The Doug Noll Show

Teaching life skills to children is one of the keys to their success and more importantly to fostering collaborative and constructive attitudes towards conflict. We can have a peaceful society if we take the time to teach our kids how to do it. The skills include communication, problem solving, leadership, self-reflection, and emotional intelligence. The question is how to find the time and knowledge to impart these skills. Well, we can always turn to the experts for help. My guest on this edition of The Doug Noll Show is Bobbi DePorter, an accelerated learning expert, co-founder of SuperCamp, and President of Quantum Learning Network. Her website is supercamp.com. Bobbi explains that the SuperCamp program teaches children and teenagers life skills, leadership, and learning how to learn. The program starts with an examination of attitudes, beliefs, and curiosity. The teams are divided into teams of 12 and are given challenges to develop into mini-success moments. The teens are given opportunities to talk about themselves as they reflect on their personal interests and their dreams. In this process, they learn how to be themselves in an authentic, honest way.

The SuperCamp experience creates a safe, trusting environment. It encourages kids to observe, speak up, and participate. The kids are asked to examine their personal values and then talk about how those values will be shown to the world. Bobby tells us that the skills kids learn in SuperCamp persist throughout life. A caller says that his high school freshman teenager is not motivated to study. What can be done? Bobbi says that the trick is to ask the question, "What is in it for me?" or WIIFIM. The idea is to engage your teenager with simple questions to show how studying today links to future goals and aspirations. Simple things like getting college catalogs, and even pinning up college pennants can provide enough motivation to help teens. Another caller says that her teenager is extremely angry, probably because of the family stresses arising from the economy. Bobby advises her to become aware of what her teenager is hearing from friends, the Internet, and the media. Information comes to teens from a wide variety of sources, and teenagers often do not have the ability to discern what is true against what is false. Doug advises the listener to be authentic, non-judgmental, non-critical, and non-reactive. By being present, really present, with your teenager, you can learn what the source of the anger is. Bobbi and Doug agree that parents should not try to problem solve in these listening sessions.

A caller says that she has a 16-year-old son who lacks confidence in himself. Bobbi suggests that she try giving her teenager super-support moments. She can ask her teenager, “Can I give you a super-support moment?”That question would be followed with a short piece of praise for something positive that the team has done in the last day or so. Parents should notice the gifts of their children and comment on them. The key here is to be very specific about what it has been observed, and be very honest, authentic, and present. Doug points out that teens have great BS detectors and will immediately turn off if there is the slightest bit of insincerity or lack of presence. No one ever said that raising a teenager is easy work.

Doug asks Bobbi to talk about the eight keys of excellence taught in the SuperCamp programs. Bobby lists the keys as Integrity, Failure leads to success, Speaking with good purpose, This is it!, Commitment, Ownership, Flexibility, and Balance. Doug asks Bobbi about facilitators as SuperCamp. The facilitators are typically great teachers with a passion for helping kids. They must take 300 hours of training in the SuperCamp methods before they can become facilitators. They are trained in the quantum learning methods that Bobbi has developed over the past 20 years. Doug comments that facilitators probably get more out of teaching SuperCamp than the kids that attend, and Bobbi laughs and agrees.