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1. Does my child need to know Spanish to attend?
2. Is financial help available?
3. Who are your staff? How can I be sure about the
quality of the care my child will receive?
4. What medical assistance is available?
5. What do the villagers do during the day?
6. Can I call my child? How can I communicate with
my child?
7. Can I drop by the camp?
8. My child has never been away, and I am concerned
about how he or she would feel.
9. Will my child speak Spanish after the camp?
10. Is the camp accredited?
No. We have various levels of instruction available, depending on the
level of proficiency of the child.
Yes. Limited scholarships based on academic achievement and financial
need are available. Please send us a recommendation letter from the child's
school principal and a copy of your last year's tax return along with
your registration. We must receive these materials by June 1 in order
to consider your application. We also encourage families to seek assistance
of local service clubs.
All our teachers are either certified teachers of Spanish or hold a MA
in Spanish. Most of our counselors are MSSU students majoring in Spanish
with at least four semesters of Spanish. Almost all our staff members
either have lived in a Spanish-speaking country or are native speakers
of Spanish, and they bring first-hand knowledge about the countries to
share with villagers.
The statistics shown below attest to the quality of personal attention
in the Villa:
Staff to camper ratio: 1:4
Staff over 18 years old: 87% (all staff is over 16)
Staff return rate (not counting former villagers and the director): 73.9%
Villagers return rate: over 40%.
Our primary concern is the well being of each child, and the low staff-per-camper
ratio allows us to provide plenty of personal attention and instruction
to each camper. All our staff members undergo a thorough training that
lasts 3 days. We check all references and conduct personal interviews.
In most of the cases we have prior knowledge of our counselors, because
they are or have been our students. We pride ourselves on the quality
of our camp.
We strive to provide a safe environment in which injury or illness is
minimized. A nurse is available on campus from 7:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.
Monday through Thursday and is available on call for the rest of the time.
All campers are covered under camp accident insurance, underwritten by
Harford Life Insurance Company, which has a $50.00 deductible. If a child
gets a common cold, falling sick in the middle of the night, and the nurse
does not recommend taking the child to a hospital and does not see the
situation as a medical emergency, we usually do not notify parents immediately,
but rather wait until the next day. If you would like to be notified immediately
even in this situation, please let us know. We notify parents immediately
in case of any medical emergency.
Prescriptions that villagers bring with them and take on a regular basis
are administered by counselors.
Staff members undergo training in emergencies procedures and communication,
child abuse prevention, and response procedures in such situation as asthma
attacks, anaphylactic shock, etc.
Our villagers are very busy, and even what is called "free time"
is a time filled with well-structured activities. Please check our Daily
Schedule for more details.
We strongly discourage phone calls. First, it is difficult from a practical
point of view: there are a limited number of phones in the residence hall
for a very large number of children who have very little free time. Second,
it takes time for a child to adjust to being away, and a call might disrupt
the adjustment process. We have noticed that without phone calls home,
the homesickness has decreased tremendously.
We suggest that you take this as an opportunity to communicate with your
child through writing, using either letters, postcards, or the Internet.
You can give your child pre-addressed, stamped envelopes or postcards
to facilitate the communication. Send your child a card or letter even
before the Village begins so that your child will receive it at the very
beginning of the camp. Your camper can also practice keyboarding and e-mail
use skills through access to the state-of-the-art computer lab and the
Internet.
We strongly discourage parental visits to the camp. Our primary reason
is that they disrupt activities in which the child is participating and
hinder the child's adjustment to the Villa. As our daily schedule shows,
villagers are very busy, and we see it as one of the ways to prevent them
from feeling homesick. We see this being away experience as a step in
the child's growing and maturing process, as an opportunity to develop
autonomy.
Another reason we discourage parental visits is to avoid a possibility
of violating legal custody issues in cases where there are parental disputes.
We provide on-line communication with villagers and pictures of on-going
activities. Parents have a chance to visit facilities during the check-in
and after the closing program.
This is a great opportunity for your child to start developing her or
his independence in a safe, well-structured and well-supervised environment.
Our counselors are trained in recognizing the signs of homesickness and
helping children to adjust to the new environment and enjoying the company
of other villagers. We provide excellent personal attention to every villager.
If the child, however, experiences real difficulty adjusting, we will
notify parents and might suggest changing from residential to day camp.
Please do not expect a miracle. Nobody can learn to speak a foreign language
after 5 days. Learning a foreign language is a long process, and you have
made an excellent decision by starting early, because children have the
greatest ability to learn and excel in a foreign language. Research shows
that children who start early have a better chance in achieving proficiency.
Foreign language study can increase the child's capacity for critical
and creative thinking. Children who study a second language show greater
cognitive development in such areas as mental flexibility, creativity,
tolerance, and higher-order thinking skills.
No. The American Camping Association accredits "a sustained experience
which provides a creative, recreational, and educational opportunity in
group living in the outdoors. […] 'Outdoors' requires utilizing
the outdoors and the natural environment as a principal setting for activities
[…]" We do not provide living in the outdoors in this sense
and, therefore, do not qualify for their accreditation. Our program is
primarily academic, and we use classroom space as well as other university
facilities such as computer lab and language lab as our main setting.
We do, however, follow the American Camping Association's guidelines,
and even exceed their standards in such areas as staff-per-camper ratio
and staff return rate.
The Missouri Department of Education accredits school districts for summer
schools, not the institutions of higher education, and it requires a minimum
of 120 hours of instruction, which we cannot give in 5 days. For these
reasons, we cannot receive accreditation from these two institutions.
However, we are very proud about the quality of our program, and its growth
attests to that.
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