Camp and the Home Schooler

by Julie Hartley

As directors of an international sleep-over arts camp, we have welcomed dozens - perhaps hundreds - of homeschooled campers over the years. We have gotten to know these kids well enough to understand - and reject - the cliches about why a homeschooler can benefit from overnight camp. And we’ve also come to see how overnight camp is a great fit for the homeschooled child - particularly when that camp has a specialty, or a unique focus.

If anyone has ever told you that your homeschooled child should attend overnight camp to help them develop their social skills, then you can rest assured that we are not going to say that here! Our homeschooled campers have social skills equal to those of school-educated campers, and sometimes better. But it is a fact that school-educated children have dozens - maybe hundreds - of kids they mix with daily, making it more likely that they will meet other children in their community who share their interests. If your child has a specific passion - say, robotics, or creative writing - meeting others who share that interest can be a challenge, and is even more so when the child is homeschooled. Choosing a specialised overnight camp can introduce your child to dozens of like-minded people, and enrich their homeschooling experience once they return home.

Surprisingly, most overnight summer camps exhibit few of the problems or negative values that may have turned you away from public school education in the first place. You are probably already familiar with the recent US Department of Education survey that indicated 85% of families who choose to homeschool do so in part because they are concerned about safety in their child’s school - lack of adequate supervision, bullying, cliques, drugs and violence. Overnight camps, on the other hand, achieve a degree of nurturing, positivity and support rarely equaled in under-funded public schools. Most well run overnight camps have a staff ratio around 1:3. In a good camp, counsellors live in with their campers, take activities with them, and ‘hang out’ with them during meals and at free time. The constant presence of a positive role-model makes cliques, bullying and other negative dynamics all but impossible. Our campers tell us again and again that one of the wonderful thing about attending camp is being free from the pressures they face at school. Pressures to conform, to take drugs, to participate in activities they may not agree with. At camp, with adults always on hand and supportive, they can relax and be themselves.

Many parents choose to homeschool in order to create a curriculum to meet the specific needs of their child - something the public school system may not be doing. North America is home to literally thousands of overnight camps, so that a little research can turn up a camp that may meet your child’s needs precisely. A child with learning disabilities whose needs were not being met in school, may find the situation quite different in a camp where his specific learning disability is the focus, and academic work tailor-made by experts is balanced by confidence-building camp fun. Our own camp specializes in the arts, and is the summer home for hundreds of uniquely creative children. Young writers who choose to spend hours of each day working on a novel. Actors who are homeschooled because their film commitments make a regular school day impossible. Artists, animators, dancers and musicians. Many parents homeschool because of specific religious affiliations; most religious communities offer overnight camps, where parents can be confident their values will be respected and upheld.

Overnight camps rarely have a rigid curriculum, nor a fixed and repetitive daily schedule; in this way, too, they differ from public schools. In most camps, there are no bells that ring. No one telling a child each moment of the day exactly where they should be, or what they should be doing. Camps offer a more flexible and relaxed approach to learning, because it’s summer! Specialist camps like ours may offer dozens of choices of activities each day. Campers select based on their interests, and also their mood. If your own memories of camp were of enforced ‘polar bear dips’, clanging lunch bells, mandatory games of ‘capture the flag’ and a uniform with the camp’s logo in big letters, then you’ll be pleased to find camps have come on a long way in the past decades! Again, the key is to research your options. Your choice of public school may have been limited, but the range of overnight camps available within a few hours’ drive could surprise you.

Finally, there are some activities and skills that are best taught in a live-in environment... provided you can find one that fits your philosophy, as a parent. Leadership training programs are a key example. For young people who live together, facing team and leadership challenges together, solving problems and negotiating solutions, learning happens on a whole new level. When our theater kids rehearse four hours each day for their final show, a camaraderie and shared sense of purpose emerges that would be hard to equal in weekly theater classes or a Saturday workshop. Many camps offer immersion in a foreign language without the need to travel overseas, and again, the knowledge gained far surpasses what could be learned in evening classes in the child’s own community.

Parents who choose to homeschool become experts in drawing together all the strands that can together make up an appropriate education for their child. Museums, libraries, theaters, the Internet, travel, group workshops and religious associations may be some of the strands that the parents of homeschoolers choose, as they weave together their child’s education. Overnight summer camp is definitely another. By researching carefully to find a camp that is suited to your child’s needs, you open the door to a community of friends, learning and fun that may be with them for years to come.

Julie Hartley is the co-director of Centauri Summer Arts Camp, a specialist arts camp for ages 8-18 located in the Niagara Region of Ontario. You can reach her through the camp website at www.centauri.on.ca