UNIQUE COLLABORATION
- CEC creates a unique space for collaboration and shared learning: camp directors responsible for developing and leading the camp’s vision and their senior camp educator (often the assistant camp director or program director) responsible for designing the educational frameworks and programs that implement this vision.
- Through a joint learning experience and time to plan for integration and application at camp, CEC ensures learning is enculturated through staff partnership that primes the camp for success.
ABOUT CEC
- CEC is about shaping experiences at overnight camp, providing training that illuminates the choreography, architecture and design of the summer experience.
- CEC offers new ways of thinking about education, focusing on both incorporation and implementation. It helps participants deepen their educational vision and provides them with methods to actualize this vision.
- CEC is multidisciplinary in its approach. It explores how neuroscience, anthropology, social work, and experiential design can enrich and expand the camp experience.
- CEC is a shared learning experience with peer-led opportunities, allowing participants to explore the relationship between education and recreation, and how Jewish values can encompass all aspects of camp culture.
SEMINARS
Camp Educators Cohort is now closed.
Seminar 1
The Jewish Value Proposition
A summer at camp brings Jewish experiences to life. But what exactly is a “Jewish experience” anyway? This seminar is about values exploration. Specifically, it focuses on what makes a value Jewish. Over the course of the program we will navigate the differences between “thin” and “thick” values, and explore how through the cultivation of a camp culture and the design of specific programs these values can become a lived camp experience.
Highlights include:
⦁ Principles in values education; crafting peer-reviewed, values-based vision; integrating values into camp culture
⦁ Designing summer-long value themes; values-based program design; training staff for values exploration
Seminar 2
What Makes it Experiential
What is experiential about experiential education? Turns out, ‘experiential’ is more than just a buzz word. This highly interactive seminar will provide you with frameworks for creating four types of educational experiences: abstract, metaphoric, mediated and concrete. Additionally, the seminar will introduce you to the variables that shape these experiences, the methodologies that bring them to life, and how each plays a different role and yields different outcomes.
Highlights include:
⦁ Balancing resources in camp experiences; understanding impact and outcomes, sensory engagement, typology of activities; design of space and environment; peer-based experimentation
Seminar 3
The Stories We Tell; The Stories We Create
How are our campers learning from the experiences we are designing? In this seminar we will step into the shoes of our campers to consider how they are receiving and processing what they are experiencing and learning at camp. More specifically, we will explore how our campers become the protagonists of their own story. We will focus on the processes of memory formation, self-authorship and storytelling, and how these ideas can help shape the totality of the camp experience.
Highlights include:
⦁ Creating signature narratives; utilizing your camp’s “collective memory” for deepening stakeholder engagement
⦁ Developing narrative arcs for the summer and for specific programs; principles in educational processing (framing, reflecting, conceptualizing)
Eligibility
CEC targets camps, not individuals. As such, eligibility requires the participation of both the full-time camp director (or senior professional responsible for vision and design of camp) as well as the full-time person responsible for educational implementation at camp. Participating camps must be in North America.
Eligibility is limited to overnight camps only.
If your camp only has a seasonal educator or only has either a director or Jewish educator who can participate in CEC, please email info@ieje.org to discuss.
Cost
Thanks to the generosity of the AVI CHAI Foundation, tuition for the Camp Educators Cohort is $1,800 + $180 registration fee per person. The total cost to a camp is $3,960 for both participants.
In addition to participation in the program itself, tuition covers travel within North America (up to $400 per seminar), double occupancy hotel room and meals during seminars and additional seminar-related expenses.
Tuition does not cover transportation to/from airports or baggage fees.
TO APPLY
M2 Camp Educators Cohort is now closed.