The summer before senior year is a great opportunity to get ahead on developing foundational research and communication skills in addition to discovering who you are and what makes you tick. I've done some summer workshops in the past with students looking to improve their reading, writing, creativity, and critical thinking skills. This would be totally tailored to your student and would start with developing a profile for them on what sorts of topics peak his interest so we can get the most engagement.  We would conduct several exploratory exercises to identify the aspects of life that he has a natural curiosity for, whether they're things he's seen inside or outside of school. This is also a great opportunity to do some college major/future career exploration. The skills involved with independent research, note taking, essay writing, and argument building can then be developed more effectively as we complete different assignments that exploit his natural curiosity for the topics he's interested in exploring. Doesn't matter what it is - could be philosophy, religion, or could be rock climbing or surfing, whatever. 

Many students miss out on the ability to develop critical skills in high school due to the fact that they simply are not interested in the subjects they’re learning about.

• develop a personalized profile of the student based on a series of exploratory exercises designed to reveal the essence of their likes, dislikes, and where their natural curiosity lies.

  • topics can range from anything from philosophy and religion, to rock climbing, to computer programming.

    • the topic is not whats important - its the natural interest that the topic fosters which is essential to giving the student the motivation to fully engage in the assignment at hand so that we might have the opportunity to develop the critical language and thinking skills along the way

• use this time to explore college majors and potential career paths based on their natural interests and curiosities

• develop a curriculum of study based on their curiosity; assignments include poetry, formal essay writing, creative writing/fiction writing, persuasive essays, project/based learning, presentation development/speech writing, reading of different texts/annotation skills,

• Skills fostered along the way in addition to aforementioned writing skills: how to conduct independent research, how to take notes, how to budget time, how to construct an argument/apply logic

• other effects of the program: students gain/will walk away with: a better understanding of themselves and their interests, a list of several potential majors and several potential career paths that they might enjoy, an increase in self confidence in their ability to learn and express themselves,

• learn how to study: how to actually take down quality notes and learn from them. Memorization techniques, making notecards/quizlet (should this be a separate thing like EFC? or same thing? agenda book and google calendar etc.) - at the end of the summer have an assessment with a reward if you score a certain score (money back to the kid?) and use that opportunity to learn study skills