Kate Hunter, Features Editor
@khuntercourant
Amidst a global pandemic, major changes have been implemented to the way we live our lives. Among these changes, summer programs probably don’t come to mind right away. However, like many other things, they too have been impacted.
Susan Caroll, a counselor at the high school, says some summer programs weren’t able to run at all. “Teen programs that required travel, such as Rustic Pathways, were forced to cancel”, she said.
Other programs, however, looked to socially distanced and digital approaches to make participation possible.
Anna Barnard, a junior at the high school, was a counselor at Waveny Camp this past summer. The health and safety of the camp participants were put first. One change was that counselors were required to provide a negative COVID test result before working. “We had to spread the kids out with noodles and all the counselors had to wear masks while maintaining distances of six feet at all times,” she said.
Eating lunch had its own precautions. “All the kids had to bring their own lunch, we couldn’t share, and we all had to sit in a circle six feet away,” Anna said.
Despite this, the kids at the camp provided a positive report. When asked if they had fun at the end of the week, they all said yes. “The kids all really liked it because it gave them a chance to get out of the house,” Anna said.
Ian Nicholas, a senior at the high school, participated in the Bruce Beck Sports Broadcasting Camp for the third consecutive year. Ian said, “this year was obviously a whole different animal because it was all virtual, and especially for sports broadcasting, it is performance based. Normally you are sitting in front of the camera, not the iMac, it makes a big difference,” he said.
While in past years his camp took field trips to MetLife Stadium and watched Yankees games, COVID made these activities impossible.
Inevitably, Zoom’s challenges were present. “If you had a question it was hard to ask it, and you may not get as much back and forth feedback as you want, but you know, to be honest it really went very well,” Ian said.
Meghan Driscoll, a junior at the high school, was an intern for her aunt’s marketing firm, Global Prairie, based in Kansas. “Originally I was going to fly out to Kansas to where it was based and stay with my family for a couple of weeks while I did it, but obviously that wasn’t possible this summer, so they switched the whole thing online and it was just a lot of Zoom meetings,” she said.
Madison Grenauer, a senior at the high school, took part in the Yale Summer Journalism program and they too turned to Zoom. Madison, however, saw the positive of Zoom’s set up. She said, “I personally think that I got as much out of it as I would have if it was in person because we actually had a lot more opportunity to talk to people who were really skilled and had gone really far in the writing world and I think that if it wasn’t for the online situation those people wouldn’t have had the time to come in to Yale and talk to us,” she said.
Anna Barnard is hopeful for a more “normal” experience next summer. “I really hope next year we can do more as counselors to establish connections with the camp kids; a good start would be being less than six feet apart,” she said.
