Developing Character at Falling Creek Camp
A Deep Dive On Character
Bob Ditter is a child and adolescent therapist from Boston, MA. He visited Falling Creek from 1986 until 1992 to help with staff training. He is well known in Camp circles and just co-authored a book with Dr. Jim Cain titled, Building Character at Camp.
Below is his article from the latest Grow & Behold issue - We hope you’ll enjoy the magazine, and join us in a feeling of gratitude and excitement for the summers ahead!
River (name has been changed to protect his privacy) was an enthusiastic, 9-year old, first-year camper at Falling Creek. He was as excited and nervous as most every other first time camper, except that he had a secret: he could not swim.
This was a source of great embarrassment to him, not to mention that it held him back when everyone else seemed to swim with abandon. Once Johnny “Beans” Ervin, River’s counselor at the time, realized River’s predicament, he and co-counselor, Chris Lyle, quietly went about spending every free moment they could helping River master swimming. After being a camper himself for 7 summers (2013-2019), Johnny returned as a counselor and Line Head from 2023-2025, and knew what it was like to be a new camper.
“It was my first year on staff, and River was very reserved and homesick,” Johnny remembers. “That dark green lake can definitely be a scary place to learn how to swim!” River pushed himself through fear, tears, and failure.
“I remember it was the third week of Main Camp,” Johnny continued. “I had just returned from a day off to find a smiling River waiting for me on the dock in his bathing suit, towel in hand. ‘I want to show you something,’ he said to me.
He dove in and swam multiple laps! He was justifiably proud and smiled a lot more after that and became much more social. His success improved the entire dynamic in our cabin.”
This short anecdote about River exemplifies an aspect of Falling Creek that is constantly operating in the background: What neither River nor Johnny may have recognized at the time was that it wasn’t just River’s swimming skills they were developing; it was also his character—his courage, perseverance, determination and, as we will see, even his gratitude.
Defining Character
My definition of character is values in action. To be authentic, character traits must represent behaviors that are deeply ingrained within us. Otherwise, we could go through the motions of being kind, for example, without actually coming from a place of kindness in ourselves.
To do so would be acting, which might be somewhat convincing in the short term, but would not stand over time. Character traits are enduring. They are also universally recognizable. Kindness, for example, is something that we all can “stack hands on.” We know it when we see it.
The Four Character Superpowers
When I talk with kids about their character, I call it their “hidden superpowers.” My personal top four character traits are resilience, kindness, gratitude, and integrity.
Resilience
Some people call it “grit” while others call it “perseverance.” To be resilient means we have the capacity for two important things:
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To keep going (persevere) in the face of adversity. That requires a lot! Like the following: ▪tolerating frustration; ▪binding our anxiety; ▪overcoming our fears; ▪developing “positive self-talk,” or what we say to ourselves to keep going; ▪becoming more comfortable with our own vulnerability; ▪tempering our pride in order to accept help from others.
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To recover from a setback. That means picking ourselves back up when we fail and learning from the experience as best we can.
Kindness
Kindness requires that you give of yourself – your time, your attention, your energy. Kindness helps us be mindful of others and contribute to the welfare of our community. It has a powerful positive effect both on the person receiving and the person who is giving.
Gratitude
Gratitude focuses on the positive. To be grateful means to recognize the gifts we have been given, whether by our parents, our friends, our community, or God. It requires us to overcome our pride and be humble, accepting that we are not perfect, but strengthened when we acknowledge all that supports us and contributes to our happiness and well-being.
Integrity
I call integrity a master strength because it means being our best self as much as humanly possible. To have integrity means that we have the capacity for four important things:
- To take responsibility for the impact of our words and actions.
- To keep our word: to “walk the walk” not just “talk the talk”
- To keep the confidence, or trust, of others.
- To do and say what is right rather than what might feel good in the moment. I often say to counselors that they are entering a sacred space with their campers. They are being entrusted with the care and well-being of imperfect, impulsive, messy, noisy, nosey, dependent, evolving, young boys over whom they have extraordinary influence. To have integrity means taking this trust seriously. After all, camp is a place of becoming.
Helping Boys Develop at Falling Creek Camp
We do not “teach” character in the usual sense. You cannot watch a YouTube video or follow a TikTok “influencer,” listen to an audio book or go to a lecture on character and suddenly you have acquired “character.” Character has to be fostered. It comes from trial-and-error experience – what people sometimes call the “school of life.”
We strengthen resilience, for example, the same way we strengthen or reinforce any asset – by allowing kids to wrestle with challenges and setbacks; by supporting them, but not rescuing them; by allowing them to experience the consequences of their mistakes, their poor judgment and even the unfairness of others. The only way children develop resilience authentically is when we allow them to grapple with challenges we support and guide them through, but don’t save them from.
