying parents dressed in casual or business clothes also came into view—parents who were hurrying to beat the 9 am traffic in downtown Winston-Salem.
Once the campers were checked in and smothered in quick hugs and kisses from their parent, which tended to wake them up a bit, they followed us down the hall as we guided them to their classes. Sometimes the anticipation was more palpable in parents than campers as the adults tagged along with us for a peek at the classrooms and for final goodbyes.
Although every child is different, there is a collective silence that starts the first class of every week. At times, it felt like a game of cat and mouse to get the kids to talk or warm up to their classmates on that first day, but I came to learn that it was a process similar to the projects for that week.
I had spent most of my summer interning with Sawtooth’s camp classes, but my second-to-last week was the most challenging. It was tough to make my 12 to 16-year-old class on jewelry making feel welcome and social as their nerves took over from the moment we entered the professional-grade studio. Each day, we had a new project that followed specific instructions on how to make a copper-colored necklace, a wavy gold-colored bracelet, and even earrings bent and hammered to make curved, circular, drop-style ones. The metal had to be heated under fire to bend it in the desired shape, so additional precautions had to be followed, and that required more time, attention, and structure––and, as I soon found out, silence and concentration from all the campers.
Looking to ease their nerves, I remembered the advice given to me from an instructor I helped before in a 9 to 11-year-old weaving class. She often emphasized to the class that this was camp and not a school semester. There were no grades, just the camper as the artist, the materials, and the potential to make something great. It helped the younger creatives relax and remember that we were here to learn and have fun, and that mistakes were part of the process.
I also noticed that asking the 12 to 16-year-olds questions about themselves or starting an open dialogue allowed the other kids to interject and truly “whistle while they worked,” forgetting how anxious they were those first few days. Hearing the echoes of chatter and laughter was not only a win for me, but also for them as they also got accustomed to their environment in the smallest but most important of ways. From seeing them take initiative to getting specific tools and anticipating their next move in their projects, you could see a true jump in growth.
As the week went by and Friday arrived, excitement grew for the final day, so they could complete and display their work for their room’s show and tell. By this point, all the work from the past week was put on display at the camper’s desk for their family to see. But most importantly, it was great for the kids to see the fruits of their labor, as well as their joy and, at times, their frustration, and how, in the end, it formed a beautiful collection of fantastic artworks.
As a Camp Sawtooth intern and one who is ending her undergraduate journey to start anew in clinical mental health, I am not certified to provide a professional, psychological analysis of the kids’ growth throughout the past few weeks. In my opinion, though, I believe that as these projects developed over the summer, the young artists’ confidence, persistence, and skill did too. I am excited to see what they make next summer at Camp Sawtooth.