COCAcon 2020 November 12th - 15th
We're going to Houston!!
Special News from COCAcon 2019
2019 Spirit of COCA-I RecipientJoey Cavazos, Camp Discovery |
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Joey has been a part of camping for 30+ years, starting initially as a counselor and working his way up to the director level. As Director, Joey has expanded programs to include weekend retreats for families, including those that have lost children, and in-hospital camp programs. Joey is a fun-loving, yet no-nonsense leader among the mostly-volunteer staff, and sets high expectations and helps volunteers and campers achieve them. Joey's tireless dedication to camp and the children and families, and on an even broader level to COCA-I and the children and families it serves, makes Joey incredible choice for this award |
2019 Camp Spirit Recipients |
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Region 1
Chris Eldridge Camp Ta-Kum-Ta |
Region 2
Dave Wessell Kay's Kamp |
Region 3
Carole Royer Special Days Camp |
Region 4
Talia Johnson Camp Rap-A-Hope |
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Region 5
 Tommy West
Camp Discovery
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Region 6
 Sean O"Neill
Camp Enchantment
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Region 7
 Heather Olsen
Camp Magical Moments
Cancer Camp for Kids
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Region 9
 Allison Andlar
Camp Quality
Northern Ontario |
Keynote
Tom Rosenberg has a distinguished career in the camp profession and a long resume of service to ACA. He most recently served as the executive director of Camp Judaea in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Prior to Camp Judaea, Tom spent more than two decades with Blue Star Camps in North Carolina, most of those years as a director.
Tom is a past national treasurer and board member of the ACA as well as a past board president and treasurer of ACA Southeastern. A founding board member of the North Carolina Youth Camp Association, Tom was awarded the Henderson County Chamber of Commerce’s inaugural Camp Industry Leadership Award as well as the American Camp Association’s National Honor Award and ACA Southeastern’s Distinguished Service Award.
With an educational focus in business, Tom graduated with distinction from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California with an MBA and from the AB Freeman School of Business at Tulane University with a BS in Management. He is also a graduate of ACA’s Camp Director Institute.
Tom melds his experience in the camp profession with business expertise, inspirational vision, successful fundraising experience, professional agility, organizational skills, and strategic focus.
Tom, his wife Pam Sugarman, and their son Daniel live in Atlanta, Georgia
Keynote
Dr. Jim Cain is the author of 16 team and community building texts, including the classic Teamwork & Teamplay, A Teachable Moment, Find Something To Do! and his latest book, 100 Activities that Build Unity, Community & Connection. He is also the creator of the innovative T&T Training Cards.
He has traveled to all 50 states and 31 countries (so far), sharing his knowledge on subjects ranging from teamwork and leadership to creative problem solving and trust building.
His train-the-trainer programs are legendary and his conference keynotes/playnotes are active, engaging and tremendously fun.
With regard to Jim's group facilitation skills, Tom Leahy of NCCPS remarked, "Jim, you are a Jedi Master!"
Teamwork & Teamplay
468 Salmon Creek Road
Brockport, NY 14420
Phone: 585-637-0328
Email: jimcain@teamworkandteamplay.com
website: www.teamworkandteamplay.com
Grief and Bereavement Pre-Conference
Thursday November 14th 8:30 am - 3:30 pm
Keynote - 8:30 am - 10:00 am
Workshops 10:15 am - 3:30 pm
Keynote - 8:30 am - 10:00 am
Workshops 10:15 am - 3:30 pm
$50 Preconference Fee
Helping families, professionals, volunteers, and communities support grieving children, youth and adults
Andrea Warnick is an educator, registered psychotherapist, nurse, and thanatologist. She specializes in ensuring that adults, children and youth have access to caring and informed support when experiencing the serious illness, dying, or death of someone close to them. She has learned through her 20 years of experience that such support goes a long way towards helping individuals of all ages integrate their grief in a way that allows them to thrive in life.Keynote
Grief is a natural and healthy part of the human experience yet in our contemporary society it is an experience permeated by myths and misconceptions. While it can be challenging enough to know how to best support others and even ourselves during life’s windstorms, knowing how to best support children often proves to be an even greater challenge. Children and youth with cancer are not only grieving the impact of their illness, but may also be grieving other losses such as the separation of parents or the death of a friend who was at camp last year, but not this year. When children and youth come to camp – so does their grief. This plenary presentation will explore ways of juggling life’s joys and sorrows by identifying practical tips for supporting a healthy grief process in ourselves, our colleagues, and our campers.