By allowing campers to wrestle with those challenges–whether physical, social, or emotional–we give them a gift: to grow and become stronger from the experience. In other words, falling off your bike isn’t necessarily an indication of failure. Sometimes the only way to discover what “balance” is, is to momentarily lose it. Character development is no different.
(Note to parents: Loving your child means allowing them to have this struggle. You might want to think of sending your son to Falling Creek as sending him to the “University of Positive Moral Character.”)
Chris and Johnny did not “save” River from his embarrassment over the fact that he could not swim. They encouraged him to meet the challenge, but he was the one who had to engage with the fear, frustration, and failure.
Johnny made a very important point about this. “It was River who took it upon himself to ultimately overcome his challenge, not us.”
The Falling Creek Code
One element a camp must have in order to foster positive moral character is to be intentional about it. Sharing a language or “code” the entire community buys into is one way of doing this. This is what is embodied in what Yates Pharr explained to me as the Falling Creek Code:
“The ‘Code’ came from a group of us around 2008 or 2009. We wanted to establish a way to create expectations about what it means to be a member of our community, but in a memorable and child-friendly way. After all,” Yates explained, “my basis for knowing how to fit in and get along with others came from my own personal experience at camp. We also wanted something that would guide our counselors: how do all of us learn how to push through the hard stuff, stick with it, learn to work as a team and collaborate and cooperate?”
Matt Sloan, Program Director and Chaplin, adds, “We wanted a way to connect Christian values to the daily experiences the boys were having at camp. There are opportunities to practice ‘undeniably good things’ in your cabins and/or activities that require taking a risk. Taking that risk is when you find out what you are made of. It’s what makes other people want to emulate you.”
Michael Nuckles, Camper Development Director, adds, “We wanted the ‘Code’ to be more than just a cliché. We wanted to capture how we care about each other, listen to one another, and come to know we can count on one another. I also didn’t want it to be something that took the fun out of things. We soon discovered that the ‘stakeholders’ at Falling Creek were truly serious about having something that helped squirrely 7 year-old boys become young men who were better prepared for the challenges of the world.”
Whit Flickinger was a camper from 2012-2019 before returning to serve on staff in 2023, 2024, and as Line Head for the Robinia cabins in 2025. He told me that buy-in has been extremely successful and starts right at the top.
“Yates and Marisa embody the Code themselves,” Whit explains. “The way they interact with people and make themselves available sets the tone. They are role models for everyone else.”
Having role models is indeed one of the most powerful ways we as people develop values and character: we learn by watching others, especially others that we admire. Campers learn positive character from seeing it in their counselors, who in turn learn what it means to be a positive role model. And counselors learn those values from seeing their leaders live by them.
I was impressed that Whit could rattle off the four elements of the “Code” easily:
- Warrior Spirit (“resilience”)
- Positive Attitude (roughly “gratitude” and “kindness”)
- Moral Compass (“integrity”)
- Servant’s Heart (“kindness”)
Whit went on to explain, “Living by the ‘Code’ begins during orientation. We immediately start practicing as a staff what we will practice later with the campers. One of the ways this happens is with what we call ‘Evening Embers.’ That’s where we, first as staff during orientation, then later with the campers, talk about our day: what was hard or challenging, what was fun, what we learned about ourselves or what someone did for us. We learn first hand that listening to someone is a way of loving them.”
Whit shared how there were three other ways the “Code” was brought to life at camp: Morning Watch, where themes related to the Code are shared; Campfires, where skits, personal stories, or speeches are related to an element of the Code; and church services on Sundays. He also emphasized that there was a lot of fun and joy in doing all of this, just as there was joy and pride for a boy when he accomplished something at camp for the first time. “I like to think of camp as helping boys be better people through fun!” Whit exclaims.
“For me, knowing that campers internalize the things the Code stands for at such a young age is pretty incredible. And I’m not sure who benefits more–the campers or the staff.”
This reminds me of something that Johnny, River’s counselor, shared with me about when River came back to camp the following summer. “The big thing was seeing his parents, who brought him to camp,” Johnny told me. “His mother came up to me and started crying, saying, ‘You are a big reason River was so keen about coming back this year. You are so important to him!’ That’s when I realized that, in just a month, you could do something that has a big impact on a kid.”
I would hazard a guess that Johnny felt as proud in that moment as River did the year before, standing in the glow of his generosity created. As I have been heard to say, “love is when you no longer know who is benefitting most.” At Falling Creek Camp it is clear to me that the staff grow from this work as young men as much as the boys do. And that River not only developed grit, he developed gratitude through the role models of his counselors.
In his conversation with me, Whit quoted something a professor of his had said that made an impression on him. “If teachers were not just great keepers of knowledge but great understanders of people, schools would look a lot different.” Maybe they would look a lot more like Falling Creek: A place of becoming, where boys are helped to be better people through fun!