21^st century skills

There is a lot of buzz particular in schools but also in the wider community about kids reaching adulthood prepared for their future. There is a need for youth to be skilled enough to navigate the world into which they will be employed and living.  These so called ‘21^st century skills’  will hopefully enable a young person to gain the greatest potential success in their life and will be sought by both higher education institutions and employers.

Summer camps have been watching this trendy terminology with a happy glint in their eye as the intentional learning that we provide every day in a safe and fun environment fits right into this model.  Camps can easily argue that they can complement the developmental components of 21^st century skills in an environment that varies so greatly from school that it allows for more and varied success.  Camps are not just a somewhat expensive commodity that either provides child care or a ‘fun’ way to spend the summer, they are learning environments where children don’t even realize they are engaging with skill development.

Camps often work hard to convince parents that first and foremost their children will be safe and secondly that they are providing good value for money in the skills that campers leave with.

Often parents may focus on hard skills – did their child get better at tennis or swimming? It is the camp benefits that are perhaps less tangible which meet the 21^st century skill set, a deeper appreciation for nature, the ability to build relationships and make connections, greater independence, more resilience (it does rain at camp sometimes!).

We are proud to be actively promoting 21^st century skills and look forward to sharing more moments of learning with our girls this summer.  Camp Runoia building lifelong skills.