The story of the Warhorse summer camp
During one of our regular coffee breaks at our office, the team got into a heated discussion about how any formal education system in the world is training students for jobs that are probably not going to exist by the time they graduate. We started reflecting on our educational experiences and we felt that though the intention was very good, formal education did not necessarily equip us with skills on communication and thinking.
Based on that idea, we decided we will build courses which train students in communication, thinking and analysis, i.e skills which are extremely essential for the upcoming future.
This year, we are training students across 4 different age groups
Ages 7–9,
Ages 10–12,
Ages 13–15
Ages 16 and above
and we have a range of different courses catering to the intellectual needs of children of that age group.
Ages 7–9
For a really long time, we were training students in Public Speaking and debate and when we started training students of this age group, we found that while they had a lot of fun in class, a lot of things we were teaching them were going over their head. We decided that to make a more meaningful impact, a different medium of pedagogy was required to teach students communication. Therefore, we started dabbling in theater and movement to build two really solid courses which is designed to help students express themselves creatively. The idea is to not teach them just about the art forms but to use these platforms as a medium to impart various skills and traits like empathy, spatial and bodily awareness, rhythm through which they can start emoting and expressing clearly.
Ages 10–12 and 13–15
For students of this age group, we have 6 different courses categorised into two main projects viz. Project Ideate and Project Express
Project Ideate:
For the longest time, formal education systems across the world have taught students what to think rather than how to think and we firmly believe that this is a major problem. Students need to be taught the skill of thinking and curiosity must be fostered. Based on that we brought forth three different courses under Project Ideate.
- Creative Thinking and Design- There’s a major misconception that creativity is for the artistically inclined. That’s completely false. Through this course, we help students manifest their individual creativity to solve real world problems using the medium of Visual Design and lateral thinking(An indirect approach towards problem solving)
- Coding 101- Coding is one of the most important skill sets to have for the future, but what is important for everyone whether they are inclined towards coding or not is to start thinking like a coder. The idea of this program is to help students start thinking in an algorithmic manner and start trying to figure out algorithms to solve important problems.
- Art of Science: Students today have grown extremely competent in manipulating formulas and solving problems in science and math, but they are never taught about the origin of the problem or how to think about the problem itself. Using simple physics and math, students are taught how to think in a scientific manner where they construct their own theories, perform experiments to prove their hypothesis and come up with solid conclusions of their own.
Project Express:
- Public Speaking: One of Warhorse’s traditional courses, the skill of Public Speaking has been delivered in different formats to over 1500 students across the country. We believe that if you are able to speak well, to a large group or a small group, a world of opportunities open up. This course uses easily applicable aspects of neuroscience and psychology to explain to students what fear is, why we feel it, body language on stage and off-stage and also on impromptu speaking while getting plenty of stage time to practice the skill. Because hey, you can learn public speaking only by doing.
- Debate 101- Debating is actually one of the best ways to structure and practice your thinking and believe it or not, we debate all the time. The idea behind this course is to help students build frameworks, mental models and techniques to structure thought, develop ideas and articulate them clearly.
- Writing 101- Argumentation need not just be verbal and in fact, your analytical thinking and your ability to string arguments together gets a lot clearer when you are able to write coherently. If this skill is picked up at a young age, the world is your oyster.
AGES 15 & ABOVE
#Steppingintothefuture
We wanted to create and curate meaningful experiences for older students before they step out into the future. We came up with three very interesting courses for this age group
- Entrepreneurship 101- A course carefully devised by the founders of Warhorse themselves. This program is a crash course on everything entrepreneurial related from learning how to see if there is a problem-solution mismatch, scope of different industries, learning how to make a business plan and figuring out how to make a business sustainable.
- Science and Philosophy: Students aged 15 and above have learnt a lot of science through their middle school but have we ever thought about the origins or the thought process of it. This course seeks to bridge the gap between our understandings of science and philosophy and how the two overlap so much all the time. Students will learn to distinguish between an objective truth and a scientific truth and maybe even ponder over whether truth exists at all.
- Coding Lvl 2.0- In this slightly more advanced program, students will learn about the future of computing and how/where they can apply themselves in the world of algorithmic thinking
All of the above courses have been designed for high impact in a short span of time post which we will be beginning our long term programs from the third week of June 2018.
You can check out further details at https://summercamp.warhorse.in
Looking forward to a game changing summer of 2018.
See you there,
Vishal V
CEO
