"It's so much more than a summer camp!"

Last week, I met with one of my friends and was explaining to him what a day at Breakthrough Silicon Valley looks like.

“In the morning, we meet the students at the buses, give them high fives on the way down, and then play some games before classes start. We also have this thing called ASM which stands for All School Meeting where students prepare skits to share with their peers and teachers. Oh, and practically every week we have special events. For example, tomorrow I get to help out with Olympics at one of the sites!”

His response, even if unsurprising, caught me off guard:

“So is Breakthrough basically summer camp but with classes?”

I thought to defend the program by saying, “No, it’s an academic summer program! It’s so much more than a summer camp!” In fact, I think I might have said that before taking a step back and thinking about the similarities between Breakthrough Silicon Valley’s summer program and summer camps.

It’s true that the focus of Breakthrough is on academics. Our students arrive at 8:15 every morning and start their first class at 8:30am. They go through 6 classes every day and have Study Hall for 40-60 minutes at the end of each school day. Before 4:30pm, we might have packed students brains with high doses of literature discussion circles, to the quadratic formula and Newton’s Laws of Motion. The students then board their buses back home where they work on their 1-2 hours’ worth of nightly homework. But there are many aspects of traditional summer camps that contribute to our program’s success as well.

During All School Meeting, students are encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and try something new with full effort and a positive spirit. Many of our students feel uncomfortable leading cheers or acting silly on stage at the beginning, but eventually become excited and look forward to their time on stage. Similarly, during Olympics, having a positive team spirit and attitude is regarded highly, even above skill level. If a student fails to dodge a ball in dodgeball, their team cheers her on and praises her efforts. While teachers and students alike promote quality skits or victories in Olympics, nobody’s goal is to train our students to be good actors or star athletes. It is a place for them to act silly, feel a little uncomfortable, and in the process become more confident. It is less about showing off talent and more about improving and learning.

The classroom approach is similar. Our students’ work is held to very high standards, but the goal is not to have them turning in perfect assignments every day. And if a student misses a homework assignment, the focus is on finding a solution to the issue: Was the assignment unclear? Did you feel unprepared to compete it? How can we work to ensure you complete all your assignments? Students’ success is a collaborative effort between the teachers, staff, and students at Breakthrough.

Stanford psychologist Paul O’Keefe conducted a study that tried to identify students’ “goal orientation” during summer camps and other summer enrichment programs. O’Keefe identified two kinds of orientations: 1) mastery orientation where students are interested in learning for learning’s sake and 2) performance orientation where students are interested in learning in order to show off their smarts. 

At Breakthrough Silicon Valley, strong emphasis is placed on what O’Keefe refers to as mastery orientation. We know and recognize that our students are smart and talented; our next step is to develop and celebrate their growing work ethic. Our goal is to have them think not in terms of how smart they are, but rather in terms of how their motivation and determination will help them continue to become even better students.

In thinking of how our Breakthrough Silicon Valley summer program promotes this kind of learning and environment which is similar to summer camps, I take back my knee-jerk reaction of insult and instead celebrate the similarities. Perhaps the way our Executive Director describes it as an “Academic summer school with a summer camp vibe”, is a good way to go about it. Like summer camps, Breakthrough emphasizes collaborative, team-building activities and fosters resilience in our students. If one assignment wasn’t great or you felt unprepared for a skit, that’s okay – you’ll get another chance to take a positive risk tomorrow.