Liberty Lake teaches campers 21st century skills focusing 5 star points:  teamwork, aspiration, independence, integrity, and friendship.  Each week, campers get time to focus on one of the star points, and in this week, the target was teamwork.

When people usually think of teamwork, the simple image of a sports team or a business team, a group specifically designed to function together, comes into their head.  At camp, we would expect to see this in traditional ways:  soccer, baseball, basketball, dance, relay races, etc.  In all of these activities, children work together to accomplish a single goal.  While each of those activities certainly teaches teamwork, camp has ways of showing the unexpected forms that teamwork takes everyday, and here are a few of those ways I have observed this week:

Gaga:  While gaga is an every-person-for-themself game, children constantly find ways to circumvent this.  The skilled players always form alliances, and those alliances help all its members advance in the game.  Many alliances will stand on the edges and hit the ball at all the other kids in the middle of the octagon.  Others will pass the ball to one another and use the force to bounce it from partner to partner.

Fencing:  Traditionally, fencing is about two people facing each other with swords.  While the end goal is to be the best swordfighter around, fencers rely on one another to build their skills.  Emy, our fencing instructor, encourages this in training exercises:  attackers try to touch defenders with their sword on one of four points, either should and either hip.  Defenders parry the oncoming thrust.  During this drill, campers help each other learn how to defend and attack, and not just by doing the drill, but by guiding and directing one another with small comments and suggestions.  Campers take what they learn and try to teach one another during the drill.

Fishing:  Many people fish to be alone in nature and let the water and woods exist with them, and many do it to catch the biggest fish they can find.  While this certainly is the case for many young fishers at Liberty Lake, two campers lured a small snapping turtle into a net.  Another camper helps his friend bait hooks.  Fishing works well with a few people to plan with, to provide advice and aid in what bait to use, and to direct new fishers to where different fish usually go in the lake.

Liberty Blog and Rap:  Now while these two electives might seem complete opposites since one is more musical than the other, both use one of the most basic tools to any writer’s toolbox:  collaborative writing.  All the rappers sit at one table and discuss their lyrics, talking about them and testing them out on each other to see what sounds good.  Rap this week created a single song with the work of four campers, each camper providing and then rapping a verse to a whole song.

Liberty Blog, in much the same way, encourages campers to work together to come up with ideas and test those ideas out with each other.  One camper helps another plan the order for their own article on the Friday assembly, deciding whether to put the paragraph about ice cream before the paragraph about performances or not.  Other authors even tested out team writing before deciding to work on different articles.  Everyone shares their work with others at the table to see what parts work and what parts could change.

Teamwork needs everyone to perform a role that benefits the group and do that role well.  While teamwork does come from classic team sports and activities, it also comes to life in every elective and activity at Liberty Lake.  Even when campers do traditionally solo work, they learn to support one another in small ways.  Although an individual may get credit for a rap, caught fish, or won swordfight, it’s through the help that everyone, campers and counselors, provide through their roles.