It’s summertime again for yours portly, which means MINECRAFT CAMP!  Woot!

I’m back to spend my mornings playing the digital equivalent of LEGOs on the computer with elementary school kids.  It’s glorious!

By the time you read this post, we’ll be halfway through the first of two sessions of camp.  I have had a group of ten campers this week, with three students (two former, one current) helping out as counselors.  The second week has just three campers enrolled at the time of this writing, but I imagine that will change.  I had just five students signed up for this week’s camp as of last week and it doubled by camp day, so… we’ll see!

Minecraft Camp is one of the tentpoles of my summer hustlin’.  This time of year, lessons slow down considerably due to family trips and the like, and while I still teach quite a few in the summer, it’s nothing like the volume of the school year.  So Minecraft Camp helps to keep the lights on.

For reference, I charge $200 per camper for a session of Minecraft Camp.  That means this week alone represents a gross of $2000.

The school takes a 20% cut, or $400.  I will pay two of my counselors about $200 each, or another $400 (the current student will be paid in lucrative school community service hours).  Finally, campers get a t-shirt; that will probably be another $200-300.

So, after all the expenses (around $1100), I’m looking at a net of $900 for this week.  If next week’s numbers stay low, I’ll likely run it with the student counselor, so that should be another $600, for a total profit of around $1500.

Not bad for eight days of around four or five hours each.  It’s not the most impressive net profit ever, but it helps considerably when that extra chunk ‘o’ change hits in June.  If I put in twenty hours both weeks, it comes out to around $37.50 an hour.

I’ve been incredibly blessed to run this camp since Summer 2014.  The camp was the brainchild of a former school administrator, who invited me to help out as a counselor for the inaugural Minecraft Camp (one of my current counselors attended that inaugural camp).  After he moved, I took over the camp.  All of the groundwork was already laid, so inherited what is, essentially, a gold mine.

It’s been a good run.  Here’s to another six days of craftin’!

—TPP