Author Archives: Jeff Carter

Jeff Carter is the Director of Rockbrook Camp for Girls in Brevard, North Carolina. He attended Davidson College, earned a master's from Harvard University, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in the History of Religions. He has taught at Vanderbilt University, Davidson College, and the University of South Carolina. He received a Fulbright Fellowship to study in Nigeria, is an All-American college athlete, and a published author. Beginning in 1988, he worked for eight years as a camp hiking and rock climbing guide before becoming, with his wife Sarah, the owners and directors of Rockbrook.

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February 22, 2009July 23, 2020 • Summer Camp • Jeff Carter

A Quick Quote on Camp

We ran into this quote the other day and thought we should share it. It’s from Charles William Eliot, who at 35 was the youngest president of Harvard University.

“I have a conviction that a few weeks spent in a well-organized summer camp may be of more value educationally than a whole year of formal school work.”

It’s nice to see the value of camp being endorsed by highly educated people. We agree. Camp is educational in the broadest, but also most fundamental, sense of the word. Through personal experience, it offers opportunities to forge connections and nurture children far beyond what school can provide. There’s really nothing quite like camp!

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January 20, 2009December 29, 2020 • Summer Camp • Jeff Carter

Top 5 Summer Summer Camp Directories

When searching for summer camps, it’s always good to look at several to compare them and learn about which might best fit your child. You can spend a lot of time searching the Internet and reading different camps’ individual websites, but you can also visit one of the many summer camp directories out there. These are special sites designed to help sift through all the options. You can narrow the complete list of camps by region, by activity specialty, by gender, by type (sleepaway vs. day, e.g.), even by religion. As you enter your preferences, you’ll be presented with a more manageable list of camps to research in more detail, for example by requesting their catalogs and promotional DVDs.

Summer Camp Directories

Ah, but there are lots of summer camp directories out there too! So here are what we consider the top 5 camp directories to visit. Each is organized a little differently and will therefore yield somewhat different search results. Looking for a residential girls camp in the southeast? In addition to Rockbrook, each of these directories will reveal a range of options. After spending some time on these sites, you’ll have an excellent idea about which summer camp will be right for your child.

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January 2, 2009June 1, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

Kids’ Freedom to Play

“I’m so glad you build into each day plenty of free time.”

Yes, our daily camp schedule includes three different blocks of time when kids can do what they want— right before lunch, right before dinner and right after dinner. Before lunch and dinner we open the lake for a “free swim,” a time when anyone in camp can come down for a dip. Otherwise, kids can hang out in their cabin with friends, play games on the hill, explore the creek by “Curosty,” write letters home, chat with their counselor, prepare a skit for evening program, or just read a book. There are so many options.

This kind of free time is such a welcome relief from the overly scheduled, competitive, pressured life so many kids deal with at home and at school. Grades! Sports! Music Lessons! Home Chores! Since their childhood is almost “job-like” with its extensive commitments and expectations, kids really need a place that allows for their own pace, their own interests, and their own sense of fun to flourish. At Rockbrook, we all enjoy this, every day.

After all, you gotta have free time to really play.

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September 24, 2008June 1, 2020 • Children • Jeff Carter

Children Learning at Camp

Cory Doctorow wrote a nice post reminding us of the classic book about children and learning by John Holt, “How Children Learn” (originally published in 1967). The book, which has been revised and reprinted, can still be found on many education course reading lists because it makes a very important point teachers and parents easily and often forget. His basic claim is that children are natural learners, and that instead of always forcing them to adhere to a generalized curriculum, they should be encouraged to follow their curiosity, engage what they are passionate about, expand their perception and awareness, and experiment with the world around them. For adults, this means being less of a tyrant (“You have to…”) and more of a partner along for the adventure of growing up. Holt has observed this kind of adult coercion in the realm of learning to be often more counterproductive than not. Of course, parents and teachers need to provide some guidance at times and encourage or facilitate certain educational activities (or social behaviors!), but any habit of rigidly adhering to particular learning styles, contexts, or subjects may shape children to the detriment of their strengths and talents.

What does this have to do with camp? If most of the year is comprised of adults telling children what to do, what to study, what to learn —and you have to agree it is— then having a break from that in the summer is incredibly important and valuable. After all, that’s what camp provides. Campers arrive at camp and decide for themselves (without mom, dad, or teacher) which activities to take and how they will spend their time at camp. With some guidance from the counselors, they make their own experience, explore their own interests, build their own understandings. The great feelings that come with this freedom is certainly one reason girls love their camp experience.

Camp is so meaningful for them because they are active participants in making it meaningful.

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September 5, 2008June 1, 2020 • Dance • Jeff Carter

Weisstronauts: Live at Rockbrook !!

