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Outside, it was summer
vacation. The sun shone. Inside, it was the All-Star
Futurekids Motivational Learning Camp for Boys and Girls
entering Grades 5-8, and Dan Miscisco was urging his
small group of grade-school kids to Catch the Spirit!
Somewhere, children played on a beach. Here, in a small,
cramped room in St David's United Church in West
Vancouver, children were learning to Make Learning Fun.
They were getting Motivated. They were grappling
Miscisco's challenge to tell him what "spirit" stood
for. "I know! I know!!" said 10-year old Neil Desai,
leaping to his feet. "S is for setting goals," P is for
Persistence. I is for Innovation. R is for Risk. I is
for Intensity. T is for...for "What would it be if
all your pals in a room helped you with a problem?"
Miscisco coached, upbeat. "Oh I know!" Neil
said. "T is
for Teamwork!" "Great! Give him a hand." Miscisco
exhorted. The group of about 30 kids gave him a hand.
Neil beamed. and so it goes in another day at
camp. No craftwork or canoeing for these kids. Foe one
week out of their summer these boys and girls spend
between 9 a.m. and noon learning how to cultivate a
positive outlook - Dale Carnegie for kids. It costs
their parents $99, a price that parents do not
apparently blanch at. The camps, which Miscisco started
three years ago, are full. The wonder of it is it took
him so long to come up with the idea. He has run
volleyball and basketball camps for 24 years (with about
1,000 campers enrolled), but motivation courses sees
like a natural for him. The 48 year old Miscisco - a
former elementary school principal, high school vice
principal and currently a teacher at Norgate
Community School in North Vancouver - is the kind
of guy whose favourite punctuation is the exclamation
mark, a guy who won't say "Hello" when he can say "Glad
to meet you!" He always smiles because smiling is
"positive" and "positive" is one of the ways to success
and happiness. He makes eye contact, offers a firm
handshake, waves his arms a lot. Miscisco is
irrepressible. "I'm like this all the time," he said.
"In high school, I was coaching basketball and during it
all I was using motivational techniques. And I started
getting requests to speak about them." He turns those
techniques, Miscisco said, on the classroom where all
too often he saw bored students. "The major philosophy
is to show the children that learning can be fun.
Enthusiasm is the key." the direction of the camp may be
inspirational, but it also takes the idea of success at
face value. It is strongly skewed towards money matters.
Every day, the campers hear a feature speaker. One this
week was Doug Anderson, a North Vancouver realtor with
Sussex Reality. Sussex is one of the camps' sponsors.
Anderson spoke about his "commandments for success."
Number One was: "You are always working for yourself. At
home, school, play, work, job career." Number two was:
"do the best you can do, be the best you can be". The
campers also heard a speaker from the North Shore Credit
Union, another camp sponsor. "they sent a person to talk
about money management," Miscisco said. "He talked about
the importance of being a wiser shopper, the importance
of starting a bank account early in life"
Shouldn't parents be teaching these skills to their
children, Miscisco is asked, and saving the pressures
of adulthood for them for a late date? "good
question. Unfortunately, the home for varying reasons is
not doing it to the degree it was done in the past.
They're (Parents) looking more and more for outside
resources. "we get a lot of parents who say my child is
doing very well in school but is very shy, who needs a
confidence build-up." "This is not a summer school. This
is an elected week that their parents and themselves have
decided to do to make them better people." Does it make
them better people? Ryan Clarke thinks so. He is a 13
year old Vancouver College student whose father is a
financial consultant and whose mother makes and sells
children's clothing. This was Ryan's second time at the
camp. "My mother forced me the first year, but it was
quite exciting. We learned how to set goals for
ourselves and strive forward." Last year, Ryan was
getting Bs and Cs at Vancouver College. This year, he's
pulling down As and Bs. And what goal has Ryan set for
himself? "I'd like to be a doctor," Ryan said, "or I'd
like to play some baseball in the major leagues." |
