Starting a Summer Camp
Inspiration for Creating the Program
Sumo, short for summer online, is an online summer camp that I founded at the end of May. There were many reasons that I wanted to start a summer camp, but the main cause came from the coronavirus pandemic. The contagious qualities of the virus forced everyone to stay indoors, and as a result of this, my original summer plans and the plans of other families had been abruptly canceled. As I pondered on what to do, I noticed that my parents were struggling to find a summer program for my sister. I felt like creating a summer camp of my own would help solve the problems of not only my parents but the dilemmas of other parents as well.
This was not far from what I originally was going to do, which was to host another annual summer camp in another country, but now that is no longer possible.
However, there were some differences between my idea and the types of programs I was accustomed to teaching. Firstly, this summer camp would be held online. This meant that there be virtually no physical connection and opportunities to do physical activities together as well as a limited amount of communication. Secondly, this program would be more leaning on trying to teach children academic-related topics rather than just accompanying them and having fun.
I decided that I wanted to create a program that was designed to introduce little children to new topics and interests that they will no doubt encounter in their futures. I then had to decide which specific age group I wanted my program for. From my personal views and experience, the best opportunity for children to start to explore new interests is during the middle of the elementary school where their minds are mature enough to have long term goals but still have plenty of time to develop such interests passions that they would lose the chance to do so later in life.
The next step was to find out which subjects to teach. I wanted to find things that would be both new and interesting. I decided to choose topics that I personally found interesting and are present in our everyday lives such as math, history, science, and computer science. However, I also wanted to make my program different from the normal education that students received at school, so I picked some intricate subjects to be taught for each subject
Finding Students
I did several things in order to reach out to people who might be interested in the program. First, I designed a flyer that gave a brief summary of the program and a document with the full program description. I posted the flyer on various social media channels and advertising sites such as Facebook, WeChat, Nextdoor, and Craigslist. I also went to the social media group of the elementary schools and advertised there. I also contacted friends who had siblings of the appropriate ages. From this, I received around 20 people who were interested in attending my program. For the first week, the program averaged around 16 people every day. After the first week, I advertised once more. The parents of the students who attended the first week also recommended many of their friends to have their children attending the program. Therefore, at the beginning of the second week, there were more than 30 students who had enrolled in the program. During the second week, the program averaged around 24 students every day and it peaked at 28. I did not advertise anymore during the third week and the average amount of students attending dropped back down to 20. Some students had to leave because they had conflicting plans with other summer camps that they already registered and paid for.
While I was finding people to attend the summer camp, I created a website for the program. On the website, I gave a general description of the program, attached all related documents to the program, and provided contact information. I also made an area where the recordings of each class could be posted, so that if a student missed class or needed to review, they could just watch the recording. I also implanted a homework page for students to receive an optional homework each night.
Finally, I created an email account specifically for this program, which allows me to send information to the parents attending, as well as a place to receive feedback, questions, and homework assignments.
Program Design
The main issues about designing the program always stemmed from balancing different aspects of learning. How much should we spend on education over having fun? How long should the classes be so that students can learn something from it, but also not be exhausted? I tried my best to make sure that both needs of the students were fulfilled and tried my best to make the program both fun and informative.
The summer camp spanned a period of three weeks. Besides Wednesday, each day had two 40-minute classes spent on one of the four topics. These four topics are math, science, history, and computer science.
For Math, instead of focusing on topics that they would soon learn in school, I placed a focus on introducing them to the topics of Olympiad or competition Math. Olympiad math is semi-related to the math topics covered in school. However, rather than making students perform straightforward numeric calculations, Olympiad math is designed to help students think outside of the box in order to arrive at the answer. Olympiad math focuses on helping students develop critical thinking skills that can be applied beyond the scope of mathematics. The most basic topics that I wanted to cover were number theory, probability, and geometry. These topics are more widely applicable in the real world as well, which made me think they were very worthwhile to teach.
I placed a focus on showing the different branches of science. The topics that I settled on teaching were chemistry, biology, and environmental science. The classes focused on the most basic topics of these branches of studies so that students would be able to understand be more interested in them after the program was over. The students learned different topics under each branch of science, there was an emphasis on showing how each branch of science was related to one another.
In history, I wanted the students to obtain a greater view of the world around them. So, I picked a specific point in history, one for eastern civilizations and one for western civilizations, and talked about their cascading effects on global history. The focus on eastern civilizations was the development of the Mongol Empire while the focus for western civilization was the Enlightenment ideals and the Industrial Revolution. For a third topic, I wanted a topic that was both interesting and influential in modern society. The topic I felt was best suited for this was the development of technology and its effects on the world today.
