Mitchell-Buncombe Nonprofits Partner for WNC Children

This article was originally published in local papers.

Spruce Pine, North Carolina – Camp Spring Creek of Mitchell County and OpenDoors of Asheville join forces to make a difference in the lives of four Western North Carolina children.

This summer, four Buncombe County children connected through OpenDoors of Asheville were awarded full scholarships to attend Camp Spring Creek, an academic and recreational camp focusing on literacy, language, and math skills. Located in Bakersville, the camp has served children from WNC and around the world for 11 years and is one of only three residential camps in the United States accredited by the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and Educators. OpenDoors connects local children living in multi-generational poverty with enrichment and education opportunities to help break the cycle of poverty. The organizations teamed up to provide jointly-funded scholarships made possible through private donations, enabling four children from Buncombe County to attend Camp Spring Creek for four weeks at a total value of $29,920.

According to Jennifer Ramming, Executive Director of OpenDoors, the nonprofit currently partners with 13 Asheville city schools for 48 students, more than 2/3 of whom have some type of language-based learning difference and suffer greatly from “summer slide.” The Orton Gillingham methodology offered at Camp Spring Creek provides daily, one-on-one, multisensory tutoring sessions for each camper that is both diagnostic and prescriptive. “The students were assessed and progressed in areas such as phonemic awareness, decoding, encoding, writing mechanics and study habits,” says Ramming. “There was also a wonderful section on the report [from Camp Spring Creek] for each child called ‘Recommendations’ that gives us a road map for how to continue our student’s success in partnership with the teachers and specialists during the upcoming school year.”

Co-founder of Camp Spring Creek Susie van der Vorst is overjoyed about the partnership. “The kids from OpenDoors had the most integrity and the best manners of any campers I’ve ever seen,” she says. ”All the OpenDoors children were an asset to our program and taught us as much as we taught them. Everyone fit right in and it was great to see the OpenDoors kids getting to know the other campers and branching out to form friendships of their own.”

As a part of their study hall sessions at Camp Spring Creek, campers write letters home. The OpenDoors campers also wrote thank you letters to “sponsors” whose donations made the scholarships possible. “I am a better reader now and I met new people,” wrote one 7th grade child, “Thank you for helping me come here.” Another camper, age 10, wrote: “My reading is improving. My tutor is cool and she taught me cursive. I have made lots of friends here and some of them are from different places.” Their letters also included positive responses to new experiences they had at camp, such as whitewater rafting, paintball, swimming lessons, and woodshop.

For more information about services from OpenDoors, residents of Buncombe County can call 828-777-1135 or visit opendoorsasheville.org. For information on teacher training, camp, or tutoring opportunities through Camp Spring Creek, call 828-766-5032 or visit www.campspringcreek.org.

In Their Own Words: Scholarship Sponsor Thank You's

This summer, Camp Spring Creek and OpenDoors of Asheville provided 4 jointly-funded full scholarships for 4 Buncombe County children to attend camp for a month. Learn more about OpenDoors by reviewing our inspiring interview with Executive Director Jennifer Ramming here. Meantime, enjoy these camper thank you letters: Dear Sponsor,

Thank you for helping me to go to camp. I love to go camping now. I learned how to read better. Also, tapping helps with my spelling. I did not know that you could make so many things out of wood. Thank you so much.

Love,

[Female camper, 11 years old]

Dear Sponsor,

Thank you for my time at camp. I have made lots of friends and some of them are from different places. My tutor is cool and she taught me cursive. We learn new things everyday. My reading is improving and my tutor is making reading a lot easier and all this happened because of OpenDoors and Camp Spring Creek.

Love,

[Female camper, 10 years old]

Dear Sponsor,

Thank you for helping me come here. I am having so much fun at this camp. I'm really glad. I came to do whitewater rafting at this camp. I am a better reader now and I met new people. Thank you.

Love,

[Male camper, 10 years old]

Congrats!

Congratulations to the wonderful group of participants

who completed this fall's Associate Level Training!

It's been an incredible 10 days. Three cheers!