We’ve been meaning to post something about this all summer, but only just now sat down to do it. Back in June we had the awesome instrumental rock band The Weisstronauts play a show at camp. Pete Weiss, who fronts the band, and who knew Jeff from his Chicago days (the early 1990s!), had an open tour date, and everything worked out for the Rockbrook girls to have a rockin’ dance party. Dance contests, limbo competitions, conga lines — it was non-stop action!

The band’s music is a little hard to describe, but you take 3 electric guitars, bass, drums and the occasional “accent” instrument and roll out surf, country, spy, psychedelia and rock styles. Very danceable, very up-tempo, tight playing, and fun through and through.

Head on over to the Weisstronauts’ Site and you can hear the leading track, “Fisticuffs,” from their new CD Instro-tainment. You’ll enjoy it. Promise.

And here’s one more treat. During the show at Rockbrook, the band recorded some video, and now Pete has put together a music video that uses some of that footage. Take a look and you’ll see RBC! The song is “Seven-X’s,” also from the new CD, and the old-looking footage in the video is from the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Very Cool.

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March 30, 2008January 31, 2020 • North Carolina • Jeff Carter

Saving North Carolina Hemlocks

There is a pest, a small insect native to Japan called the “hemlock woolly adelgid,” that is threatening the health of hemlock trees all across the eastern United States. From Maine to Georgia, along the Appalachian mountains and Piedmont, hemlock trees are dying, and unfortunately Rockbrook has not been immune. Perhaps 75% of the hemlock trees at camp (and we have a lot on our 200+ acres) have been infected. You can easily tell because the insect produces a white wool-like substance at the tips of the trees’ branches.

Initially, scientists attempted to control the woolly adelgid using chemical insecticides, but now there is a growing consensus that a particular Japanese lady beetle, Sasajiscymnus tsugae (“Sassie”), can provide effective biological control of the pest. These small, pinhead-sized black beetles eat exclusively adelgids and a few aphids. They evolved alongside the aldelgid in Japan, and are, as it turns out, a very effective and very specific predator. The U.S. Forest service conducted several years of testing and has now embarked on a large scale effort to release colonies of the Sassie beetle in infected areas. It is somewhat difficult, time-consuming and costly to raise colonies of the predator beetle, but their long-term effectiveness in controlling and even reversing the damage done by the woolly adelgid has been remarkable.

Working with Dr. Patrick Horan, Rockbrook Camp is treating its hemlocks with multiple colonies of the Sassie beetle. We’ve picked more than a dozen trouble spots (like the trees shown here near the Junior Lodge) as starting points, but as the beetles mature and reproduce, we hope they will spread and attack the woolly adelgid throughout the camp. It takes several months, even years to see the benefits of the beetles’ work eating the adelgids, but we’re excited and hopeful to see the results.

P.S. One of our release sites is up on Dunn’s Rock where there are some of largest known examples of Carolina Hemlocks.

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March 17, 2008October 5, 2023 • Children • Jeff Carter

Are your Kids Ready for Camp?

How do you know if your kids are ready for summer camp?

It’s an important question to ask, especially if you have a younger child who’d be new to the experience. Most discussions of this question focus on whether or not your child is outgoing and ready for the social component of camp. The idea here is that once a child makes friends at camp, they’ll enjoy the activities and be fine away from home. In fact, it’s often hoped that the camp program will help a shy child become more outgoing, more self-confident and independent. It’s true; camp is great for this reason.

Talking with Sarah, the Director of Rockbrook, she also cautions parents to make sure their child is honestly interested in attending camp. “It’s best for it to be her idea,” she says. As parents fondly remember their own summer camp experience, or hear that camp is “good for kids,” they can sometimes push a little too hard and talk their children into the idea, perhaps before they are really ready. “Research camps together and find one that sparks her interest and makes her really want to go. Learn about camps together; listen to her concerns, and with gentle encouragement, you’ll find the right camp,” Sarah suggests. You’ll know she’s ready for camp when it’s her idea and she’s excited to go.

Read more about the important skills and characteristics kids need to be ready for sleepaway camp.

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February 13, 2008March 24, 2023 • Summer Camp • Jeff Carter

Camp — A place for girls to grow

Back in 1998, Kellogg’s produced a television commercial that, quite unintentionally, reminds us why a girl’s time at summer camp can be so valuable, why it really can fuel tremendous personal growth. The commercial shows a little boy reciting a “declaration” of sorts about what children need.

“We the children need the following:
We need encouragement.
We need to laugh.
We need inspiration.
We need to be read to.
We need to have self-esteem,
Love and security,
Adventure,
Discipline and Freedom.
We need to make mistakes,
Ask questions,
To imagine.
We need to win,
And sometimes we need to lose.
We need to be hugged.
We need family, friends and even foes,
And heroes.
We need nourishment.”

It’s just amazing how camp is one of those unique places that provides almost all of these ingredients. With its wide ranging program of activities, caring staff members, traditions and overall philosophy, summer camp satisfies these needs for children. We’ve often said it at Rockbrook; “camp is a place for girls to grow.”

Here’s the commercial.