A Camp of a Different Kind

Tucked away in a back corner of West Deptford Middle School, through a tangle of corridors and a canyon of stacked chairs, is a summer camp unlike most.

Instead of the thump of dodgeballs or warbling campfire songs, the dominant sound was the clatter of laptop keys and the scratch of pencil on paper, as nine students polished their work near the end of the two-week program Thursday.

As the morning wore on, campers worked through an author bio, bouncing ideas off each other and getting help from middle school teacher and Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project (PAWLP) fellow Fiona Paterna, who said the growth from the first day is obvious.

“They realize they have so much to say,” Paterna said.

The camp, part of the PAWLP Young Writers/Young Readers program, is in its fourth year in West Deptford, though nearly all of the campers this year were there for the first time.

It was an immersive environment for those rookie campers: all around them on the walls hung oversized sheets of paper, covered with favorite words, ideas for characters and settings, favorite books and ways to lead a story. In front of the arc of their desks, a Smartboard displayed an example author biography for Paterna as a jumping-off point. Behind them on tables were books and journals.

“It’s just words, words, words–reading them, writing them, why we love them,” Paterna said.

Camper Miranda Essig, who’s been at every camp since the start, talked about learning a wide variety of writing techniques, everything from similes to personification to–and this one brought out a grin–onomatopoeia.

“That’s my favorite word,” she said.

Essig said she likes writing poetry because of the freedom it offers, either to structure words and rhymes, or just do your own thing. More than that, she said writing gives her a way to express her feelings on the page.

And beyond the building blocks of plot and character and setting, one of the biggest hurdles Paterna said the students have to overcome is the intimidation factor of the blank notebook page or blank Word document–a common trait among writers of any age, but especially among the second- through sixth-graders in the camp.

Paterna encouraged the campers to keep their pens moving and not self-edit along the way, and helped reinforce that through freewriting sessions along the way.

“I think they’re too hard on themselves,” she said.

Fostering that love for writing and creativity pays off in the classroom down the line, as kids come out of the writing camp with all the tools they need, from grammar to how to lead off a story, but more importantly, Paterna said, it pays off in a belief in themselves.

“You can see even the weakest writer has more confidence now,” she said.

Down the line, there’s the possibility of expanding the program in West Deptford beyond just the district; the program at the middle school is the only one like it in South Jersey, and Paterna said stretching it beyond two weeks could make it even more valuable.

“It’s not enough time to get through everything–time has just flown by,” she said.