In Their Own Words: Tyler & his Mom

This summer, Tyler attended camp full time for six weeks on a scholarship funded by Rotary Club and Camp Spring Creek, among other sources. Tyler is now in 7th grade. His mother, Rebecca, had this to say about her son's experience: "I feel very blessed that Tyler got to go to camp. It really changed not just his reading ability, but also his confidence and attitude about learning. Now he’s more motivated and eager to learn because he has the tools he needs. He wants to go back to Camp Spring Creek every year. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience for him...As far as Tyler’s opinion: he loved camp. When he got home, he told me wanted to go back to camp. He said he hopes to go again next year and eventually help out at Camp Spring Creek and be able to help other kids once he learns enough. He was really happy that he got the help that he needed to assist him with school."

Meet Wendy

Camp Spring Creek has a new Office Manager and Bookkeeper! We are happy to introduce you to Wendy Woody, originally from Burnsville and very happy to be working with us. Wendy will complete her Associate Degree in Business Administration from Mayland Community College this December, and has consistently earned a 4.0 GPA.

Prior to working for Camp Spring Creek, she was a Sales Associate at Cato in Spruce Pine and a tutor at Mayland for students enrolled in business classes. "It was a really busy schedule on top of school," Wendy says, adding that she is grateful to have a single employer now as she focuses on finishing her degree. Wendy is also mother to two sweet young girls, Madelyn age 3 and Mackenzie age 1.

Wendy has been working for Camp Spring Creek for about a month and is already putting her delightful demeanor and hard skills to work. "I'm using a little bit of what I've learned in my degree every day," she says. "Probably the biggest thing I've used so far is Quickbooks and Accounting, but I'm learning more and more every week."

Welcome--we're so happy to have you!

Interview: Jennifer Ramming

Today's interview features Jennifer Ramming, co-founder and director of OpenDoors of Asheville. Camp Spring Creek has partnered with Open Doors in the past (read more) and, this summer, four of our campers came to us through this partnership.

From the OpenDoors website: OpenDoors of Asheville connects local children living in multi-generational poverty with an active, individualized network of support, enrichment and education opportunities.  At OpenDoors, we invest in kids who live in poverty so they will learn to invest in themselves and in the end, break the cycle of poverty for themselves and for our community.

Camp Spring Creek: Briefly tell us about how you found yourself in the line of work you're in.

Jennifer Ramming: I was a volunteer in my son's class when he was in the 3rd grade. There were a small group of boys who could not read and the teacher asked me to work with them so that they would stop disrupting the class. They were eager to learn but couldn't access the material. I started to learn about dyslexia through a friend who knew one of the boys. That friend was Dr. Marcy Sirkin who owns the Arden Reading Clinic. She connected me with another colleague, Dr. Deirdre Christy, who assessed this boy and found him to be severely dyslexic and above average IQ. The school assessment showed that he was low IQ. Everyone was surprised! That initial relationship progressed organically over a couple of years as my oldest son’s friendship grew with this boy and his mother and I parented our boys, often together. We became extended family, like you might with a neighbor, though we actually live 10 miles apart. It was a conscious choice, but made possible because our kids were in class together and played on sports teams together. We created an intentional community around this family. This is a case study, which became a model of our school based community outreach and support that my co-founders and I replicated when we officially founded OpenDoors.

CSC: At the end of the day, what is it about OpenDoors of Asheville that puts a smile on your face and motivates you to continue all of the hard work? If you have a specific memory or anecdote to share, we would like to hear that.

JR: There are so many moments of shining joy and hope! One day a middle school boy who I didn't know well, but was the brother of a current OpenDoors student, jumped into the front seat of my car and looked at me earnestly and said, "I want to get an education." He was dead serious, but he was very much in trouble at his public middle school and was thought to be a low performer. It was an incredible insight into what turned out to be quite a gifted profile. This mental picture motivates me every day when I advocate for kids who are labelled as "behavior problems" or having "low ability." I instinctively fight for them as if they were my own. I have a natural propensity to believe that all children have a great deal of potential and I'm grateful for the few teachers I had in my life who did this for me. I'd like to think that I had a lot of potential too, but I was not a successful student until I was in high school.

