Leadership Camp Suggestions for Developing a More Effective Curriculum

by Noah Adam Doyle

Conversations with leadership camp directors, teenage participants, religious educators, and parents (including my own) suggest that today’s leadership camps are no longer like the Boy Scout Jamborees my father attended as a teenager. While camp participants still drink bug juice in the dining hall and sing songs after dinner, today’s high school leadership camps are highly structured, inclusive programs that hire professional training staff and engage teenagers in leadership exercises modeled after a page from General Electric’s corporate management training manual. To compete with all the opportunities available to teenagers each summer, leadership camps must do no less than guarantee the transformation of the awkward high schooler into the 21st century.

Description of Leadership Camp The International Leadership Training Conference (ILTC) is a two-week summer leadership camp held every August on the premises of the B’nai B’rith Perlman Camp located in Starlight, Pennsylvania. B’nai B’rith International purchased the campgrounds in 1953. In 1957, under the leadership of Phillip Klutznick, a portion of the camp was transformed into an international leadership-training center. Today, the center serves as the BBYO, Inc.’s center for youth leadership development, and hundreds of Jewish adolescents from around the world visit the campgrounds.

With the support of Professor Tove Hammer, Professor Marty Wells, Jeffrey Hoffman, international director of Summer Programs for BBYO, Inc., and the staff of the Martin P. Catherwood Library, I investigated the impact leadership camps have on the skill development, motivation, and values of their teenage participants. By tracking 138 high school teenagers from across North America, Europe, Canada, and Israel who attended BBYO’s International Leadership Training Conference (ILTC), a Jewish leadership camp located in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, the challenges involved in training adolescents became evident and some ideas that camp administrators could utilize to make their leadership programs more effective evolved.

Overall, the research project highlights that the ILTC program achieves many of the goals the camp seeks to accomplish (see “Methodology” sidebar on page 48). Teenage participants reported that they left the leadership camp feeling as though they had developed stronger leadership skills and could move from camp to the external world with confidence and effectiveness. Participating teenagers reported that they could now manage their peers more effectively and, as a result of enhanced leadership skills learned at camp, were appointed or elected to a greater number of positions in community and high school extracurricular activities. There were also some surprises in the findings. Teenagers’ gender, age, and previous success in high school all played significant roles in determining the extent to which each teenager benefited from the camp experience. Surprising? Yes. But also an avenue for innovation. A careful analysis of our findings provides direction for developing a more effective leadership curriculum.

Recommendation 1

Create a gender-defined component of the leadership curriculum.
Throughout the entire research project, female ILTC participants consistently scored higher than the male ILTC participants on all indicators of leadership skill strength. Yet, male ILTC participants exhibited a greater growth in leadership skills than the female ILTC participants following the camp experience. Why would gender play a role in determining how much a teenager gained from his or her leadership camp experience? Should we consider grouping high school participants by gender for some leadership classes?

Recommendation 2

What is BBYO, Inc? BBYO, Inc. is a youth led, worldwide organization that provides opportunities for Jewish youth to develop their leadership potential, a positive Jewish identity, and commitment to their personal development. The youth participate in democratically functioning small groups under the guidance of adult advisors and professional staff. For more information, please visit www.bbyo.org.

Instructor preparation and classroom training is a necessity.
A second surprising finding was that younger participants (under seventeen years of age) exhibited a greater growth in leadership skills than the older participants following their camp experience. Should leadership camps mix eighteen-year-old high school seniors with fifteen-year-old high school sophomores together in the same program? Probably not, but they can successfully mix high school juniors and high school seniors in the same program. However, to mix different ages and potentially different leadership skill levels, adequate instructor preparation and classroom management training is a necessity.

A small but vocal group of teenage participants continually voiced the concern that they were not being “challenged” enough during the leadership sessions I observed in this study. However, those leadership instructors who had a strong grasp of the training material were able to remain focused, creating games aligned with the lessons, which resulted in in-depth discussions among engaged participants. These instructors successfully challenged the more highly skilled teenage participants and ensured that all teenage participants’ needs were met during the camp.

Ensuring that leadership instructors have an extensive understanding of their topic does not have to come at a high cost. Minor changes can result in a great enhancement to the leadership curriculum. Rather than being assigned eight different leadership sessions to teach, during the summer of 2003, each ILTC leadership instructor developed and taught only two specific leadership sessions. During camp, these instructors repeated their classes multiple times for different groups of participants. The result was that participants felt challenged, instructors had a better grasp of the leadership material, and the leadership sessions continually improved throughout the summer.

Recommendation 3

Partner with a university to design a follow-up exercise or project.
To ensure that all the participants are challenged and follow through with the skills developed during the leadership camp, design a follow-up project or assignment. These projects reinforce the lessons teenage participants gained over the summer and further develop concepts discussed at camp. One initiative in development for the ILTC program is to partner with a university to design a follow-up project. A university partnership would offer the possibility that teenagers could receive college credit for their leadership camp experience and project following camp — which would increase the incentive of the project while adding another dimension to the leadership program. Additionally, many universities have extension offices that may benefit by expanding to a younger — but still potentially receptive — audience through this type of partnership. Overall, the goal is to ensure that leadership camp lessons and concepts are further developed than they are now and more effectively highlight the program’s achievements to parents, alumni, and members of the community.

Leadership Camps — Skills and Memories to Last a Lifetime

I attended my first leadership camp as a nervous, unfocused high school adolescent. I had completed my freshman year at Commack High School and was hesitant about spending two weeks in the Pocono Mountains with complete strangers. But when the program came to a close, I left motivated, self-confident, and charged with a desire to get involved within my high school and local community.

Leadership camps provide young people with memories that last a lifetime, but they also have a very practical and expanding role. These camp experiences provide adolescents with the opportunity to foster self-identity and develop interpersonal skills. I attended because I envied those who spent their summers in the Pocono Mountains around a campfire — singing, bonding, and discussing the topics of the day. What I experienced was more — I acquired tools for the future, not just fond memories of the past.

Methodology

Originally published in the 2004 January/February issue of Camping Magazine.