Career camps for children.

Summer camp programs have been popular for many generations. Museums, historic sites, zoos, aquariums, and parks have taken camping programs seriously, creating specific goals and objectives to make their programs unique. Fewer children of the current generation get experience in the real world at a young age, and solving this problem concerns everyone in the interpretive field. Unfortunately, camps do not replace getting outside year round, but they can target interests so children will want to participate and learn about outdoor-oriented careers.

A Word About General Camps

The Falls of the Ohio Foundation, the "friends group" for Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana, has been holding summer camps since the interpretive center opened in 1994. They regularly offer week-long camps, grouping children by lower, middle, and upper elementary grade levels.

The foundation hires local educators to develop the curriculum and lead the programs. These programs are multidisciplinary, casting a broad interpretive net. Topics include geology, life sciences, and journal writing, as well as arts and crafts with a nature component. The park's interpretive naturalists provide targeted assistance as requested and offer two career-related camps.

Our Career Camps

The Young Paleontologist Camp was the first career-based camp developed and is the major focus of this article. The program teaches children ages 9 to 16 that fossils are more than dinosaurs. This three-day immersive program focuses on fossils, what paleontologists do, and how they do it. Participants are guided through the park's Devonian-age fossil beds to get an in-depth look at the fossils and how paleontologists study them. The camp's highlights for most children are the days we take them out to a working limestone quarry and a series of road cuts to collect fossils that they can keep (after learning how to identify them). We try to bring in a professional paleontologist (typically a college professor) to give them an opportunity to hear from and question what he or she does as a paleontologist. Many are disappointed to discover that it is not 100 percent field work!

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The Youth (or Teen) Archaeology Camp was the most recent career camp developed. This is geared for 10-to 15-year-olds and provides an immersive experience in archaeology. Modeled after the paleontology camp, it utilizes the expertise of Falls of the Ohio Archaeological Society members, a group of professional and amateur archaeologists who meet monthly at the park's interpretive center. The campers get an in-depth experience with ancient Native American lifestyles and hands-on activities with real and replica artifacts. A professional archaeologist provides background information on local archaeological sites and training in excavation procedures. The final day includes a chance to participate in an actual dig at a nearby historical site, an extraordinary opportunity for young teens.

Career Camp Options

There are an incredible variety of choices for career-oriented camps--only limited by your creativity. An important guiding question is to ask, "What did I want to do when I was that age?" Focus on activities that you have a real zeal to provide. Don't choose a topic with which you are not fully acquainted or qualified to present; it will come back to haunt you later. Campers are smart!

Another important question is, "What resources are available?" Without access to fossils in outcrops, a paleontology career camp would not be as successful. A vocation-based camp--be it oceanography, forestry, or archaeology--will fall short of expectations without access to real-world locations. Use the strengths of both your people and site. If you have a connection to a natural feature or historic location, not only will the program more easily to attract gung ho participants, it will likely end up with a waiting list!

What Age Range?

I learned in the first attempt that it is easy to miss the ideal target age for career camps. While children may be interested in dinosaurs or fossils in the first or second grade, they are less likely to have the emotional or intellectual maturity to be career campers. Some activities and much of the discussion will be above their mental and physical abilities. Even third and fourth graders may find most of the content outside their area of interest because they have not mastered the basics. Younger children are eager to share their knowledge, but become fidgety if you lecture or present an activity that is beyond their aptitude. This is a taste of reality, not "fantasy camp." (Which no doubt would be fun, but on different merits.)

You will always get children--it doesn't matter their age--who are immature and become bored very easily. They will disrupt the group or cause the activity to lose focus. Think about the core activities around a career camp. Try to include a broad mixture of hands-on lab and field activities to accommodate a variety of learning styles.

How Many Campers?

What are you capable of handling? The space and available assistance will be critical. At our park, we limit participants to 10 in order to have a high-quality program without worrying about having too many children to supervise. The paleontology camp has serious safety issues, since we take them off property on two mornings for several hours to collect fossils (more about that under "Logistics").

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Our early years didn't go as smoothly as hoped. There were one or two disruptive campers enrolled because their parents wanted them to attend, not because they were interested. We have developed a method to filter out the uninterested. Each child must handwrite a half-page essay about why they want to participate in Young Paleontologist Camp as part of the enrollment process. We ask that it be handwritten (as opposed to being printed from a computer) to assure that the child did indeed write it. While it is certainly possible for a parent to do the work, we have found that the children are eager to explain their interest. It is not foolproof, however, and there are disruptive children who can write really well. The quality of the program improves dramatically when everyone is there because they really want to be!

How Much Should it Cost?

Most summer camps are priced to be revenue producers. I would encourage organizations to offer career camps at the lowest possible cost or at the very least provide scholarships for low-income participants. Expenses are relatively easy to calculate. Determine the break-even point with the minimum number of participants, allowing for at least one last-minute cancellation for every 10 children.

