Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!yale!bunker!wtm
From: moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re:  Greetings!
Message-ID: <10499@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 3 Mar 90 04:59:52 GMT
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Reply-To: moth@dartmouth.edu (Tom Leathrum)
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Index Number: 7048

In message 6910, Lana.Berrington@f34.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Lana Berrington) writes:

     Well.. our goal  of  course is to alter NOTHING.  However campfires
were my prime concern.  Another concern of mine is the singing of graces.
As with most camps we Sing a grace before the start of a meal.  (ie; Johnny
Applesead etcc.).  My Sign Language instructor seems very intent that we
should have campers sign the graces.  Particularly since HI camp will be
taking place with all the other camps.  All the other campers will be
standing for grace and my instructor thinks it would be good for all the
campers (HI and not).  The non hearing impaired campers could learn
something new by making an effort to learn the signs.

and in message 6911:

     Anyways.. at the camp where I work we accomadate many different age
groups at the same time.  The youngest campers stay for only one week while
the rest stay for 2 weeks.    During the course of the summer we run two
specialty camps, which take the place of young campers section.  One is
Cystic Fibrosis camp .. and this year for  the first time the other will be
Hearing Impaired Camp.  To Staff our specialty camps we generally use the
same staff that have been hired to work for the summer.  Unfortunatly this
means that the counsellors will know only minimal sign language.  It is a
group  of some sort that is leasing our facilities and our staff for the
week for HI camp this year.  Our pride at CCH is that we boast a group of
the most enthusiastic and eager-to-learn  Staff members around, you can bet
that the bunch of em will be practicing their signlanguage eagerly as soon
as they have their placement.

- ---End of Qouted Material

All this sounds wonderfully familiar to me.  I worked for many summers
(well, OK, only four...) at a camp in South Carolina which always ran
two parallel camps.  I worked in Camp Hope, which held four one-week
sessions and one two-week session for mentally handicapped, followed by
a one-week session, called Camp Running Brave, for children with
hemophilia.  The other camp on the site, Camp Sertoma, ran all one-week
sessions:  four for underpriveledged children, two for hearing
impaired, and one for visually impaired (called Camp Lion's Den). 
These summers were an important time for me.  Anyway, I understand your
concerns and would like to lend some input from my experiences.  As I
said, I did not work at the camps for hearing impaired, but I feel like
I learned quite a bit of sign language anyway.  The counselors who
worked the camps for hearing impaired generally did not come in to the
program knowing sign (in a staff of ten to fifteen counselors for that
camp, usually no more than three or four had prior training in sign),
but they *all* knew it by the end of the summer.  Not only was the
staff eager to learn the language, the campers proved generally eager
to help them learn (especially all the good words!).  We generally
"sang" grace, too, and one of the people who knew sign would stand at
the front and sign the songs (we also had the words written on
posters).  The children in the camp for hearing impaired followed along
beautifully, and the other campers were sometimes positively awestruck
at seeing people sign the songs -- I found myself, many times, teaching
one of my mentally handicapped campers how to sign "Johnny Appleseed"
(actually, that song was one of the more difficult ones).  I think I
also follow your concern about campfires, but I don't see why they
should be more of a concern for hearing impaired campers than for any
other group of campers.  The whole issue here is safety, and any camp
should have such concerns in mind from the very beginning -- the most
important case of this being, of course, swimming.

I know all this is saying is "go for it," but I couldn't possibly be
enthusiastic enough about saying that.  If you have any more questions
that I might be able to answer, please don't hesitate to write to me,
or post to the group, whichever you like.

Regards,
Tom Leathrum
moth@dartmouth.edu

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