Why WOW! Camp exists

I noticed it first on field trip days. I taught fourth grade, and every year I pushed my team for more of them. Three, then four, then five. I wanted my students in front of people who were passionate about something real. Cool people who do cool things.

Because on those days my students were different. The kid labeled "a handful" was the first one off the bus. The quiet one wouldn't stop asking questions.

Something woke up in them the moment learning stopped being a worksheet.

• A place
• A person
• A thing you could hold

I built it for fourteen kids

In the fall of 2019 I designed my first camp. Reptiles one day, cooking the next, and every expert a real one. Families signed up. I was counting the days.

You know that part. I still have the page I planned it on.

The email that changed everything

When I wrote the families to say camp was off, one mother wrote back. I've never forgotten it. Her daughter had already lost school, friends, teachers, and routine, and this camp was the one thing left on her calendar.

She wasn't asking for a refund. She was asking if there was any way it could still happen.

She used the word back at me twice, in an email about a camp that no longer existed. Reading it, something settled in me. A vow, honestly. The next chance I got, this camp was going to happen.

What fifteen years taught me

I've been a high school teacher, an elementary teacher, and a school librarian. Fifteen years of watching how kids actually learn versus how we've decided to measure it.

Somewhere in there I got certified in the Question Formulation Technique, and it named something I'd been fumbling toward.

The questions have to come from the kid, or they don't do any work.

The Institute later published a piece about what we do here, titled "WOW! Camp and the QFT: Learners Become the Heroes of their Own Journey." I still think their title says it better than I usually manage to.

• Certified educator, State of Georgia15+ years in education: high school, elementary classroom, and school librarian.
• Question Formulation Technique certifiedRight Question Institute, in partnership with Harvard University, National Geographic, and the Library of Congress.
• 200+ campers, 20+ camp weeksFive summers of camps directed and facilitated, plus Saturday sessions.
• Published by the Right Question Institute"WOW! Camp and the QFT: Learners Become the Heroes of their Own Journey" on rightquestion.org

What I got wrong

Plenty. Two of them changed how I run every week since.

Last week at Apex Gym I felt a breeze before the session, moved the whole workshop beside a building wall, and kept indoor space ready. It ran clean.

That's what five summers buys you.

The one I think about most

Emma. She built a great first version, then small frustrations snowballed. By Wednesday she hit a wall, ripped her board apart, left the pieces on the floor, and walked out to the sidewalk park.

My high school volunteers and I ran a rescue assembly. We went back through the video footage to reconstruct her original design, added support braces where it had failed, and hid it. When she came back I handed her a letter.

This doesn't have to be your final chapter.

from the letter, signed Mr. D

She kept that letter in her pocket like a treasure. She owned the rebuilt board, and by Friday she was glowing. At the library arcade she gave it away to a mother with two little kids.

I didn't plan any of that. It's just what you do when you've decided that a kid falling apart on a Wednesday is not the end of the story.

Five summers later

• 5summers running
• 20+camp weeks
• 200+kiddos

The same families come back summer after summer, and a lot of them are the kids school struggles to hold.

Last summer two campers aging out of Junior Bakers cornered me to pitch an intermediate camp for middle schoolers, complete with Cupcake Wars challenges. They were lobbying me. That's when you know it's working.

Sawyer rated his first day of camp a 2 out of 100. By Thursday he was locked in, testing his board, giving other kids feedback and taking theirs. He finished the week at an 8.

The number was never the point. He left seeing himself as a builder.

That's the whole job. That mother's email is still the reason we run.

Same rule at home

People ask if I ever switch it off. Honestly, no. Get them outside, hand them something real, then get out of the way and let them figure it out.

It's the same rule I run at camp, and I didn't invent it there. I just stopped making exceptions.