Parents often call our home office to ask whether we offer “leadership” programs. While we do not offer a survey-type course with the word leadership in the program name, I do believe that in actuality some of Education Unlimited’s summer camps and programs develop leadership skills with greater depth than any other program of which I am aware.
Over the years, I have been following the emergence of the leadership program genre and have done ongoing research into leadership development, seeking to answer the questions: What is leadership, and how does one best build those skills for aspiring young leaders? According to the staff of one program that runs general leadership programs, “It’s about responsible decision-making, listening, public speaking skills.” Another staff person from the group concluded that “leadership is what runs through our conferences: collaboration, problem-solving, conflict resolution.” (New York Times, April 19, 2009)
Of these concentrations, I believe that two that are touched upon – one explicitly and the other implicitly - are truly the foundational skills for building leadership: public speaking and critical thinking skills. Education Unlimited offers two groups of programs specifically focused on these two topics, our A+ Summer critical thinking camps, and our Public Speaking Camps. The specific offerings include:
A+ Summer High School
A+ Summer Middle School
Public Speaking Camp
Advanced Public Speaking Camp
American Legal Experience
Building leadership skills is in fact of tremendous importance. With the advent of the internet, everyone can find information quickly and efficiently on any number of subjects. What, however, can one do with that information? Can a person see the connections between various concepts to see how different ideas come together to help support a novel solution to a problem? These are the sorts of issues and skills we tackle with our A+ Summer critical thinking camps. Traditional leadership camp seems to touch on any number of subjects, too many in my view to achieve significant gains in any subject covered. Instead, they are really geared toward helping students strive to gain a bit more confidence and thus seek to attain an office in student government or offer themselves for possible leadership roles at their school. I believe that it is vital for students to learn to perform with distinction once leadership opportunities are presented so that they really stand out. Just taking a leadership role is a laudable goal, but is not enough. Instead, students should strive to be effective leaders who demonstrate excellence, the kind of leaders that by their superior service will prompt a teacher to write them an uncommonly powerful letter of recommendation for college, or will justify having a teacher consider nominating and advocating for that student for truly special awards and selective honor.
A BRIEF DISCUSSION OF FAKE ‘HONOR’ MARKETING
Have you been considering a leadership program based upon glossy personalized invitations to attend, invitations which note the great honor in being ‘nominated’ that has been bestowed on your child? Many so-called leadership programs are offered each summer for high school students, and having observed the efforts of the largest of these programs I can tell you that I have two problems with many of the programs from this group of camps commonly self-labeled as ‘leadership programs’ (along with at least one travel program organization). First, the integrity and honesty in recruiting and marketing for many of these programs have been seriously questioned by objective sources of known reputation (see the links below). Although it is not my intention to digress into a discussion of ethical recruiting, and I only feel equipped to engage in a thorough discussion of Education Unlimited’s programs and how we present them, I do think that parents and students can benefit by learning about ethical standards and practices of this special niche of the academic summer program world, which I believe outside of the genres of leadership camps and travel programs generally holds itself to high ethical standards. One small tip is to always do an internet search with the name of the program and ’scam’ or ‘fraud’ included in the search; you will sometimes find hundreds of posts by unhappy customers, and that should give you serious pause!
Over the last several years many articles have discussed and one could even say exposed some of the extremely questionable recruiting practices used by many of the largest leadership program organizations, with some organizations even being forced to reorganize by the Internal Revenue Service (seemingly stripped of non-profit status) and in other cases being subject to legal actions by state and federal agencies, and here are a couple relevant articles here if you are interested in learning more:
Congratulations! You Are Nominated. It’s an Honor. (It’s a Sales Pitch.)
Students “Recommended” for Study Abroad? Not Quite - Student Travel Service Still Misleading Parents
I will admit that I am disturbed by these reports, and many others, about how the programs focus on ‘recruiting’ so aggressively, sometimes even pretending a rare ‘honor’ has been bestowed when that is just not the case, rather than simply and honestly making parents aware of what they do and what its benefits are, as most summer camps and programs do. At Education Unlimited, I can tell you that we try hard to represent all programs as clearly, completely and honestly as possible. In our post-camp surveys, well more than 90% of families say that the program experience was very accurately presented in our materials. In fact, it is not uncommon for parents to tell us that we undersell our programs, and should be more rhetorical and emphatic! You can learn more about how past participant families feel about our programs by visiting our testimonials section on our website.
