Staff Training Summit 1: Crisis Prevention & Response: De-Escalating Intense Behavior Situations
Staff Training Summit 1: Crisis Prevention & Response: De-Escalating Intense Behavior Situations
COCA’s Staff Training Summit is proudly sponsored by 
Hosted by Emily Golinsky of Bright Moose, LLC 
Session 1: March 31, 6:30 pm EST
Session 2: April 2, 6:30 pm EST
Session 3: April 8, 6:30 pm EST
Session 1:
Crisis Prevention & Response: De-Escalating Intense Behavior Situations
In this session, we will cover strategies to help manage escalations (situations in which participants are experiencing heightened behaviors), including aggressiveness. After walking through the stages of behavioral escalation from calm, through triggers and acceleration, to the peak and back down through de-escalation and recovery, we will dive deeper into how to support both campers and staff during these intense moments. We’ll dig into various types of escalation such as “tantruming” and “turtling,” how responses vary between these, and what to do in these specific situations. You’ll walk away more confident to handle – and help your staff handle – critical emotional/behavioral meltdowns in a safe, effective, and compassionate way.
Session 2:
Successfully Navigating Complicated Camper Interactions
When a simple pull-aside-and-chat isn’t enough, staff need a deeper toolbox of skills to help them address challenging episodes of camper behavior. We’ll focus on two areas during this engaging session: first, what to do when one camper’s dysregulation begins to affect the entire group, ultimately leading to frustration for campers, staff, and even parents; and second, how staff can safely and calmly engage campers in “high stakes discussions” – like when things are awkward or when campers need to receive feedback that could frustrate/escalate them. At the conclusion of this session, you’ll be equipped to understand the impact that individual campers’ difficult (but not necessarily camp-inappropriate) behavior can have in the group, identify early warning signs and staff strategies for redirecting group dynamics and resetting group culture, and help your staff have honest, clear, and supportive communication with kids when challenges arise at camp.
Session 3:
Allying without Enabling: Supporting Staff & Camper Engagement through the Lens of Neurodiversity
Every camper and staff brings their own way of thinking, feeling, and responding to camp life—and staff do too. In this session, we’ll discuss questions such as: “What does it mean when a camper struggles with nuance, gray areas, or unexpected changes?”, “How can I offer support when my brain works similarly – or very differently – to a camper’s?” and “When a colleague says ‘I can’t’ or seems overstimulated, how do I know when they need a break vs. when they need a gentle push?” We’ll explore how to balance support and challenge, respect autonomy while encouraging growth, and ensure that we ally with (rather than enable) campers and colleagues who are neurodivergent. You’ll gain an increased understanding of how one of the many neurodiversities staff and campers may have, autism, could present in the camp environment, and last but certainly not least, you’ll fill a toolbox with concrete strategies to help everyone at camp, regardless of neurotype, feel both supported and stretched in healthy ways.
About Emily: Emily is an international keynote speaker and presenter whose sessions get called many things, some of her favorites being: “tremendously helpful,” “definitely not the same-old-same-old,” “fun and informative,” and “not to be missed – a reason to come to the conference!” With 25+ years of experience in camp leadership, and following her retirement from a 15-year role as Executive Director at the therapeutically-based Camp Starfish (NH), Emily founded Bright Moose, LLC (www.brightmoosetraining.com) to provide training, coaching, consultation, and professional development to camps, schools, towns, and youth organizations, guided by the motto “Help Others Shine Bright!” Emily is an Education Advocate for youth with special needs and a certified Mental Health First Aid Instructor, and is honored to be the recipient of the Peter Kerns Award for the Advancement of Professional Development. She holds a BS (Health Psychology) and MS (Camp Administration & Leadership), and recently completed her Higher Education Teaching Certificate through Harvard. She is President of the New Hampshire state association for camps (NHCamps), where she also sits on the legislative and DHHS committees, and she is active as an accreditation visitor and Board Stewardship committee member for ACA, New England. You can find her in Camping Magazine, ParentingNH, on the Project Real Job blog, and on multiple podcasts. Fair warning: she is also a member of the National Sarcasm Society and an avid collector of terribly awesome puns.