Counselor Staff

The Heart of a Kabeyun Experience
Kabeyun counselors are chosen for their warmth and compassion, their understanding of children and their integrity as much as, or more than their expertise in a particular activity. A staff to camper ration of 1 to3 enables us to place a strong emphasis on instruction and to encourage positive and lasting relationships between campers and their counselors. Each summer we seek a balance between older, more mature and experienced men and women, and younger students. Our staff return rate is typically 80%, and sometimes better. Many of our counselors have "grown up" with us, spending several summers as campers, participating in our counseling intern program for 16-year-olds and continuing as staff.

Our counselors wear several different hats, ensuring their access to all the boys in a variety of contexts. All counselors are instructors in their particular areas of expertise, as well as cabin counselors. There are three counselors in each cabin who share the responsibility for parenting this important home group. In addition, all counselors share in the responsibilities of supervising a table in the dining hall, leading special activities on the Kabeyun stage, and supervising evening activities - they are involved in every aspect of community life, regardless of their particular activity assignment.

Kabeyun's 2012 Counseling Staff – click to enlarge!

Safety and Instructor Certifications
Just about every one of our counselors is certifed by the American Red Cross as a Waterfront Lifeguard - this allows them to take the boys swimming regardless of their activity assignments. Evening dips with the cabin group is a favorite way to end the days, for instance. All trip leaders are additionally certified in Wilderness First-Aid, an intensive, two-day course, as a minimum. Each summer several also hold certifications as Wilderness First Responders - a nine-day course in backcountry medicine.

As instructors, our counselors also hold a variety of professional certifications: paddling staff are certified by the American Canoe Association as instructors; our swim staff are certified as Water Safety Instructors, a Red Cross certification; the archery instructor is certified by the National Archery Association as a Level I instructor; climbing staff have training in top rope site management and challenge course instructors are trained in the technical and safety aspects of the ropes course. Equally important is the amount of experience behind them in their respective activities, providing a solid foundation for specific technical and safety training.

The Director

Ken Robbins, Director
A camper in the 1980s, Ken returned to Kabeyun in 2001 as a counselor, served as the Assistant Director beginning in 2002, and became the Director in 2010. He has worked in various capacities as an experiential educator and facilitator over the past eighteen years, including time as the Challenge Course Director for Sacramento State University, California and as Director of Adventure Programs for The Clark Foundation in Cooperstown, New York. During the winter months he resides happily in Kittery, Maine with his wife Roanne and  daughters Nora and Quinn.

Women at Kabeyun

During our first 50 years Kabeyun was very much an all-male world: the only women at camp were the nurse, an occasional spouse and an office secretary - a minimal presence in the daily lives of the boys. By the early 1980s, we had come to believe that the all-male camp of the past no longer met the needs of boys facing increasingly complex familial and social situations at home. Today, women make up 10-15% of our staff; they are fully integrated into camp life, including living in the cabins as counselors in the younger cabins. We believe this provides the boys, and all of us, with a better balanced community and gives us access to a much broader pool of talented, skilled and experienced counselors.