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Aug
8
Camp I Can
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Special Education
I loved the idea of Camp I Can from the first moment I heard about it. Camp I Can is a new innovative summer school program for high school students who do not complete their credits during the regular school year. The idea is that kids who are really struggling with a particular subject can complete their credits while at the same time having fun doing it. The students do school work for part of the day and fun activities like crafts, building models, playing games etc. for the rest of the day. Numeracy and literacy skills are imbedded in these fun activities so that the kids earn their credit while improving their numeracy and literacy skills at the same time. What a wonderful idea. It was going to be at my school for the first time this summer, and I was going get to teach a math class. I could hardly wait.
It was one of the most difficult, but rewarding things I have ever done. I have tons of qualifications and tons of teaching experience with at risk kids- over twenty years as a matter of fact. I have my Special Education Specialist in Behaviour, I taught kids in jail, and I taught at risk kids in regular schools. I knew what needed to be done.
First, I had the kids complete a “Getting to Know You” questionnaire so I could get a sense of where these kids were coming from. I knew they hated math, but I wanted to know more than that. A number of kids told me that they are always rude to all of their teachers. I guess it’s better to be a really bad kid in school than to be a failure in school. At least that way, they’re good at something even is it’s being bad. I told them that I didn’t believe that they were like that because they didn’t seem like that to me, which was true.The first day, I talked about my expectations: I would treat them with respect, and they in turn would treat me and each other with respect. That was the only rule. I believe in the KISS principle. I didn’t have to encourage them to be respectful too often. Each time there was an incident, I told them in a very kind way ( except for three times when I lost it) that they were being disrespectful to me (or to someone else, whatever the case was) while I had not been disrespectful to them. That obviously was a very powerful thing to say and do because their behaviour improved. I also caught them being good whenever I could. I find that catching kids being good really improves their behaviour. There’s too much focus on the negative. By the last week, I don’t think I had to remind them more than once a day to be respectful, which was great given how impulsive some of my kids are. We actually started to have a good time in class, and even better the kids started to learn math. There was lots of laughter and lots of learning.
My students were so creative. I am in awe of their creativity and told them so. They found ways to amuse themselves while at the same time driving me to distraction. The lesson on measurement and graphing using remote controlled cars really caught their attention. Everyone was engaged and enjoying themselves. I wanted to introduce an element of fun into the math class to help motivate these kids, and I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.
Who knew that one of the kids would drive a car into the hall and down the stairs, play chicken trying to crash two cars together, tie helium balloons to the cars and drive them every which way. What were they thinking! What was I thinking! They’d obviously seen too many special effects on TV. I just watched it all in wonder and amazement and decided to go with the flow and let them have their fun for the first part of the class, and then settled down to the lesson. They created a race track using masking tape, measured the speed of the different cars over different distances and graphed the results on a line graph learning terms like independent and dependent variables. They were so proud of themselves, and I was …exhausted.At times, I felt like I was on some kind of survivor- reality- teacher TV show. Where did these kids get all that energy? I wanted to take a nap when I got home after being with them for the day. But, you know as the four weeks progressed we really bonded. It was wonderful to see the smiling faces and hear their laughter on the last day of Camp I Can.
Do I think Camp I Can was a worthwhile experience for the kids? I certainly do. I saw the kid’s self-esteem blossom. They came to class. No one skipped any of the twenty days, although sometimes some of them were late. But hey… I couldn’t help but think about that kid who told me that I could help him learn by making him want to come to school. I think I did. The kids came, had fun and learned. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Fall when they aren’t going to Camp I Can.
Do I think Camp I Can was a worthwhile experience for me? I certainly do. It gave me an opportunity to walk my talk. I was able to prove it was possible to make kids want to come to school and learn. Make no mistake, it wasn’t easy. I had to dig deep. But I believed in what I was doing, and I was going to make it work. I will, however, be making some practical suggestions for some changes to the structure of program so that next summer The Camp I Can teacher will not find the experience too taxing. After all, not everyone is as obsessive as I am.
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4 Responses to “Camp I Can”
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Edublog Awards
Toronto Reading Council
Congratulations on the website, so glad you are up and running and even happier to be able to read your experiences and insights, I never cease to be impressed by your life.
Camp I Can, now how can we get more people to hear about it? Are there links?
Wow, I couldn’t stop reading this post. Anything that’s done to foster the human spirit and make a difference excites me, and your camp really excited me. Wonderful work you’re doing
Thanks Alvin, I wish regular school could be more like Camp I Can. I’m going to see what I can do to make that happen.
[...] summer when I taught grade ten math at Camp I Can, I showed the kids how to do long division the old fashioned way, without a calculator. They were [...]