Yesterday at 3:10 pm outside the art cabin, I had to de-escalate two senior counselors arguing over swim coverage; the 10-minute reset and a quick duty board review got us back on track without making it personal. I’ve started pairing a private two-minute check-in with a written follow-up so expectations don’t drift by evening lineup. When the clock is ticking and kids are watching, do you separate the people first or the problem first?
That 3:10 pm scramble vibe is real — . I’ve been running a 90-second ‘what do you need from each other before the next block?’ huddle, then snapping a pic of the duty board and texting it to the senior staff thread so it can’t morph before evening lineup; it pairs nicely with your ‘two-minute check-in’. Small caveat: if voices are still spicy, I swap one counselor to a neutral task for one rotation so campers don’t absorb the static — have you tried that?
Last week outside our art cabin, I did a 60-second “radio off” pause and had both counselors initial the duty board for coverage until 3:20 — , but it stopped the spiral. Building on @johnson39’s quick huddle, my tweak is a cheap clip-on timer on the board — when it dings, we do a 30-second confirm so expectations don’t drift before evening lineup. Only caveat: if it’s a fairness issue, I punt the feelings chat to a five-minute off-floor debrief after lights out so the kids never feel the wobble.