Summer Program
PEER Summer Program is an intensive three-week camp that provides improvised rural Chinese high school students from 9th and 10th grade an extra-curricular learning experience with emphasis on independence, creativity, teamwork, and citizenship. It values liberal arts education as well as ideas on service-learning. PEER maintains a 1:4 teacher-student ratio to stimulate maximum interaction; volunteers are rigorously selected by application. Students are selected based on merit or demonstrated desire to learn.
Program components:
1) Thought-provoking Seminars
- Each Summer Program offers 6 to 10 small group seminars; Course size range from 5 to 12 students
- three hours every other day
- designed to resemble a discussion session or seminar course in a western college setting
- Students are free to “shop” from a selection of seminars but are required to commit to their chosen
- Seminars serve to broaden horizons for students’ understanding in a topic of their interest
Through close interaction and discussion-oriented erudition, students will learn from themselves, among each other, and directly from the relevant material to farewell their accepted role as passive receivers of knowledge.
Sample Seminars include: the History and Future of China Rural Development, Applying Game Theory in Real Life, Selective Reading of Ancient Greek: Agony and Purification, the Knowledge of Basic Medicine, The Art of the Film-On Chinese and Western Films
2) Collaborative Group Activities
- Students are divided into three to five groups to engage in competitive team activities
- Each group self-governs; advised by volunteers
- Activities require problem solving ability and teamwork from student
- Each activity always end with a reflection led by volunteers
Through intensive cooperation and competition, students explore their roles in team work and competitions. Ultimately, these activities require students to develop a variety of different skills from presentation, field work, hands-on ability, to leadership.
Specific activities, such as the final field research, ask students to understand at least one aspect of their local community and organize such knowledge into a presentable form; such activity calls for deeper reflection on the relationship between an individual—especially an underprivileged one—and his or her environment.
Sample creative team activities include: Photo Hunt, Domino Effect, Fashion Show in Newspaper, Paper-Bridge Building
3) Student-Initiated Projects
- Each student, under the guidance of a volunteer, must complete a presentable project before the end of the program
- Student can do the project individually or as a group
- Student applies skills learned from seminars and collaborative activities
- Project type varies: PEER memorabilia book, creative writing, research on local gambling, public health promotion, etc.
- Each student will be assigned to a mentor relevant to the subject of his choice and work with his mentor closely in two weeks’ time to complete this project.
The independent project will touch on a variety of skills; its primary purpose is to ask students to guide themselves to proactively make choices and realize their plans through a step-by-step planning.
Sample Independent Projects designed by the students include: Sociological research on Local Gambling Habits, Stuffed Animal Theater
4) Individual Mentorship Program
- Starting in our 2009 program, we paired up each student with a peer volunteer in our new mentorship program.
- The volunteer, in addition to guiding the student throughout the program as his adviser, maintains a long term relationship with the student through further communication.
- The unique one-on-one communication is new and will be priceless to some of our students.
- To facilitate the process, PEER has also kept student record with personalized note, students’ work, volunteers’ correspondence to keep track of the students’ development and the effectiveness of the program.
The purpose of the Mentorship Program is to provide both students and volunteers with the opportunities to have intimate personal communication and mutual learning. We realize that what students get most out of the summer program is the influence that the volunteers have on them. Thus positive and personal communication will provide the valuable chances to optimize this influence.
5) Service-Learning Trip (new in 2010)
- The service-learning trip aims to help both students and volunteers understand the current situation of Chinese rural areas.
- To facilitate student to reception, the trip is designed to pair students with volunteers.
- Based on such foundation, the service trip will have contact with local communities like rural enterprises, local school interactions, communicating with neighborhoods, or simply meaningful research on community related topics.
- Besides the purpose to get to know the students’ community, the skills obtained in the process of service trip will include communication skills, research skills and information aggregation and integration which will be applicable for their future work and study.
The purpose for this project is to assist students to have an insight into their local community which they may have some clearer ideas arises from the trip to better contribute to in the future. And we believe that this will also help our volunteers to get an insight of the Chinese rural community both within and outside of the schools.