By Department Head – Mr. Michael Brown

This years communication class begins by focusing on helping teach youth principles that can help them with speech class but also other areas of their lives by helping them think through challenges that they face and understand the importance of discipline and deceitfulness of life’s anxieties. It stresses the importance of rising to meet life’s challenges (in this context, speaking in front of others) for the sake of setting a right example for others, emphasizing the camp goals of teaching purity and honor. Afterwards a blank speech outline will be given to students to serve as “training wheels” for their speech, where blanks can be simply filled in. I’ll speak first, then the students will be numbered from 1-16, more experienced speakers go first. Each speaker will then become the toastmaster for the next speaker. This uses class to create a situation where campers are forced to get to know one another better at the start of camp. After the speeches are completed we will prepare a foundation for the Tabletopics session, and try to help teach the campers a basic ritual question, along with learning to practice “active listening”. The plan is to use terms the campers are already familiar with to make learning simpler and to make it more memorable when camp ends. Terms such as “Posting” a question, and then “Replying” to the question, along with basic ritual questions which involve hitting the “Like” button, will hopefully bring to memory what was learned in class when they return home and use their social media or various other online forms of communication. The purpose of Tabletopics will be to teach students the important of learning to make conversation with others in order to teach the camp goal of showing concern and respect to other individuals.