Free/Free Choice

Free/Free Choice--Leadership and Values

In my current world I spend a great deal of time striving to make intentional choices that foster a world where each voice matters, each person has an essential role, and while there is a hierarchy of aspiration, excellence, wisdom, this doesn't discount the contributions of even the most naive, youngest person to contribute with enthusiasm. Many voices to make a choir.

I have come to a realization that my skills rest in the region where practice meets facilitation-coach, teacher-guide. But also my skills in synthesis. I feel both blessed and cursed by seeing the "big picture" in all its messy interconnectivity. Of course, as with almost any thought process this links me back to camp, to leadership and intentionality. It also leads to areas of blindness, inflexibility, of an overly sure sense of certainty.

Camp, maybe more intentionally later on, was an obvious team effort in leadership and management. The director's director in Edna, the rabbinical spirit in Irv. Edna was on one hand more flexible but also is seems to me the more grounded. Cole, Uncle Ray, Hal, Cheryl, etc...and Judy added a balance that has always intrigued me. As I noted before Judy had the ability to see and feel it all, at once, as a community whole, in a way I barely imagine except for the acceptance that it was real. And Colbert brought something else entirely different except that he too saw things in a caffeine and sugar induced totality--the schedule board was in many ways a metaphor for the entire world of people moving, of sharing and ciphers.

One of my favorite jobs as a staff member was to help schedule for free choice--I think I did this as a camper too but these are blurred memories (I had trouble sleeping due to what was later diagnosed as gall stones.). I do have a clear memory of sitting at one of the redwood tables next to the staff table, before the programming office, and listening to Colbert's thoughts about the theory of "Free Choice" and helping to balance the choices and picks for campers with their needs and the schedule.

All Camp
Welcoming structure to which we all ally-checking in, swimming with Cheryl, the Nurses, riding test, a selection of what camp was about that for returning campers was returning home, for new campers a structure that buoyed them, helped them feel safe(er). All very structured, very "set", so much so that each years you could pretty much tell what the first 24-36 hours would bring.

Cabin choice was bonding into a group, friends, a staff member as a leader, what ever worked was possible, as a group, in your new home. I seems to remember taking an early overnight in cabin choice

Free Choice, was the developmental process of making choices, making new friends, taking you riding and swimming, but only if you choose. The idea of a schedule that allowed youngsters at the age of 7 or 8 to make choices that had real consequences seems so radical yet so basic.

Free, Free Choice, the most "hippie" free form, "Free/Free Choice" where you could pretty much wander about--by third session I napped a lot.

And the underlying connection that in each person there was a more mature, more capable young person, growing and learning.

But here's that ongoing conundrum--in some ways this failed I think because the adults, the staff didn't get it or had other agendas. And in part it succeeded but in another way entirely--it felt right to some if us, and we carry some sense of this forward but it was rarely defined/named. In some ways we were making it all up as they went along--Free/Free choice for adults.