Staff Writer
LIMESTONE — Now in its 23rd year, the Aroostook Teen Leadership Camp (ATLC) has gone beyond striving for happy campers and has yet again provided happy campers who are happy with themselves.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Sponsored by the Aroostook Mental Health Services, Inc., just about 50 campers attended ATLC at the Limestone Community School/Maine School of Science and Mathematics from July 26 to July 30; the camp focuses on developing leadership skills and encouraging teens not to use alcohol, tobacco or other drugs.
“Our biggest thing here is, of course, leadership,” said Valerie Theriault, co-director of the ATLC. “We’re really focusing on leadership and leadership skills as well as focusing on substance abuse prevention (including drug and alcohol awareness), self-esteem, decision making, team building (where they’re learning to work as a team),” she said. “There are all different aspects of leadership.”
At camp, students listened to a daily national motivational speaker, attended workshops on leadership, drug awareness and adolescent issues as well as participated in team-building activities, took part in small discussion groups (called family groups) and participated in evening social activities.
“What we call family groups are close camper groups that [generally] have seven or eight campers, a student staff member, a facilitator and some of the groups have co-facilitators,” Theriault explained. Interaction in these smaller groups are more private and give campers an opportunity to share and talk about their day.
“We call it family group because by the end of the week, they feel like a family,” Theriault added.
Twelve-year-old Cassidy Anne Woo of Caribou was one of many campers who found friends in her family group that she plans on keeping in touch with once camp is over.
One of many ways that campers interact with each other is through the giving and receiving of warm fuzzies.
Many campers were wearing long yarn necklaces that originally consisted of a single-strand of yarn with a loosely tied pom-pom adorning the string.
“These are warm fuzzies,” Woo said, holding up the pom-pom attached to her necklace. She explained that when you give somebody a hug [usually accompanied with a compliment] you pull one strand out of the pom-pom at the end of your necklaces and the other individual pulls a strand from their pom-pom. The warm fuzzy strands are exchanged between the two, and strands are tied to the yarn necklace. Toward the end of camp, some campers had more fuzzies tied to their necklaces than there were loosely contained in the pom-pom adorning the necklace.
“The thing about Aroostook Teen leadership Camp is that there are no put-downs whatsoever,” Theriault said. “Campers are accepted for themselves; we do not allow what we call put-downs or cold pricklies.”
The cold prickly is the counterpart of the warm fuzzy.
“If we hear a put down, you have to give what we call 10 put ups,” Theriault added. “ATLC is a place where you’re accepted for whoever you are — you don’t have to pretend to be somebody to fit into a group, you don’t have to try to do the thing to be popular or to be the jock — you are accepted here for who you are and campers get a week of truly being able to be themselves.”
“They hopefully build enough self-esteem and leadership skills to be able to continue being themselves once they return to their schools and to be the leader, not the follower,” she said.
“You learn skills like communication and leadership,” said Woo. “It is all fun, but it’s not all games — they incorporate fun into learning.”
Woo hopes to one day be a student staff member, much like 13-year-old Corlyn Cavender, also of Caribou.
“We have three mini-workshops a day,” Cavender said, “They basically teach you how to set things straight and to set goals for how you want your life to be.”
Teen motivational speakers come from all over the U.S. to speak with the campers.
“They’re teen motivational speakers, so they’re very focused on this age group, and it’s great because it really gets the campers up and going,” Theriault said. “The speakers help the campers really realize that there are consequences to the choices they make.”
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Camp staff member Kaitlyn Collins oversaw campers Crystal Bouley, Clarissa Buck, Anna Faucher, Madison Leach, Collin Paterson and Jacob Plavnick as they diligently cooperated to bring a marble from a starting point to the bottom of a cup a distance away using only wooden dowel segments and their stationary bodies to make sure that the marble never touched the ground. The exercise, called Marble Tube, had groups trying all sorts of techniques to get the marble into the cup.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet12-year-old Cassidy Anne Woo of Caribou showcased her collection of ‘warm fuzzies’ that she received during the Aroostook Teen Leadership Camp.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
Cassidy Ouellette and Indya Ouellette, no relation, discussed strategy regarding the leadership building exercise called Marble Tube, where campers had to move a marble from a starting point to an ending point at the bottom of a cup using only wooden dowels to move the marble.
