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Academic Summer Camp Teaches Students Effective Communication Skills
Included within the life skills set are tips on communication to avoid with others. Certain conversation responses such as reassurance, advice, and identification that seem helpful on the surface can actually hinder positive communication, and may even end a conversation before it has a chance to become meaningful.
By practicing active listening, SuperCamp participants learn how to prevent communication-killing conversations. First, students learn to avoid denying. When a friend shares an experience, fear, or feeling, and you respond with reassurance, you may mean to comfort, but what you’re really doing is cutting off the sharing with the statement that they shouldn’t feel that way; you’re denying their feelings.
Next, students learn to avoid advising. When someone tells you about a problem they’re having, and you quickly hand them a solution, you shut them down immediately. Furthermore, if the advice you give turns out not to work, then the issue could backfire on to you.
Students also learn to avoid how not to “me-too!” When a friend begins to share something they’re going through and you cut them off with a “Me, too”, only to start in on a story of your own, you have successfully sabotaged the conversation. Your friend may never get to finish telling about their issue, but they will know all about what happened to you.
None of these responses set a conversation up for success. Often the best “conversations” are very one-sided when it comes to speaking. By listening more and talking less, SuperCamp students find that they can learn much more about a friend. This is called “Active Listening” and it’s a vital ingredient in meaningful communication. The “listener” listens very intently and hardly says a word, only contributing enough to let the other person know they’re really understanding them.
At SuperCamp, when students learn to listen, they learn how to support a conversation without reassurance, advice, or identification. The goal is not to diagnose, pacify, or fix, the issue; rather it is to listen, and to let the speaker know they have been heard.
Over the past 28 years, SuperCamp has taught these learning and life skills to over 50,000 students from all 50 states and from over 30 countries worldwide. For additional information on SuperCamp, summer camp locations, and enrollment, please call 1-800-285-3276 or visit www.SuperCamp.com.