Will you provide lunch or will they brown bag it? In the field, we stop at nearby eating establishments for a quick bite (paid for by the parent or guardian). We provide inexpensive light snacks, too.

Purchasing equipment that can be reused in subsequent camps will increase expenses the first year, so be as creative as necessary to keep costs in check during your first camp.

It is easy to recruit volunteers in a career theme camp. A single knowledgeable person should be responsible for leading the program, but it need not be done alone. Additional adults should assist if there is an emergency. Bringing in guest experts or going out to meet these professionals in the field is the best way to introduce children to a profession. If you are not sure whom to ask, look for state or local chapters of national professional organizations. All careers have them--history, geology, archaeology, forestry, wildlife management, gardening--you name it! Most professional societies have outreach capabilities or persons in your area whom you may contact. New entrants in the field mean new members in the long run, so it is to every organization's advantage to work with youth and nurture their interests. Network, network, network!

Using Field Experts

Not every expert can work effectively with children. Some are terrified at the prospect. Some folks are better off being left alone studying the wilderness! Rather than have a bad experience, interview a prospective guest career expert before inviting them. What important benefit will their presence bring? Will it be an exciting, hands-on activity or a boring lecture? Will children be involved or will they watch passively from the sidelines? Is the expert gregarious? Have they worked with children before?

Do not use the expert as the replacement for the program's main counselor/leader. In today's society, blindly turning your camp over to a guest "stranger" has the potential to be a disaster if someone gets hurt (or worse). Camp participants will be turned off if they have a bad experience, such as a being fussed at for touching a piece of equipment or an artifact. Youth camps should be as hands-on as possible. There are some things that are best done in the "talking head" format, but those should be minimized or at least scattered widely across the duration of the camp. While it is true that almost every job has its boring moments, such realities are best kept as trade secrets at this point. Active hands make engaged minds.

Promoting the Camp

Career camps are unique and should be marketed as widely as possible. We promote them through our park website and print information in our annual events and activities brochure. The limited number of campers means that we don't have to market it extensively through newspapers. The paleontology camp always has a waiting list because it is unique in the region.

One year we had a boy from northern Ohio attend (he and his dad stayed at a local motel). Other years we've had participants from central Kentucky (they chose to camp). A career camp should offer participants a unique activity they cannot get anywhere else. Whether it is behind the scenes at a fishery or raptor rehabilitation center, a quarry visit, or bird banding, campers need a singular experience!

Logistics and Safety

Working with 10 or more students is a lot of fun. Safety is not an overarching concern when everyone is seated at a table or on the ground coloring or working on a simple craft activity. However, take them to a quarry, highway road cut, or an archaeological dig with its numerous pits, and safety rushes to the forefront. It is issue number one. For the program leader, learning suddenly becomes secondary. That's today's reality. Some of the things I did as a child, I am not sure I want to see happen in a camp on my watch! (Nonetheless, like my childhood friends, we all survived and are better for it.)

It is still possible for campers to experience real-world activities, have fun, and live to make memories. The key is adequate supervision. When I take the children to a road cut or quarry, a parent or guardian must accompany each camper. I provide safety guidelines for everyone and keep the group in a contained area. An adult is there to literally keep an eye on their child. I work with everyone, but as fossil collecting is focused downward, I cannot do my job assisting them and watch the entire group simultaneously.

If a parent is unavailable, a grandparent or any relative or assigned guardian over 18 may come in their place. I discourage parents from bringing siblings because then they have more than one person to watch and accidents are more likely (because the sibling has not been instructed in safe behavior). I have not had any bad experiences with campers, thank goodness. I did have a volunteer assistant trip over a tree root and cut himself badly enough to require emergency medical attention, though that happened inside our park.

Will your career program require parental supervision? It depends on the type of career and program activities. A sufficient number of adults is recommended when taking campers off-property or to areas that have a higher risk of injury. With the Young Paleontologist Camp, staying out of traffic, not climbing on rock outcroppings, and staying safely away from dangerous quarry walls and equipment are my chief concerns. We switched to a different quarry where the collecting is about as safe as possible--essentially picking up fossils in a field--but parents do like being with their children and once we return to the park for fossil identification, they leave.

I give out a checklist and bring in examples of various tools and safety gear so campers get an understanding of their use. They are passed around so children can examine them. Our collecting locations are chosen so that tools are seldom needed. Most collecting is done by hand and occasionally with a flat-head screwdriver. If a rock needs to be broken, I do it for them, offering techniques and tips, but keeping flying rock chips out of their faces.

Conclusion

Camps are ideally suited to introduce children to a future career when they have expressed an interest in the subject. A well-researched program with activities suitable for the age and maturity level will make a fun and educational program. It can guide them to--or away--from a career. The immersion in a wide variety of activities focused on a specific profession differentiates this type of program from your typical day camp. Career camps do not require much more time to prepare than a general camp program.

Alan Goldstein is a Certified Interpretive Planner and an interpretive naturalist at Falls of the Ohio State Park in Clarksville, Indiana. Reach him at [e-mail].