Curriculum in Focus: An educational framework designed for success
For a PDF version of the CRS Curriculum in Focus Guide, please click here (opens in new window.)
For 90 years, the Louis August Jonas Foundation has been committed to helping young people grow intellectually, ethically, and globally through Camp Rising Sun, our full-scholarship, summer leadership program for teenagers from around the world. In the upcoming weeks, we will take a deeper look at our curriculum, which has inspired in so many young people worldwide, a commitment to compassionate and responsible leadership for the betterment of their communities and the world.
In this issue, we will focus on our educational framework, which is based on fostering independent learning and on emotional intelligence for compassionate leadership
The CRS program is meant to serve as a watershed in the development of an individual’s identity. Its success lies in encouraging in each participant the fullest realization of their intellectual, cultural, humanistic and ethical capabilities. Through hands-on social emotional learning experiences, participants develop new self-awareness, increased self-confidence, and enhanced perceptions and understanding of the world around them. In some cases, participants do not feel the full impact of the program until years or even decades after their summer at CRS.
The CRS curriculum is thoughtfully designed and implemented to support the four core program goals, which seek to:
Foster an appreciation of both diversity and common humanity of the participants and encourage lasting friendships across boundaries of color, religion, gender and nationality.
Expand the participant's intellectual horizons through serious discussion of personal and world issues and by encouraging introspection; to heighten artistic sensibilities through guided exploration.
Develop leadership abilities and self-reliance by encouraging each participant to take on significant projects and responsibilities for the program and to gain experience in motivating others.
Offer and demonstrate by action a strong working philosophy of giving characterized by the belief that personal fulfillment flows from making lifelong commitments to serving society through the pursuit of humanitarian goals.
Our founder, George “Freddie” Jonas, strongly believed that “one cannot help but feel it is more important to teach someone how to think or approach a problem than to give the answers. There are so many problem areas in this ever-changing world that the answers of today may not fit the questions of tomorrow.”
In the spirit of this philosophy, the CRS program is rooted in an educational framework of experiential and social-emotional learning, which equips participants with lifelong leadership skills that are adaptive to cultural and societal changes.
Our Approach: Independence within Structure
Through our unique experiential learning model, participants are given considerable independence within the program structure to construct knowledge through meaningful hands-on experiences. At CRS, students are valued as intelligent, responsible, independent thinkers, each with unique lived cultural experiences. As such, significant value is placed on participants’ active voices and contributions, which serve as lessons in responsibility and foster a sense of ownership over the learning process.
While there is considerable freedom for the participants of the summer to shape their experience, there is a strong framework in place to provide the structure within which campers may safely explore new ideas, challenges and experiences. In its most basic form, experiential learning involves a recursive cycle of action and reflection based on a personal experience.
According to the Association for Experiential Learning, “experiential education is a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.”
Our summer counselors use a facilitative style of coaching and feedback to foster and model the reflective process and create a supportive space for young people to challenge themselves to take risks and learn through mistakes. Participants then use that feedback to experiment with new roles and behaviors that are informed by prior experiences.
Emotional Intelligence for Compassionate Leadership
In order to better support the development of responsible world leaders, our summer counselors are also trained in Social Emotional Learning (SEL) theory, which is a process that develops emotional and relational competencies in the following areas as described by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL):
Self-Awareness: ability to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses
Self-Management: self-control, stress management, and ability to motivate the self to achieve personal goals
Social Awareness: ability to understand that others come from diverse backgrounds and may hold different perspectives from our own
Relationship Skills: ability to effectively community and listen to others
Responsible Decision-Making: ability to make decisions that are based on ethical standards, safety, and social norms
The CRS program builds these competencies through a variety of experiences that can contribute to the development of a compassionate leadership style. Campers are given the opportunity to experience and interact with people, cultures and ideas that are entirely new to them, expanding their social and global awareness and building their understanding of both themselves and the world. They are given the space and the time to reflect on their own place and potential within their newly-formed community and to consider how their actions affect the experience of others. They are challenged to extend this thinking to the effect their actions can have in their home communities and in the world.
As alumna Nadine ‘16 says, “Seeing that I could choose to do things that could make the little world of Camp different made me realize that I was nearing adulthood and could change how things operated in the real world.”
Be it through working on a collaborative group project, attending a peer-led instruction, or developing cultural awareness through an evening discussion, CRS provides carefully planned opportunities for leadership experience; arranges for thoughtful, responsive staff to act as mentors; and designs a pace of delivery that allows time for critical reflection on experiences — time that is often missing from our lives. In the upcoming weeks, we will share more about how the CRS educational framework is implemented throughout our curriculum in support of our mission.
Excerpts of this article were derived from the Camp Rising Sun 2020 Curriculum Guide. To read a full copy of our curriculum, please email contact@lajf.org