Summer Writers' Camp

In October of 1982, I went to the fall conference of the Southeast Iowa Writing Project. These early events were held at a hotel on the highway near the Amanas. They later moved to the Marriott in downtown Des Moines. I liked the Amana site because it was much closer to home and not nearly as congested.

There were a number of impressing speakers at this event. Teachers, writers, area education agency consultants, and professors from the University of Iowa were part of the group. One was a Cedar Rapids teacher named Barb Scott.

Barb told about a unique project she and others had come up with. They patterned it after the sports camps that are offered for kids in the summer only it was a writers’ camp. They charged 4-6 graders $75 to be part of a weeklong half day camps. For some reason Barb had stopped doing the camps.

I was intrigued! I thought it was a viable option for Mt. Pleasant and a perfect way for me to earn some money in the summer time. I explored the option with the school district administration and got the go ahead to do it.

I decided to try to make it a positive supportive environment for young writers. I wanted the camp to be pressure free and comfortable. There would be no assignments and no grades. Kids would simply be encouraged to write and share their writing.

My plan was to charge $25 per person for the week and meet each day from 9:00-11:30 with some kind of snack time built in. In later years it was supported with Phase 3 dollars. I limited each group to no more than twelve students. We would have several computers available for those who wanted to write using them.

I sent flyers out through the district with a form to interested kids to sign up and pay the fee. I was inundated with interest and had enough to have two sessions. There was a waiting list of nearly 30 kids. I would have had more camps but just didn’t have the time with graduate school. From that point on every year we had far more kids interested than we could accommodate.

I gathered some unique things for the participants. Each would get some pencils, pens, paper and a Summer Writers’ Camp T-shirt. When each student registered they indicated their size and it was then given to them the first day of their week. That proved to be a good move and provided walking advertisement for the camps.

The camps continued for several years. Some weeks we had two going on at the same time and I hired another teacher to help with them. Heather helped me with several ones and was really great to have around.

I turned it over to others when I left the district and it continued for a few years and then died out. I felt bad that it didn’t continue but there really wasn’t much I could do about it. Maybe I’ll do something like that again someday?