Learning for ALL

in #life6 years ago (edited)

The Worst Students?


“Is that Billy raising his hand? He never participates in my science class!”

Replace the name “Billy” with any name and you get what I hear every day at camp. These quotes come from teachers that come to chaperone their kids at my outdoor education camp in Michigan. Teachers find it astounding that kids who are sometimes the “worst kids” participate and enjoy learning at our camp.


Johnnie, who cannot sit still, can experience success. Taylor, who is an exemplary student, can experience success. Sara, who struggles with reading, can experience success. Children of all type experience success at camp. The key is experiential education. Who wants to see a diagram of a turtle when you can hold one? Who wants to see a chart of the food web when you can play a game of predator and prey? Who wants to read about how pioneers lived when you can act it out? A child doesn’t have to be told that there is a hinge on a box turtle, that student can look at it and watch it actually work.


Children need to get out of the classroom.

Camp brings learning to life!


When kids come to camp not only are they gaining a valuable experiential education, but they are learning life lessons such as leaving the parents nest, living with peers, energy and food conservation, and how to live without personal electronic devices. Students leave a week long camp program asking to come back and many voluntarily give up their phones when they visit us for summer camp! Watching kids leave a sedentary lifestyle for an active camp way of life is a huge win.


Camp is where students can build culture, a sense of community, and make meaningful memories. School leaders often talk about how camp helps students make meaningful relationships with their peers and their teachers. So, not only is camp helping a student thrive academically and socially, but also improving the student’s interaction with other school goers.



Children will play, learn, build community, and grow school culture at camp, not to mention create opportunities to fill up their school yearbook with great content! A camp experience is a trip that will create positive lasting effects for each student who participates.



Send your kid to camp.

Sorry, let me repeat myself…

Send your kid to camp!



If you are a teacher, work with your school to make camp a possibility. Ways you can make camp possible is to offer to organize the trip, start a fundraiser, or offer your time to chaperone. Parents, you can help too. Make camp possible by bringing it up at PTO meetings, offer to chaperone, or tell other parents.

Thanks for reading!
-Curt Ross

All pictures are from my camp taken by myself or other camp workers.

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What an awesome thing you're doing, @curtross! I think this is how ALL education should happen and I don't understand why it takes governments and education departments so long to get that. I was 'lucky' that my kids were suited to the traditional education system but I always thought it was wrong for so many kids. In the first year of highschool, their school organised a day called maths chimps for those who did well in maths. It was an outdoor day where they built bridges, calculated the height of a tree based on the sun and its shadow, etc. etc. It was the funnest maths day of all their school years combined. And I thought, heck, why don't they just teach maths like that all the time. And most of all, for all children, especially those who struggle with the normal book methods. I'd love to see camp methods introduced in regular schooling. The outcomes would be phenomenal. Thanks for sharing!

I have a life goal of opening a school that focuses on this. Got some kinks to work out before I start drafting a proposal.

I cannot quite express in words how much I support these kinds of ideas. I like to think I'm a fairly intelligent individual, got decent grades and graduated college and all that jazz, but I found so much of my education to be absolute torture. I could barely stay awake in lectures, and I was super anxious while taking tests. But give me a puzzle that actually intrigues me and I can work at it tirelessly for hours, many times forgetting to sleep or eat regularly.

I don't think there is a problem with kids where we need to drug them up so they behave, I think there is a problem with how we teach. Different people learn different ways and at different speeds. There is enormous room for improvement in the current educational system which insists everyone learn the same subjects at the same speed in the same contexts.

Absolutely. Everyone is different. Everyone is capable of learning...not everyone is capable of learning in the same way.

Awesome, can't wait to hear about it when the time comes :)

This is so brilliant- it really levels the playing field for kids- like you say- making success possible for all of them. Amazing work- it must be so fullfilling. E x

I was a classroom teacher in a juvenile detention previous to this current job. I had eight year old all the way up to 18 year old...you can only imagine the amount of differentiation I had to do to meet everyone's needs. Now I can teach experiences instead, it has changed my viewpoint on education big time. Its amazing and fun.

I've got so much respect for you doing this work. It's changing lives for the better - what could be more important?

Fantastic post! I love your heart for education and teaching children in ways that they actually retain it! I agree 100% with @ydraz. why can't their be a more proactive approach to education!

good for you @curtross for being part of the solution!!! :)

Thanks for your sharing. Keep it up.

Thanks, I will definitely write more about outdoor education for #steemiteducation

Camps are always a good idea! Good job with this post.

Thanks a lot, I love it here.

A very nice educational post. I remember summer camps, and the fun, and did I learn stuff, yeah, but without it being a learning experience. Such as archery, a little wind gust here, a little more elevation, full pull, sight and let fly.

The experience teaches more than a teacher ever could. Thanks for that insight!

awesome post and great pics..... some of my fave memories are from camps, nice post :)
b.a.

Thanks a bunch. I am seeing that camp has been a part of a lot of folks lives.

This sounds like a wonderful thing you are doing, and it sounds as rewarding for you as it is for the children! Bravo for the work you are doing and opportunities you are providing!

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Much appreciated. Love my work and love seeing children’s faces light up in fun and learning!

This is truly wonderful to see these children have another way of learning, and to have someone else believe in their capacity. Far too many talented children get overlooked because of a label they were given, or a box they did not fit into. This is so perfect!

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