Notes From Camp

Traditional school people tend to look down on summer camp education. Most think that camp is nothing more than something kids do to pass the time until “real” school begins in late summer.

My experience with summer camps and other out of school learning opportunities suggests that young learners benefit greatly from these non-formal experiences, especially when it comes to building project-based learning skills.

I was reminded this week about how camps and other out of school learning structures can assist kids as they build their personalized learning skills. I volunteered this week at a Des Moines movie theater camp, focused on stop motion filmmaking. The camp was for middle school-aged kids, with about 20 in attendance. Here are a few of my notes from the week:

On the first day, Jessie, the camp director, warned the filmmakers to add more than one wall to their sets. That way, the camera could find more angles for shooting than just a two-dimensional floor and back wall. I was sitting behind Elliot and Benji, a couple middle schoolers from Ames, a university town 30 miles north of Des Moines. I was eavesdropping on Elliot and Benji’s conversation when I heard Elliot proclaim “Yeah, we’re not going to do it that way.” And there it was – two hours into the first day of camp and we had a little Steven Spielberg thumbing his nose to the producer, thinking he knew the better way. Elliot’s intention was to shoot a wide angle, so he wouldn’t need a second wall for the set design. But when Elliot and Benji started building their set, both realized that Jessie was right and Elliot was wrong – a second wall was needed. The two filmmakers weren’t too happy that they had just wasted two hours building a set that wasn’t going to help them complete their film. They had to start over.

Often times in school, there isn’t time to start over. Instead, a bell rings and you are either finished with the work assigned or you suffer the consequences of not finishing (homework or maybe worse). In camps, like other out of school experiences, time is a variable to be adjusted while learning is the constant.

Dominic and Quinton wanted to make a two-minute Western. From the first hour of camp they knew what they wanted to do, they developed a plan to do it, and for the rest of the week these two were hard at work. When other pairs took breaks, Dominic and Quinton kept working. They took advantaged of long period of learning time – three to four hours at a time.

Young learners don’t get that amount of time to learn in traditional school, unless they are involved in athletics or the arts. Instead, most of our K-12 schools ring bells around 45 minutes or so signaling English is over and it’s time to move on to Algebra. But what if a young writer is in the middle of creating a story and doesn’t want to stop the flow? Sorry, it’s Algebra time. Creative flow will just have to wait.

Then there’s Augie. The campers call him Jimbo, short for James Cameron, director of Titanic and other Hollywood blockbusters. Augie’s imagination is endless and quite impressive. He’s an idea guy where most of what comes out of his brain is raw and untested. But Augie will keep bringing you ideas all day, in every way possible. The camp staff wondered if Augie sleeps at night.

Most traditional schools don’t understand the Augie’s of the world. Most traditional schools limit the Augie’s of the world to three questions a class period. If Augie continues to ask too many questions and maybe talks too much without permission, he stands to receive disciplinary action from his teacher or worse yet, a school administrator.

I visited William and Konstantine. They were making a horror film titled Horrorwood. When I asked about their film’s ending, the two filmmakers looked at me and, with straight faces, said, “Everyone dies. It’s a horror movie.”

Can you imagine the feeling of consternation on the part of traditional school leaders if a pair of middle school filmmakers decided to kill everyone in their movie by brutally murdering them? Whereas Quentin Tarantino can make a film like that, maybe not a pair of middle schoolers inside traditional school.

Film camp ends tomorrow. When I signed up to volunteer months ago, I was looking forward to reconnecting with an age group I fell in love with back when I was a middle school principal in the 1990’s. But what this week has reminded me of is the power of out of school learning. Instead of traditional schools thinking camps are just fill-ins until late summer when campuses open, our K-12 system would be wise to begin adopting many of the best practices alive and well in camp or other out of school learning options.

ABPTL will be away until Thursday, August 20^th. Til then. SVB