Imagine it’s your first time in California. You’ve traveled to the mountains of southern California, at least thirty minutes from any town or city, and moved into a community of 50 people whom you’ve never met. You have finally gotten through the grueling two week training process and guess what? It’s time to take the training wheels off and get involved with the lives of 5th or 6th graders from the area. Talk about stressful.

Fast forward two weeks. You have now successfully gotten through one field shift and one cabin shift. Things are starting to make more sense now. The routines that your bosses and fellow instructors set up are becoming more familiar, and you are finally starting to figure out how this company works. Your relationships with your roommates and coworkers are becoming less strained and growing deeper. You are beginning to develop inside jokes and getting more comfortable in general. You are learning more about classroom management, and how to teach the lesson plans effectively. The coming week is beginning to look a lot less terrifying, but things are still stressful.

Now fast forward a year, or even just six months. You have graduated to the infamous “returner” status. You are so comfortable with the lesson plans that you’ve begun to not only add your own twist to the lessons and activities, you are teaching others the tricks you have learned over the past six months to a year. Your roommates and coworkers are no longer just friends, they have become family. Your bosses aren’t merely bosses anymore, but people to whom you can turn for any support you need. They may even be included in the “family” designation. Stressful is no longer a word you think of on a weekly basis. There is a whole new batch of “newbies” who are looking to you for advice and guidance. They are just as nervous and flustered as you once were.

As we enter into a new year here at High Trails, mixing returners and newbies, the question arises of how we bridge the gap between multiple generations of High Trailers. Some people know this company in and out, others are pretty familiar and comfortable with how things run, and some have only an inkling of what they are doing. The solution? Patience. Simple patience.

We are all here to be instructors. It’s in our blood, and makes us the awesome people that we are. That doesn’t mean as soon as students load those buses and hightail their way home, we can turn off our instructor switch. It is the job of returners to ensure that our new instructors feel supported and encouraged in their current position, even though there are many new things to learn.

Support doesn’t necessarily mean only being available when someone asks you a question about a certain class. Support can also come in the form of seeking out the newbies around us and asking them how they are doing. Check in, ask questions, and try to provide as much advice as possible. If we use our patience, encouragement, and humor to create lasting bonds among our staff, then come winter, we will have an incredibly strong staff full of returners. We will all be ready to greet the next newbie class with open arms and a lot more support.