SuperCamp's teen summer camps and camps for pre-teens(for students entering grades 4 and higher) are an academic summer camps and life skills camps in one. As an academic summer camp, SuperCamp raises academic skills, test scores and grades. As a life skills camp, SuperCamp increases the self-confidence, motivation, and focus of participants. Graduates return to their homes ready to make things happen at school and in their lives.
Campers come out of our programs sparkling with confidence because they've come face to face with their own success. We don't leave it to chance, belief, or wishful thinking. We let them experience for themselves just how good they are. We build in opportunities for them to succeed. They don't just believe they can be successful, they know it - because they've done it.
Teens shouldn't have to miss out on achievements because they're afraid they'll fail. They're afraid to find out they can't do something. They tell themselves, "As soon as I feel good enough about myself, I'll try something big." But what we've found by working with teens is that self-confidence works exactly the opposite way. It comes from going after something aggressively - and achieving it. It's a matter of starting small, of going for little successes and building from there.
Campers break through the self-confidence barrier over and over again with the help of what we call the Success Model. We use this strategy throughout our programs, not just for academics but for life skills, attitude - you name it. Campers first experience small private successes, then work their way up to giant public ones. All along the way, they're building on what they know they can do - with the help of lots of repetition and practice. We rehearse for success. They use the energy of their previous success to catapult them into the next.
For instance, when we work through memorization skills, the first things we do are large-group callouts where they can stay anonymous if they're afraid they don't know the answer. It's very safe. Next we practice in small groups or pairs, leading up to individual performance which can be a teen speaking or performing alone in front of the group, or in some cases the individual performance of taking a test. Where they fear to go in one giant step, they can go with confidence in a series of small steps, each built on the foundation of a previous success.