REAL TRAINING FOR EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP
Of greater importance to me for this discussion is to further explore the most effective techniques to teach leadership skills, so I will spend the rest of this commentary investigating this question.
A three-day leadership conference can be motivating and introduce students to high-profile role models, and even when just surveying leadership topics and offering some simulations and short workshops, these programs can no doubt provide some enjoyable ‘edutainment.’ While such programs may be somewhat motivating, I believe that the most effective way to encourage students into real future leadership roles is to develop not just enthusiasm, but more importantly the skills and capabilities that will enable students to speak up in class, solve problems creatively and to communicate with confidence so that when they gain leadership positions, they can be successfull leaders. Education Unlimited’s camps seek to do just this, and build up the fundamental knowledge base integral to becoming an effective leader.
Fundamental to my own educational philosophy is the idea of ‘immersion’. Indeed, all of Education Unlimited’s programs use this pedagogical approach, trying to narrowly draw the boundaries around what we explore at any given program, but explore that offering with specialized staff in the greatest depth possible in the time available. I’d like to take this opportunity to explore what the research says about the effectiveness of immersion in education, and why I believe that our leadership track programs — our A+ Summer critical thinking camps and our public speaking camps — best model this wonderful learning technique.
Immersion was by some reports first tried as a pedagogical technique in 1965 in Canada, created by a teacher and a small group of parents who felt that if students were immersed in a language (french) for most or all of their school hours, and learned their other subjects using their new language, that those students would develop a far more comprehensive understanding of the language, greater achievement, and greater fluency. The bottom line from research on the subject is that when students willingly participate, and the program is well developed, in an immersive environment student achievement can soar relative to other students’ (those not in an immersion program) achievement levels.
Here is what some of the research on the effectiveness of immersion concludes – immersion is in fact the single most effective learning technique:
“Foreign language immersion programs have been found to be the most effective [way to undertake the] study of foreign language in schools across the United States. Many positive results of total immersion programs have been found. First of all, participants attain high levels of functional proficiency in the second language (Genesee, 1985).
Achievement is significantly higher in immersion programs than those that teach second languages during short daily lessons. There is also the consideration of which students would benefit the most from these programs. Research has found that immersion programs can be useful to a wide range of students from socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities. Immersion programs are set up with the most ambitious language fluency goals and tend to promote the highest levels of achievement [when compared to other language learning techniques].”
- Katie Kramer, University of Michigan
By modeling foreign language style immersion programs, and also based on my own personal experiences with summer speech and debate camps (which are an amazing combination of intensity and fun, and in my view are clearly immersion programs by nature), I believe that Education Unlimited has crafted a unique set of programs that provide an optimal balance of fun, educational depth, and programmatic intensity. By trying to accomplish just a few things at any given program (or even just one primary subject matter goal), we give ourselves the time to make real progress, and to teach students lessons and skills that can last, rather than just touching upon a great number of subjects with no lasting knowledge or benefits for the program participants. Given the more narrowly targeted scope of curriculum we tackle at any given program, we are able to free up opportunities for exciting guest speakers, to have the time to enjoy interesting area excursions, and ultimately, to find the best possible balance of learning and fun. We create a positive environment in which most students want to learn and participate, and thus get the most possible out of the program they are attending.
I hope this discussion helps you consider how you can best help your child develop leadership potential. There are many ways at any given school to explore leadership by actually participating, ranging from the obvious choice of student government; to heading or even starting a club; to competing in activities like Mock Trial, Model UN, Competitive Speech and Debate; to starting a small business during middle or high school; and even joining organizations outside of school, and earning leadership roles there over time.
Education Unlimited has a number of offerings, as detailed above, which can build on the fundamental skills that can lead to future leadership roles, and to success in those roles once attained. If you are interested in any of these programs, I hope you will contact us or visit our website at www.educationunlimited.com. There are still spots at many of our programs, and we would be delighted to work with your family this summer!