This post originally appeared on a new Chicagonista blogging community called The Chicago Moms. I hope that you will swing by and check out some of the great voices being featured there.
Earlier this week the Chicago Tribune published a story about how increasing number of Illinois high school students are taking summer school courses, not because they are in academic trouble, but rather as a way to get ahead or shine up their resume for college admissions. The article specifically cited my town’s school, Oak Park River Forest High School, as a place where summer school is especially popular. I can attest that not only do many Oak Park and River Forest high school students attend summer school, many of these towns’ elementary school students go to summer school as well, taking classes such as “Games, Games, Games,” and “I Am An Author.”
I would never criticize any student, or their parents, for using summer school as a way to get a leg up on the coming academic year and given the demands of extra-curricular activities and the intense pressure of the college application process, I can certainly understand why some students feel like they need a “third semester” to fit everything in. That being said, as I see more and more kids enrolled in summer school, I find myself wanting to come to the defense of summer camp.
This is my 6 year old daughter’s second summer at the day camp run by our temple. Her camp runs 9 am to 4 pm, and includes daily swimming lessons. (Do you know how much progress a kid can make in daily swimming lessons over the course of 7 weeks? It’s astonishing!) Zuzu loves everything about camp: the cheers, the games, the endless Silly Bandz trading, and the activities, which range from cooking to music to drama. But mostly, she loves the teenage counselors.
The counselors are all young men and women from the temple community and they amaze me with their energy, their maturity and their dedication to the campers. The campers, in turn, hero-worship these teens. Yes, I will admit that, in attempting to emulate her adolescent heroes, Zuzu comes home from camp with a little extra attitude and some new, less-than-appropriate phrases. But, for the most part, these kids are terrific role models for my daughter, and specifically, they show her that it can be cool to be active in your temple even as a teenager.
In today’s society, with extended families often scattered across the country, elementary-school aged kids do not often get a chance to form relationships with teens and college students, but these relationships can be so rewarding for both parties. I love my daughter’s camp for providing her with this opportunity. And I would not be at all surprised to see her be a camp counselor someday.
But before that, my husband and I have every intention of sending Zuzu and her little brother to sleepaway camp. Sleepaway camp provided both me and my husband with formative experiences when we were pre-teens and teenagers, and we believe in its value.
Growing up, I was a city kid who had a passion for horseback riding. Until I learned to drive, I was only able to have one riding lesson a week — the stables being far away and riding lessons expensive. But during the summers I spent at riding camp in the Shenendoah mountains, I was able to live, breathe and eat horseback riding in a way that was simply not possible at home in Washington, DC. Whatever the passion, a sleepaway camp provides a chance to get really immersed in something in a way that everyday life does not allow.
As for my husband, he was a brainy, awkward kid who struggled socially all through junior high and high school. From a small town, he felt weighed down by the accumulated baggage of a dozen years of social missteps and goofy antics. But over the course of three summers at “nerd camp,” an academic sleepaway camp for kids who scored above a certain level on standardized tests, my husband was able to get a fresh start and reinvent himself into, well, if not exactly a cool guy, at least a less dorky guy. He was also relieved to find an environment where what he had to offer — brains, a wicked sense of humor and empathy — was more valued than it was at his high school back home and it gave him hope that things would be better in college.
The chance to reinvent yourself that sleepaway camp provides is huge. A friend whose normally shy 4th grader is spending a first summer at sleepaway camp told me that she hardly recognizes her daughter in the pictures that the camp posts online. The girl in the pictures is beaming and laughing with her arms draped around a gaggle of friends. The shy kid who hates to have her picture taken? Why, she must have stayed at home.
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