Back in 2019, the state of staffing at summer camps was in a state. The American Camp Association was reporting nationwide issues with recruitment and retention, and that was pre-pandemic. 2020 arrived, and camps were largely shut down, shrunken or online only.

Three years later, with work life largely returning to normal, and with unemployment just 3.4% in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, the business of camp, at least in Middle Tennessee, is booming.

Jeff Merhige, executive director of the Joe C. Davis YMCA Outdoor Center and Camp Widjiwagan, says his program has seen “an incredible surge” in interest from prospective campers this year.

“We right now have 6,400 registrations complete for the summer of ’23,” he says. “To put that in perspective, that’s four months ahead of where we were last year to hit that number.

“And to put it in a bigger perspective, last year we had over 7,100 campers here in Nashville in a 10-week period. We have 6,400 registered today, and 600 on the waiting list trying to get into different programs, and we still have four months to go before camp starts.”

And applications to staff those popular programs appear to have kept pace, although camp directors do acknowledge a greater focus on competitive pay rates, retention bonuses and other kinds of incentives to attract top talent.

“In the summer of 2020, we did not have in-person camps. But in 2021, when we came back after that summer off, we actually saw an increase in staff applications that summer,” says Regan Humphrey, ADHD summer treatment program director at Currey-Ingram Academy.

“I think that there were a lot of (college) students, in particular, who were ready to get out in the field and do something hands-on, but there were limited opportunities at that point in terms of things like study-abroad programs and internships, so there was a lot of interest particularly from undergraduate and graduate students in working in camps.

“Since then, I think we’ve seen applications have returned to more normal levels, typical to what they were before the pandemic.”

Humphrey also has recruited heavily from Currey-Ingram’s existing staff. Some specialized programs are purposely staffed with Currey-Ingram teachers, while other programs are staffed with a combination of teachers, counselors and social workers from other area schools, as well as undergraduate and graduate students in fields such as psychology, education or social work.

“I am worried about it,” says Christie El-Shishini, director of aftercare and summer programs at St. Henry School, when asked about staffing. St. Henry is hosting its first-ever summer camp program in 2023, so El-Shishini isn’t just staffing a camp; she’s staffing one from the ground up. “During the school year I direct our after-school program, and our staffing for that is extremely difficult, so I am worried about the staffing component for summer camps.”

El-Shishini has addressed that concern by setting attractive pay rates. St. Henry pays its camp instructors per student enrolled, and while El-Shishini declines to quote an exact figure, she says St. Henry pays its summer instructors at a higher rate than the local per-student average.

Opportunities abound for serious athletes and those simply ready for a little summer fun.

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She also offers some “soft” incentives to existing St. Henry teachers to teach camp, such as a week of “dress-down” days during the school year. “We have a pretty stringent dress code for our faculty, so for them to be able to come to work in sweatpants and a sweatshirt for a week? That’s a good incentive!”

Like Humphrey at Currey-Ingram, El-Shishini has recruited most of her summer staff from within the existing St. Henry community. Out of 39 camp instructors, 25 are current St. Henry teachers or staff, and another six are parents of current students. Student counselors and workers will be recruited from St. Henry School alumni and the church’s youth program.

Indeed, recruiting graduates is a popular and time-honored method for staffing summer camp programs.

“One of the best parts about Harpeth Hall summer camps is that the counselors, coaches and instructors who lead our camps are very often Harpeth Hall students, alumnae and faculty members,” says Carol Garaby, auxiliary programs director at Harpeth Hall School.

Merhige agrees. “Up until the pandemic, this was the kind of work that was generational. Parents were camp counselors and they’d tell their kids, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be a camp counselor.’ A lot of them came from the history of going to camp.”

However, with the COVID-induced gap for many camp programs, Merhige says his recruitment methods have shifted.

“In our case, we got very aggressive starting in 2020 to really increase our seasonal pay of counselors,” he explains.

There are more than a dozen camps in Middle Tennessee offering academic opportunities.

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“The national average a couple years ago was about $400 a week for kids working summer camp. Well, coming out of the pandemic and with the change in the labor force, and Uber ... where kids can work one delivery and have $20 cash in their pocket, the idea of working two or three weeks before their first paycheck? That kind of changed.

“We decided to start getting very aggressive, and our counselors are paid very well. So going into the 2022 summer season, we did not experience a shortage of applicants to work camp.”

Camp recruiters have also changed the emotional pitch they make to prospective counselors. The most recent high school graduates did not attend camp in person for the last few years, so hiring managers can’t tap into teens’ personal-experience nostalgia the way they could pre-pandemic.

“A lot of our recruitment is done through word-of-mouth,” says Currey-Ingram’s Humphrey. Many of Currey-Ingram’s programs are tailored to neurodivergent students, and Humphrey says finding the right candidates can therefore be a challenge. “Obviously we post jobs online through all of the hiring websites, but we also see that a lot of our students share information with each other, and counselors who have worked with us one summer will tell their friends at their school about the program.

“For students, it’s an opportunity to get hands-on clinical experience working directly with children, and that provides them invaluable preparation for their future study or for careers down the line.”

Merhige has also switched to a career-focused approach to recruitment. “Instead of asking (colleges) to host job fairs, we’re asking to present the values of working at camp to their classes,” he says.

“If you can handle being a camp counselor, being a teacher in the classroom is gonna be a whole lot easier, because you learn about classroom management and group dynamics. And then for any business, camp counselors are multitaskers, versatile, team players. And dealing with anywhere from 10 to 200 kids at a given moment, and how do you keep them organized and take care of them? These are all transferable skills.”

And camp directors across the board cite the importance for both campers and staffers of the return to in-person programming.

El-Shishini says she started planning for St. Henry’s camp program before the pandemic, in response to demand from the school and church community. While her launch date was delayed by the pandemic, she says demand for the program has only increased.

“The hype is really big, probably because it’s our first year, but our students as a whole love being here, and they’re so excited to be here over the summer, and most of them with teachers that they know and see in the building during the year,” she says.

“The nature of camp is interconnectivity and relationship-building, and being together,” Merhige says. During the pandemic, the YMCA ran a virtual learning program out of Camp Widjiwagan, but Merhige says “separation didn’t really work for us.” And now, post-pandemic, he’s seeing social benefit for counselors as much as for campers.

“It was really apparent, in the summer of ’22, how social skills have been damaged through the pandemic, not only for the campers but for those average age of 18- to 25-year-olds,” he says. “They were so technology-dependent for interaction that you could tell the direct face-to-face, eye-to-eye contact was almost uncomfortable.

“Relearning how to connect and be present is so necessary, and this has been the greatest environment ever to get people back to those skills. You saw with little kids, they didn’t know how to deal with each other face to face because they were either virtual or isolated during developmental ages, but then I noticed it with our staff.

“We’d be like, ‘Hey, you guys have got to sit down and work this out,’ and they’d be like ‘Oh, well, we’ll text.’ No! We’re gonna sit down, you’re gonna look each other in the eyes and we’re gonna work this out. And it was almost painful being present, eye-to-eye contact sitting down, and I think we’re relearning those social skills and those social manners. And I think camp’s been a great environment for that.”

“There are certainly challenges that come with working with students and seasonal workers,” Humphrey agrees. “After a few years they graduate and move on to other opportunities, so that can make it challenging to recruit staff long-term who come back year after year. But there are also a lot of pros to working with students. They’re really energetic and eager to learn and excited to be there, so there are a lot of upsides to it, as well.”