Finally, the last topic that I wanted to cover was computer science. I found out that the most basic topics of computer science were covered in elementary school, but none of those topics felt like they would be interesting for young kids. Because the program was only three weeks long, there is not even nearly enough time to talk about everything related to computer science. Rather than lecture about as many computer science topics that I can, I wanted to make the classes fun and memorable, so that students can see all the amazing things that they could do with computer science. From this, I felt the best way to structure the class was to build a little game on Scratch with the students. The students would learn basic programming functions throughout the class and would also have fun to be proud of what they created at the end of the program.
Each class period had a lot more to them than just teaching a certain topic. Students were given problems to attempt on their own, separated into groups to have discussions about the topics, and even played fun games such as Kahoots to show off their mastery of the subject.
Because of the young age of these students, I felt that it would be better for the program to include a day where we did not learn as much, but rather to just have some fun as a group instead and to get to know each other better. These fun activities include icebreaker games, origami, drawing, and watching some fun and inspirational videos.
Throughout the program, a rewards system was implemented to encourage students to participate in class. Students would earn points for answering questions and participating in classroom discussions. An optional homework assignment would be posted after class as well where if students they attempted the assignment, they would earn points as well. At the end of the program, I tallied up all the points of the students, and prizes were given to the five students with the most amount of points.
Finding a Partner
While I was designing the program, I realized the amount of material I would need to prepare if I had to teach two classes for 90 minutes a day. Not only did I feel it would be tiring for me, but I also felt that it would be better if someone new also taught the back half of the classes each day. This would make it so that the students would not be bored one person and would also allow each teacher to moderate the other’s class. If the students were to have any individual questions that would take to time to answer publicly in class, he or she can contact the other teacher with questions.
I ended up asking some of my schoolmates if they had the time and would be willing to volunteer with me to conduct this program. I found a rising junior whose summer plans had also been canceled. She expressed her interest in participating and agreed to teach two out of the four classes, which were the science and history portions, so I would teach math and computer science.
We met up a week before the program started to discuss the specifics of the programs. We agreed on which two topics we were each going to teach, but she made some changes to the topics so that she would be more comfortable with teaching them.
Summer Camp Experience
Before the start of the program, my partner and I created the detailed presentations that we would be teaching for the first week. We also spent a lot of time trying to familiarize ourselves with the functions of Zoom. Because my partner did not have much previous experience with teaching and helping much younger children, I had to check if the topics and her presentation were easily comprehensible for the students. An hour before each class, we would review again what we would be teaching that day, as well as the plan for the entire class. We would focus on creating next week’s presentations a week beforehand and discuss them over the weekend. This cycle repeated throughout the entirety of the program.
On a normal day, the program’s structure would have two classes with a ten-minute break in between. We would let the children in around 10 minutes before class started so that we could start on time and so they would have an opportunity to socialize with each other. If there was homework due the previous night, we would review it before we began class as well.
For classes, we changed the topic we would be teaching for each subject every week. The first few classes of the week would be around some of the introductory steps of the topic and would progress into harder concepts as we progressed throughout the week. Each class, we teach the subject for around half the class and have questions related to the topic at hand in order to check and reinforce their understanding of the topic. We would also sometimes add discussions or a game at the end of the class to further keep the students both interested and entertained.
This is a class recording from the second day of the program:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv84_HZaBcY
Final Thoughts and Reflection
I thought that there were a lot of takeaways from running this camp. There were many unexpected obstacles that occurred during the planning of this project and actually carrying it out. Although I had spent the entirety of the first weekend trying to rehearse my slides, I still felt nervous going into the first class, scared that I was going to mess up. The very first thing that I noticed when I started my first class was that there were already students messing around by publicly annotating on my slides. Fortunately, I was able to find a way to disable it. The first few classes were a great learning experience for me, and I felt that I became far more comfortable with managing the class in just a week.
Although I had participated in other summer camps before, this camp was much different. In the camps that I attended before, I merely helped out and gave feedback to the people who were in charge of the camp. Now for the first time, I was in the position where I had to take the lead and each of my decisions had resounding impacts on the way the camp would proceed. It was definitely harder and had a lot more pressure on it, but like teaching the students, I became more accustomed to it as time passed. I felt that creating this summer camp was a great opportunity to exercise the leadership skills that I had been slowly developing.
I am extremely grateful to the students and the parents of all the students involved. Their positive comments and suggestions really boosted my motivation in making this camp the best experience that I could. At the end of the summer program, I asked all of the parents there if they could donate a small amount of money to support my school, Culver Academies. Astoundingly, they easily broke the initial goal of 500 dollars I had set, and the final amount was well over 1000.
This summer camp was extremely, extremely fun to create and do. The smiles and the visible moments when a student just understood the concept of a topic at hand felt very rewarding and satisfying. If the opportunity arises in the future, I definitely feel that I would do something like this again.
About Culver
Again, I’m Will, a rising senior attending Culver Academies. Culver is a college prep boarding school focused on developing not just helping students grow academically, but to develop leadership skills and responsible citizenship through nurturing the whole individual.