Free Resources
Welcome friends! We hope that the items below will support you in your terrific work with young people! We’ll be adding new things from time to time, so please check back. Michael would love to have you join him at his Upcoming Virtual Events, so please click here for more details, including how to register.
Interested in other presentations that Michael has to offer? Check out more of his original, tested skills and techniques he’s developed from frontline experience. Click on the area of presentations below that you’re interested in:
Jump To:
01 Have Some Laughs — The Campfire Classics Video
02 Interviewing for 3 Essential Characteristics Video
03 A Letter to My Child’s Staff Person
06 Consultative Problem-Solving
07 The Perfect Conversation Activity Handout
08 Delivering the Goods Chapter Excerpt and Handout
09 An Intentional Camp Practice Activity
10 When We’ve Been Shown, We Can Shine
11 Pomp & Purpose: Trainer’s Handout
12 Flight Plans Checklist Handout
13 Flight Plans Video: How to Make the Airplane
16 “True Leadership? A Leadership Training Activity”
Imagine a late-night infomercial featuring classic camp songs presented by a real Broadway star, the wonderful Elena Batman from Phantom of the Opera.
01
Have Some Laughs — The Campfire Classics Video
Michael presents three great ways to interview people for positions in any youth development organization that will help you find out if someone is open to new ideas and skilled at learning from those around them!
02
Interviewing for 3 Essential Characteristics Video
This free downloadable resource is from Michael’s bestseller “Training Terrific Staff Volume I”, Chapter 37. “A Letter to My Child’s Staff Person” is from a parent’s perspective to their child’s camp staff member.
03
A Letter to My Child’s Staff Person
This free resource is from Michael’s bestseller “Training Terrific Staff Volume I”, Chapter 44. “Construction Sight” is a training tool that utilizes Michael’s concept of Construction SIGHT, meaning that as camp staff we need to have a specific vision of what qualities we want to construct in young people.
04
Construction Sight
Download Michael’s educational tool and Leadership Team activity that “Helps Others Soar to Success.”
05
First Class Coach
This free downloadable resource is a detailed description of the process Michael uses to get small groups to present challenges and problems to each other to generate fast solutions.
06
Consultative Problem-Solving
This resource is the current handout Michael uses with one of his most frequently requested activities that develops communication, relationship-building, and problem-solving skills. It is fully described in “The Perfect Conversation” in Training Terrific Staff, Vol. 1, Brandwein, Chapter 36.
07
The Perfect Conversation Activity Handout
This free resource describes one of Michael’s favorite methods for introducing the Mission of a youth development organization in an exciting, creative, and clear way. It’s fun and engages staff to help them focus on how we can use our program to deliver the “Goods”—the key character and social-emotional skills. This is an excerpt and handout from his bestselling book, Training Terrific Staff, Vol. 2.
08
Delivering the Goods Chapter Excerpt and Handout
Michael coined the term “Intentional Camp” decades ago to describe a program driven by the Mission of building great character qualities in young people. Based on his bestseller, Growing Great Qualities in Kids: The L.A.S.E.R.B.E.A.M. Technique for Bringing Out the Best in Young People, this interactive handout is a great way to get staff to practice going from what Michael calls, “Qualities to Conduct.” They’ll work with a partner to identify behaviors demonstrating terrific character qualities.
09
An Intentional Camp Practice Activity Worksheet to Develop Character Education
10
When We’ve Been Shown, We Can Shine
This is a letter Michael wrote to his late father years ago. It can be used as a dramatic reading about how we teach through modeling behavior.
Michael is a big believer in the importance of presenting Mission in an exciting, fun, and memorable way. When two volunteers march down the center of the room with a diploma, to music provided by the whole group, watch how focused everyone becomes on the words written on the scroll—and on the essential words that follow.
11
Pomp & Purpose: Trainer’s Handout
Great teaching takes flight! The handout for Michael’s “Flight Plans Training Activity,” described in his book, The Intentional Camp: Putting More Muscle in the Mission of Character & Youth Development, is available here. In this engaging activity, staff learn key teaching techniques from the way you show them—as explained in the book—a simple way to make a paper airplane. They then practice using these techniques themselves as they teach a partner how to make the airplane. As this happens, a third partner acts as a “coach,” and uses this Checklist Handout to support the teacher in remembering the techniques.
12
Flight Plans Checklist Handout
This video supports Chapter 57 of Michael’s newest book, The Intentional Camp: Putting More Muscle in the Mission of Character & Youth Development. Michael demonstrates how to teach people to make the paper airplane and reviews the questions to ask staff to help them identify terrific teaching techniques. Get the book at michaelbrandwein.com/store.
13
Flight Plans Video: How to Make the Airplane
This free downloadable chapter is excerpted from Michael’s latest bestselling book, The Intentional Camp: Putting More Muscle in the Mission of Character & Youth Development, the fastest selling book at the national conference of the American Camp Association. It teaches an original, simple, fun activity you can use to present the mission of camp to staff in a motivating, creative way.
14
“Going, Going, Gong!”: How to Present Mission to Staff
This is an excerpt from Michael’s number-one bestselling book on youth leadership programs at camp, Learning Leadership: How to Develop Outstanding Teen Leadership Training Programs at Camp. The book contains 24 “Skill Maps” which identify what effective leaders say and do. These are “Leadership Lingo” (things we want to teach young people to say) and “Leadership Actions” (what we want them to practice doing). The Skill Maps are to be used as the curriculum for a teen leadership program.
15
Two Sample Skills Maps: The Specific Skills We Want to Teach Young Leaders in a CIT, LIT, or other Teen Leadership Program
This discussion handout is from Chapter 31 of Michael’s number-one bestselling book on youth leadership programs at camp, Learning Leadership: How to Develop Outstanding Teen Leadership Training Programs at Camp. It’s a fun and interesting way, using a true/false format, to stimulate thinking and discussion (with a partner or group) about what makes effective leadership.
16
“True Leadership? A Leadership Training Activity”
17
“Take Me to Your Leader: A Leadership Training Activity for Teen Leaders”
This is from Chapter 30 of Michael’s Learning Leadership book. It’s a great way to teach young leaders that leaders are not “born.” They do effective things. We can identify and practice these things. This makes learning leadership accessible to all of us.
Michael’s books don’t have an Appendix. (That’s something we can live without.) Instead, Michael uses a “Liver” for essential tools that apply what’s taught in the books. This Coaching Card is from Liver, Part D, in Learning Leadership: How to Develop Outstanding Teen Leadership Programs at Camp. Camps use this handout to customize their own cards to organize and stimulate conversations between teens and their mentors and teachers to create useful feedback.