Greetings from 30,000 feet.
Though our first students won’t arrive until June 22 and despite the fact that we have been working with school programs since May, Adventure Treks officially begins today.
Today, our senior staff, consisting of our trip leaders and regional directors begin a five day retreat. This is an exceptional group of folks with years of Adventure Treks experience, several of our trip leaders began their AT career as students. Five years of Adventure Treks tenure is the norm here and several staff have spent more than seven years with us.
Here we get ourselves on the same page, share tips for success, revisit all the details that make an Adventure Treks program successful, examine trends in today’s youth and youth development, revisit policies and procedures and prepare for the massive job of staff orientation which begins on June 10.
It’s also a social time. This group of folks truly loves one another. We have been together for a long time. This is time they have together before they change their focus to training and leading new instructors and leading and role modeling our students.
Creating a strong community of our senior staff sets the basis for the rest of the summer. We can’t facilitate a strong and caring community, where students become their best selves; if their leaders aren’t doing the same. When our senior staff exudes genuine warmth, a culture of kindness, a culture of competence and strong communication, it’s picked up by our new instructors and ultimately our students.
We have been preparing for summer 2011 since last November. We have done all in our power to make it the best summer ever. It’s game time now… and we are very excited.
We can’t wait to meet your child in the days and months ahead.
Best regards,
John Dockendorf