Serious Fun: Summer Camp Helps to Prepare Kids for Future Careers

By Kristin Bryntenson, NIU STEAM Director

Parents and educators alike are always focused on how to get our kids ready for their futures.  We grapple with the question – how do we build the skills they need to be successful in whatever career path or life path they decide to take? This is a serious question that requires serious action. However, sometimes we let the seriousness of this question overshadow the fact that fun can be a key part of serious learning experiences. This is especially true in those middle school years when our kids are stuck between the innocent exploration of childhood and the growing responsibilities of becoming a young adult. Here at NIU STEAM, we do not believe that fun and career preparation need to be separate. In fact, they go hand-in-hand. One of the best ways to build future-ready skills is through fun experiences that keep kids motivated and wanting to come back for more.

So, what does it mean to be ready for the future? Educators and experts across the state of Illinois have done extensive work on the subject of College and Career Readiness and have identified a list of skills that are essential to success no matter the field, industry or career path. These Cross-Sector Employability Skills, or simply Essential Skills, are commonly referred to as “soft-skills” and include competencies in teamwork, communication and problem solving. You can read the full list of Essential Skills here, and what you see on the list should not be surprising. The challenge is not in identifying these skills but in building these skills in our students. Even with our youngest students.

How do we help students build these skills – knowing that kids want to be kids? They want to have fun! (OK, adults want to have fun, too, but that is a different blog post.)  What motivates our kids to learn and be successful might be different than what motivates us as adults. Many kids are in it for the fun. The joy. The exploration and discovery. For some reason someone decided that college and career prep can’t be fun. That these are serious topics that require a serious learning environment. So they are many times kept separate. We feel doing so is a disservice to the students we are trying to help prepare for their futures. At NIU STEAM, we recognize the fact that kids want to explore and try things and have fun doing it. We know that serious learning can also be serious fun. Our summer camps are designed to create a fun, exciting, exploratory environment while also giving campers the opportunity to those essential skills.

Let’s look at our middle school camps for some examples.

• Camper will build teamwork, problem solving, decision making, and adaptability in the Role Playing Games Camp (July 17 – 22). Anyone who has ever played a role playing game such as Dungeons & Dragons knows that to survive the quest and vanquish the big bad, you must have a good questing party who works together to solve each problem (or troll) that comes your way. You must have a good team. The skills you use to succeed in your quest are the same skills you need to succeed in life. Why not practice them while immersed in a grand adventure?
• The Exploring Drones Camp(July 17 – 22) can be a great place to explore possible careers with drones but it is also an opportunity to practice planning and organization, critical thinking and problem solving as campers design, build and navigate an obstacle course.

Those are just two of the many examples of how our NIU STEAM camps provide a fun and engaging experience while at the same time build student’s future ready skills.  So, do we call our middle school camps college and career preparation camps? No. Are they? Absolutely!

The experiences our campers have will help them develop the skills that they need to be successful in their future. At camp, as they get their hands dirty and explore new ideas, they’ll also be working together in teams, solving problems, planning and organizing their thoughts and ideas – all while having fun. Our goal is to give each kid a camp experience that will help them be future ready and motivate them to keep learning and keep exploring.