Junior Staff Application 2025

Please copy these questions to an email and address all of them. Long answers are not needed–a phrase, or a sentence or two, suffices for most questions. 

You’ll email your application to three of the folks on our admin team: our logistics goddess (logistics.nbtsc@gmail.com), our executive director (GraceLlewellyn@gmail.com), and our staff liaison (staff.nbtsc@gmail.com). Use this exact subject line (spelled correctly and without abbreviations so we can easily search our inboxes): “[Yourfirstname Yourlastname] Junior Staff Application 2025”. 

Applications are due February 28.  Thank you for applying!  

1) Who are you? Your name(s). (We need: your legal name (first/last), your preferred name (if different), and if you’ve gone by other names at NBTSC in the past (like for more than a day or two), we need those too.)  Plus pronouns we’ll use when referring to you, age as of August 4, 2025, birthdate, and what sessions (and years) you have attended NBTSC as a camper (if any).

2) Which session(s) do you prefer to work?

3) Are there any sessions for which you are definitely unavailable? Which?

4) Briefly describe your skills, experience, and enthusiasm in the following areas

•     Cooking or food preparation (especially for large groups):
•     Kitchen cleanup, dishwashing (especially in large or industrial kitchens)
•     Logistical expertise and experience (planning or coordinating events, keeping track of details, delegating, keeping track of money, etc.)
•     Health support of any kind, formal or informal. (We sometimes ask a junior staffer to help our health-support staff team.)
•     Babysitting and childcare ~ we try to assign this primarily to worktraders, but occasionally we need junior staff help.

5) Travel logistics and support 

• Arrival day ~ how would you do with getting campers checked in and organized, getting them loaded on buses or vans, etc.? 
• Departure day ~ how about supervising a bus or van ride and helping people get on their planes, trains, etc.? 
•  Any relevant experience or personal qualities? 
•  Have you traveled frequently or extensively? 
•  How would you engage communication with anxious or confused parents?

6) Driving questions

•     Do you have a valid driver’s license?
•     When were you first licensed to drive?
•     If you don’t have a license now, do you expect to by the start of NBTSC this year?
•     Have you been in any accidents or received any traffic tickets while driving? Please explain and give date(s).
•     Are you willing to run errands for NBTSC? (You wouldn’t necessarily need your own car to do this. Also, we do not assign junior staff to drive campers.)

7) Certifications: Are you certified in any of the following? If so, please give expiration dates.

• First aid
• Advanced first aid
• CPR
• Wilderness First Responder
• American Red Cross lifeguard
• other lifeguard certification
• Any other certifications/trainings relevant to NBTSC?

If not certified in any/all of the above, are you willing to get certified (at your own expense) in any of these before NBTSC?  Which?  Would you be willing to get certified in any of these if NBTSC could cover the fees? Which? (We may count on you to follow through, so think before you respond.)

8) Have you thoroughly read this year’s Junior Staff Information? Do you anticipate any difficulties with anything described there?

9) Please tell us a little about your relationship to unschooling/homeschooling or self-directed education (“SDE“)

10) Leadership

•   What will make you a strong peer advisor and role model for campers? 
•   What difficulties and challenges do you foresee in stepping into this role at NBTSC? 
•   How will you engage your responsibility to communicate openly and honestly with NBTSC senior staff regarding anything problematic (like agreement breaking) that you might become aware of? (We are very interested in your response to this particular question, so take your time.)
• What would it be like for you to work as a staffer if there are campers your age or even older? (We often have a significant cohort of older campers, ages 19-22.)  

11) Diversity, inclusion, welcoming everybody

NBTSC values diversity and inclusivity, and seeks to be a place where each person feels truly and deeply welcome. We are interested in your perspective on this – please share any personal experience, vision, or intention that you would bring to camp in your role as junior staffer. (Also please share any related work history or personal projects.) 

12) What other skills, experiences, or qualities do you have that would make you a helpful junior staffer?

13) Junior staffers are often given detailed written instructions or checklists which must be meticulously and thoroughly followed. Please tell us about your experience and comfort level working with written directions. 

13) What do you expect to be most difficult about working on junior staff? What personal challenges or weaknesses might you need to compensate for, or be mindful of?

14) Are you in a romantic relationship with a current camper (coming to NBTSC 2025)? We cannot normally consider junior staff applicants who are in such relationships. When the camper is 18+ we occasionally consider exceptions, so feel free to reach out.

15) Is there anyone you are unwilling to work with or to share a session of NBTSC with? Or willing to work/share camp with them only in certain conditions?  (For example, there might be a person you are willing to work with on staff but not if they are directly supervising you. There might be someone near your age you are willing to be around, but not if they are on the junior staff team with you, etc.)  Feel free to share any context that might be helpful.

16) Are you aware of any current campers who would be upset to find out that you were on junior staff? Please share as openly as you are willing so we can look out for everyone as best as possible. For example, if you have a painful romantic history with a camper, we’d avoid assigning them to a superhero team that you were supervising.

17) Why do you want to work at NBTSC?

18) Any other reason we should choose you?

19) Name 2 people — preferably including at least one work supervisor — that we can contact for references. Include their phone numbers and email addresses, and briefly note your relationship to them.

20) We often (but not always) assign each junior staffer to a specific role—assistant cook, assistant to the dish staffer, logistical assistant, assistant to health staff, or floater (rotates among some or all of these roles). We don’t always have all these roles at each session.

• Which would you prefer, and why? 
• Would any of these positions be unacceptable to you?

21) Anything else you want us to know?

Thank you for taking the time to apply for Junior Staff!