An Organic Place to Learn

I am pretty nerdy really.  One of my favorite things to do as I go around town and driving is listen to TED Talks.  They are these great speakers on a variety of subjects.  You can find them on iTunes, or just go to www.tedtalks.com to find them, but they are fantastic.  Anyway, I have heard a couple recently by a man named Sir Ken Robinson.  I know he is some sort of consultant, and he must be quite good because he has the “Sir” in front of his name.  The thing he talks about mostly is building creativity into our education.  In fact the thing I love that he says is that education is truly organic, that we have to grow our children.  This struck me, as a father of two really young children, as incredible.  I have always thought of education as linear, you go to Kindergarten then first grade and so on until you can get to college.  Well if we treat education as organic we can grow children in so many ways.  It is a wonderful way to think about education.  To be able to grow a child in what they are talented and passionate in.  I am not saying don’t do well in school, or that school is not important.  But I am saying what if we looked at what a child was really passionate about and helped that passion grow.  What if we took kids and looked at their talents and helped it to flourish.  What if we let them to be completely creative, and talented and let the intelligence that children truly be diverse.  I say all this because camp is a great place to learn, to grow, to be fed. In fact even the former head of Disney, Michael Eisner, said that going to camp was the single greatest learning institution he ever attended.  How great is that.  To not just think of camp as a big fun thing to go to for the summer, but was an institution where kids could grow, create, discover.  This is why we do camp.  This is the beauty of what we do.  We grow kids, we plant seeds of thousands of kinds every day.  Watch what can happen to child when they are in such a place.  It can change a child in countless ways.    

Serving the Mission

If you have a camper, age 12-17, who is looking to give back, to do some good work that can benefit others, and wants to make a difference in the community then this is a great camp for you.  Focused going out into the community, and creating legacy projects around camp, this is a camp focused on helping campers realize their potential for helping others.  Based on the YMCA Mission, campers will also get the opportunity to hear from speakers on the message of service, plus spend time doing good ol’ fashioned camp activities.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for campers to give back, and feel good doing it.  For more information please call camp at 515-432-7558, or go to the website at www.Y-Camp.org .