Just what have all of the awesome counselors from summer 2010 been up to? Like our campers, most are back in school and hard at work! We have been keeping up and have some updates to pass along. They would love to hear from their campers, so make sure to friend them on the Rockbrook Friends Net. If you don’t currently have a login, go to the community part of the camp website, and you can set one up there. Happy Fall!
Katie exploring the Italian coast
Middler Linehead Katie Estes is living in Europe for the semester instead of regular classes at Wake Forest. She is studying in Firenze, Italy, and making many trips to other destinations while there. Her most recent stop was Munich, Germany!
Riflery counselor Haley Hudler is loving being back at Denison in Ohio where she is very involved with her sorority Delta Gamma and enjoying the beautiful fall!
Christine showing some true RBC skill
Junior Linehead and paddling guru Christine Alexander is living in up with every adventure she can take on. As a leader at George Washington’s adventure program, she is constantly leading trips with other students on the weekends.
Junior counselor and sports instructor Hunter Futch is continuing to pursue new athletic endeavors in college. As a Freshman at Millsaps, Hunter is not only starting on the soccer team but also enjoying being part of her sorority Phi Mu.
We are sure to have a great deal more news to pass on to you, so stay tuned!
The issue of summer learning and “student achievement” has popped back up in the news. Yesterday, President Obama gave an interview and said he favored lengthening the school year (and of course, shortening the summer break from school). He suggested American kids were falling behind because other developed countries go to school more of the year—the assumption here being we all would be smarter and achieve more if we stayed in school for more classroom learning.
Apparently quoting his Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama also cited studies showing students “losing what they learned” after taking the summer off, with the effects being particularly significant for poorer children who don’t have opportunities to learn when away from school. “A longer school year makes sense,” he concluded. Here’s an article where you can read more and see the video.
Of course, it’s impossible to convey the full complexity of this issue in a 30-second answer, and while easily debatable, it’s clear that making a “longer school year” the centerpiece of education reform is a direct threat to the American tradition of summer camp. The American Camp Association was quick to say as much and question the President’s opinion. According to the ACA, children receive crucial educational benefits from their experiences at camp; they learn things they can’t learn at school, and if we are concerned with educating the “whole child” we shouldn’t extend classroom learning, but instead broaden the opportunities for all children to benefit from camps and other summer experiential programs.
Many questions are yet to be answered. Should we model our school calendar on the values and assumptions of other countries and cultures? Should we sacrifice the benefits of non-classroom learning that can occur in the summer for the enhanced academic/intellectual learning gained from more school time? Do we really value science knowledge over resilient self-esteem, and mathematics over caring, compassion and teamwork? Could the expense of extending the school year be better applied to fund summer camps and experiential outdoor programs?
In education reform, let’s not be too quick to adopt this kind of simple solution that carries too many negative consequences for our children. Instead, let’s be creative with the whole child in mind. Let’s start by recognizing “multiple intelligences,” and from there seek to encourage every child to explore all of their talents and hidden abilities. Let’s remember that education is so much more than what school provides.
When we picked her up, she was glowing. She felt so good about herself— confident, happy, strong. The most valuable thing for us is the entire experience… it is amazingly satisfying to see our daughter so bolstered and content.
There’s been another push recently, here in North Carolina and other places, to lengthen the school year by shortening the time students have off in the summer. Taking a look back at the history of schools in America, it’s interesting to see that this has been a long trend. During the pioneer days of this country children grew up on farms and helped their families with the seasonal work farming required. Most of their time was spent outside, working, and learning practical skills. This left only the winter months to supplement this “real” education with “book learning,” the kind of intellectual development we associate with school nowadays. It’s true; school used to only be 3 months of the year!
As cities grew, Americans became less tied to summer agricultural work, and so the time available for school increased. This meant the school calendar was simply extended, back into the fall and forward into the spring. The agricultural origins of our traditional school calendar, with time off in the summer, was retained even as the need for its seasonality waned. The summer, of course, became a time when all kinds of non-classroom educational opportunities could therefore flourish. Summer camps, programs to “train the eye and hand,” outdoor work and travel became an important part of growing up in America. Leading educators, John Dewey for example, came out in favor of the learning that goes on in the summer, the importance of educating the whole child, encouraging creativity and building healthy “minds and bodies.” The importance of preserving the summer as time away from the classroom was long understood and valued.
As pressures to advance the educational system in America have increased, however, school system administrators have looked to the summer “vacation” as a means to increase classroom time, and theoretically by extension student achievement. US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put it this way when he called summer “an inexplicable, counterproductive anachronism that takes youths out of an educational setting for 2-3 months every year.” The argument here is that if we want children to learn as much as possible, they should be in school as much as possible.
Ugh. That argument, however, is based on a fundamentally flawed assumption, namely that classroom learning in school is more valuable than the education children receive over the summer. Current research has demonstrated, quite conclusively, just the opposite— that a summer camp experience, for example, provides tremendous benefits for children, unique gains far beyond what they could find at school. These are huge benefits too… some of which, like confidence, communication and leadership, serve as pillars later life. Shrinking the opportunity for children to attend summer programs and camps, in the name of academic achievement, is short-sighted and comes at a great cost.
It may be harder to measure the important life lessons gained over the summer, and it may currently be difficult to provide organized summer programs for all children, but the opportunity for crucial youth development outcomes is undeniably linked to time spent at summer camp. Shouldn’t we be doing everything we can to promote that opportunity for our children? Yes we should, and that means preserving the summer and resisting the temptation to lengthen the school year.
Let’s say you love horseback riding, and you spent just about everyday at the Rockbrook Stables when you were at camp this summer. Certifiably “horse crazy” —that’s you! OK, but now that you’re back at home and not riding as much (if at all), what can you do to keep up with what you learned over the summer? Horseback riding at Rockbrook is great, but what can you do now that you’re back at school?
One thing you can do is watch the instructional horseback riding videos on Youtube. There are several really cool short videos about English horse riding with titles like How to Improve Your Classical Seat, How to Canter, and How to Tack a Horse. Several were filmed at Wimbleton Village Stables in London, and are very well done. Click on over and have a look at a few of these videos. You’ll really enjoy it!
The girls in our photography class this summer had fun making short stop motion videos. They would build something out of play-doh and take a series of photographs slightly moving each object in their scene. Stringing these still photographs together creates the illusion of motion. Add a little background music and you have a pretty cool video. Here is a series of final productions from first session. Take a look!