Morning Workshop
Afternoon Workshop
Play and creativity have a unique capacity to help children and youth understand their feelings and to develop skills to help them navigate these feelings in healthy ways. The camp environment provides endless opportunities to make learning about grief fun. In this session a wide range of easy to use (and modify) creative ideas will be shared including activities that foster emotional literacy such as “feelings Jenga”, activities that facilitate understanding of cancer such as “You can’t catch cancer”, and activities that facilitate the processing of grief such “sponge balls”. Bereavement-specific activities will also be shared, including ways to introduce the activities and support the campers through the activities.
COCAcademy
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COCAcademyFriday November 15th- Saturday November 16thFree to all attendees(Join in for one or more sessions, or the entire 2 days.) Spend two days with two of the best, brightest, and most innovative professionals in the camp industry! Scott Arizala & Sarah Kurtz McKinnon will host COCAcademy, an immersive series of four double-length workshops: Friday’s COCAcademy
Saturday’s COCAcademy
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Workshops
Leadership, Supervision, & Management - Positive Management Principles
Can I talk to you for a minute? Difficult Management Conversations
The most sought after leadership training topic is working through difficult management conversations. This session covers the essential skills and characteristics that leaders and managers need to have effective and successful conversations. We will cover the six steps in every conversation, practical techniques and tips for each step, strategic language, and approach & response suggestions. We will broaden the framework of how we think about corrective conversations, by including ideas about building a culture of feedback at your camp and organization.
Staff Training - Teach Staff How to Think, Not What to Do
Training your staff and volunteers an seem like an impossible task. You have a limited amount of time (in some cases, just a few hours!) and you have staff at all different levels of experience. Most of us end up relying on the default: the efficient (albeit boring) lecture. However, staff training doesn’t have to go this way. In this workshop, we will show you how to teach your staff how to think instead of what to do. No two kids or no two days at camp are ever exactly the same—it is most important to teach camp staff how to handle ambiguity.
The Behavior Session: Why do they do what they do?!?
Unfortunately, most discussions about camper behavior are about dealing with the negative stuff. However, there is a direct correlation between getting support, guidance, and creating the right environment for positive behavior and a decrease in negative behavior. So we are missing a big part of the conversation! This session will strike a balance by digging into the best techniques for supporting positive behavior as well as working through challenging behavior, including ideas and strategies for supporting campers with special needs. You’ll leave this session with the best ideas in behavior management and ways to support and sustain these behaviors as the culture of your camp.
COCAcademy is an invigorating departure from traditional conference tracks. Each workshop will turbocharge your inner expert by immersing you in challenging scenarios, simultaneously led by two dynamic camp professionals, Scott Arizala and Sarah Kurtz McKinnon..
Directors, Staff, Volunteers, Counselors... Everyone!
Any and all participants of COCA-I! It is designed to meet the learning needs of both beginners and more experienced camping professionals.It’s for anyone interested in training and leading staff who will help transform the lives of children with cancer.
Content Designed Just for Oncology Camps!
COCAcademy workshops were designed after consulting with COCA-I members and the COCA-I directors. They offer cutting-edge content in leadership, emotional intelligence, social skills, communication, and programming. COCAcademy facilitators also make spontaneous decisions to cover novel topics based on a group’s unique dynamics. Interested? Click Here for more detailed information.
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