After several meetings, Footprint Camp's objectives have been set. The objectives are to instill humanitarian values, motivate, provide guidance of directions in life, and learn how to learn.
After identifying the objectives of the camp, we started to plan our program features and outline. This is the critical part, as our program must be reflective of our objectives. We had a meeting for whole morning to come out the program outlines.
In motivation aspect, we will concentrate on increasing children's self-esteem, encouraging team work, and setting goals and directions in life.
For humanitarian values, we wish to deliver key messages, about gratitude being a beautiful traditional of ours, respect, the basis of a harmonious society, and the important of showing our love.
Apart from soft skill, we will also be designing program which will enhance children's learning skill. Such as mind mapping, memory skill, study skill, etc. All these would help the children learn faster and smarter.
Now, come to our main point, which is how we could deliver those messages and impart knowledge of such skills to the children?
This is where 5W1H will come in, why, what where, who, when and how. Those are important questions to ask ourselves as the organizers. The activities designed must not deviate from our main objectives. Besides, the games and activities must be exciting, creative and effective. We are still struggling to design such games and activities.
During the brainstorming session, all of the sudden, "Ron Clark" came into my mind. Ron Clark is an American teacher who has worked with disadvantaged students in rural North Carolina and Harlem, New York City. He has written a book called "The Essential 55".
Ron Clark shared his story on how he had developed and implemented a set of 55 essential rules in his classroom in Oprah Winfrey Show. He compiled these rules into this book. Some of the Essential 55 rules surprised me. They are not special things but are somethings we used to overlook. For instance, rule number 1, is "when responding to any adult, you must answer by saying "Yes ma'am" or "No sir."Just nodding head or saying any other form of yes or no is not acceptable." This is the basic manner that we need to practice all the time, but most of us have conveniently forgotten about that.
I have decided to apply some of his rules in Footprint camp. Of course, I cannot apply all the 55 rules in our 4 days of camping. I am going to select the most relevant ones with some modifications.
There is a rule which I love the most. It is rule 22, “you may bring a bottle of water and leave it on your desk. Do not ask me if you can get water while I am teaching a lesson. You can even have food at your desk as long as others don’t see it and I don’t hear you eat it.” I believe all students will love this rule. Unfortunately, I am not going to include this rule in our camp.
Why we need rules in the camp?
If we do not have rules, the Footprint Camp might become too hectic or chaotic in its activities. I think so. Children need discipline, but they need guidance even more. Rules are used as a tool of guidance to lead them to deal with problems well.
7/3/2010
阿诗笔
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