North Star Camp In The News
NBC Nightly News
Check out the feature from NBC Nightly News on North Star Camp during the fall of 2020, highlighting our first ever Fall Camp!
NBC News
“You do everything you can to keep Covid out, and you plan as if it’s coming anyway,” said Andy Shlensky, the director of North Star and owner and managing partner of The Road Less Traveled, a community service and adventure travel company for teens.
North Star made a number of changes, such as moving meals from the indoor dining hall to picnic tables outside; same with its arts and crafts shop, one of the only other parts of camp besides cabins previously indoors.
Chicago Tribune
In the era of iPods, cellphones and BlackBerrys, overnight summer camps are tussling with how much technology should intrude upon their bucolic bubbles.
Most camps are trying to hold the line against the onslaught, implementing a flurry of rules — and an occasional pat-down. But preserving a text-free summer is no small feat for a population almost umbilically connected to social media.
And it’s not just the kids.
Some of the worst rule breakers are parents accustomed to constant communication with their offspring, camp directors say.
AP
Inclusion is a core value shared by many summer camps, and in recent years there’s been a lot of discussion in the camp community about how to help transgender and gender-nonconforming youth succeed.
“It doesn’t matter to them, race, religion, gender, politics, sexuality,” [North Star Camp’s director, Andy Shlensky] says. “You’re just somebody else to play with when you’re 8, and that’s the beauty of camp.”
“Camps are really safe and nurturing places, and they really strive to give every camper the opportunity to be their best self,” says Shlensky. “And what better place would there be for a kid to gain confidence in their own skin?”
American Camp Association
Thanks to the American Rescue Plan Act’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER fund), 163 MPS students attended overnight summer camp at no cost in summer 2023, and an estimated 250 students will participate in 2024.
The MPS Overnight Program was established to help students rebound from the social, emotional, and physical effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to April Heding, afterschool arts and humanities manager at Milwaukee Recreation, a department of MPS. MPS values summer camps as essential partners in addressing students’ social and emotional needs alongside their academics, building students’ resilience and confidence as they navigate the complexities of these formative years.
CBS 2 News Chicago
It sounds like a disaster in the making; bring nearly 300 campers and staff together during a pandemic, and keep them together around the clock for seven weeks. But then something remarkable happened: not a single case of COVID-19.
In mid-March, as the realities of the coronavirus became apparent, North Star Camp’s director Andy Shlensky reached a tough and obvious conclusion. “If we’re gonna run this summer, everything’s going to need to be different,” Shlensky said.
Star Tribune
In 2020, only 18% of U.S. overnight camps opened, according to a study by the American Camp Association. North Star Camp for Boys in Hayward, Wis., was one of them.
For owner and director Andy Shlensky, opening was an exercise in fortitude.
“The biggest battle was rethinking everything,” he said. “We needed to change the way we do food service, arrivals and departures, even [how to play] Capture the Flag.”
Though it was relatively early in the pandemic, Shlensky relied on data from the CDC and advice from medical experts to set up some of the safety measures, which are now considered best practices.
Wisconsin State Representative James W. Edming (87th Assembly District)
“I had the opportunity at the end of last month to visit North Star Camp for Boys near Hayward. During this visit, I toured the camp and met with camp owner Andy Shlensky and Dr. Bill Lisberg, one of the camp’s volunteer doctors. It was great to talk with Andy and Bill about the positive impact of the new law I authored to make it easier for physicians licensed outside of Wisconsin to practice at summer camps in our state.
Andy came to me with the idea for this reform a few years ago after a conversation with Bill and it was great to see this important reform become law earlier this year.” – James Edming
ABC News
As the school year begins under the cloud of COVID-19 that has closed many schools across the country, students and parents have struggled to cope with remote learning. One summer camp in northern Wisconsin has an innovative solution: fall camp.
Summer is over, but owner and director Andy Shlensky is creating that same bubble for the first six weeks of the school year.
WGN
Last summer, Andy Shlensky, the owner and director of North Star Camp for Boys in Wisconsin ran a 7-week overnight camp this way and was able to avoid a single outbreak. “Residential camps are in a unique position to create a true bubble. Nobody in or out,” Shlensky said.
“Our kids are still going to compete at their dinner tables to see who can pound on their tables and chant the loudest,” Shlensky said. “Those dinner tables are just going to be outside and spaced six feet apart as opposed to inside in a packed dining hall.”
He said the camp mentality should be getting kids away from digital devices, out of their homes and back to the basics.
“The basics are still what the kids need. They need to be with their friends, need to be outside, social interaction, role models, they need engagement and they need activities,” Shlensky said.
WGN Radio
Owner and Director of the North Star Camp for Boys, Andy Shlensky, calls in and joins Mark Carman. Together they trade camp stories, discuss how North Star maintained a COVID-free environment within camp, and talk about how Shlensky will be introducing a school/camp hybrid to North Star in the Fall of 2020.
NPR
As millions of students return to virtual classes at their dining room tables, some parents who are also trying to work from home have decided to ship their kids off to camp.
But some others that managed to successfully keep the virus at bay this summer are now offering a refuge from the virus where students can live and attend classes remotely.
PBS – Around The Corner with John McGivern
Campwire Podcast
On this episode of CampWire, we are joined by Liz Kimmelman of Tumbleweed Day Camp in Los Angeles, CA and Andy Shlensky from North Star Camp for Boys in Hayward, WI. We talk about how their camps safely served student communities as kids returned to their school programming in online formats amid the pandemic. We also discuss how the Field Guide and lessons learned from summer 2020 will help camps offer more life-changing, in-person experiences as we look ahead to summer 2021.
Listen here:
Reviews of Camp
See what campers and staff are saying about North Star Camp For Boys online!