CSC: Can you tell us about about a need in your community that OpenDoors of Asheville meets which, without donor funding, would otherwise go unmet?

JR: OpenDoors provides a individualized network of support that no other non-profit I know about in the region provides. This includes so many things that many affluent people take for granted, such as transportation, scholarships, Internet access, tutoring, phone service, extracurricular fees and equipment, etc. We use our social and professional networks to help OpenDoors families. Most of the team leaders can make a couple of phone calls to co-workers, friends and neighbors who are attorneys, accountants, or doctors, for example, and make connections that would not be as easy for OpenDoors parents. We use middle class cultural currency and connections to bring resources to the table. We invest in children so that they can learn to invest in themselves.

CSC: In a sky's-the-limit, perfect-wish-world, ten years from now, what would OpenDoors of Asheville look like?

JR: It would be a sustainable, seasoned organization that had a sense of community in its alumni. I hope that many of these kids will go on to be professionals and experts in their fields of interest and make Asheville a better place to live for all of us. We are only limited by our financial and human resources. The sky is truly the limit with these kids.

To learn even more about OpenDoors, check out these full-length articles: Asheville Citizen-Times and The Laurel of Asheville.

In His Own Words: Zachary

This summer, camper Zachary participated in our Orton-Gillingham/Camp Counselor pilot program designed to benefit Mitchell County children. For four weeks, Zachary came to camp for 2 hours each day: one hour spent with his OG tutor and another hour spent participating in camp activities. "This was Zachary's first time attending a camp like this," said his mother Meredith, "and before it started he was already looking forward to it. He finished and said he hopes to return. We are so grateful and appreciative of the opportunity he was given.” Zachary, who is in 4th grade, worked with Lilja, who was a trained OG tutor and our camp lifeguard. “I had a great time," he said. "I learned a lot of stuff. I even learned how to swim.” Zachary also came home raving about his experiences in Woodshop and trying out the zip-line.

When asked about the kinds of changes Meredith noticed in her son, she had this to say: “I was very impressed with the progress that he made in such a short period of time. I was very excited when I saw the final report that Lilja wrote up and printed out. Self-confidence was an issue with our son and I was concerned about his ability to read fluently. I definitely noticed a difference in his confidence as a reader since attending camp.”

Part of Camp Spring Creek's mission is to make the tutoring and camp experience accessible to even more children from Western North Carolina, whether through grant or donor funding. This pilot program marks a big step in the right direction and we are so excited to be expanding our "local family" in this way. To spotlight what makes life so great here, we're also asking each of our local families what it is they love about living in WNC. Meredith says, "Number one, I love the beauty of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Appalachian Mountains. Also, the kindness that is displayed among the people that live here is just remarkable. Sometimes, when you go to a bigger city, there’s not necessarily a colder feel, but people just don’t know each other like they do when they live in a smaller town. This is home to us.”

Ben's Story

Ben is 10 years old and first attended Camp Spring Creek in 2012. In 2013, he and his family were delighted that he would be able to come back. Unfortunately, a change of plans in late spring prevented Ben from being able to attend. Ben and his family decided make his camp spot available to a Western North Carolina child. The silver lining is that, not only did a Mitchell County child get to experience Camp Spring Creek for the first time, but Ben will be able to return next summer. We can't wait to give him a warm welcome back!

Of his experience at camp last year, his mother shared: "Ben had a really great time. It was important for us to find a camp where he could continue the academic work he focused on during the school year, but still also be a kid. The thing we noticed the most was that his handwriting had vastly improved. He also gained a lot of confidence in reading."

Appreciation Day

This post is a press release written for local newspapers, as well as our worldwide blog readership.

Camp Spring Creek Outreach Center, a non-profit organization in Mitchell County, invited approximately 50 Western North Carolina principals, administrators, teachers, and assistants to their annual Appreciation Day.

Over the past several years, Camp Spring Creek has trained 25 WNC teachers and assistants in the Orton-Gillingham philosophy. Thanks to grants funded by the Samuel L. Phillips Foundation, Walmart State Giving Fund, Janirve Foundation, and Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, 11 Mitchell County teachers or assistants received free Associate Level Training. Seven educators from Yancey County and 6 from Avery County were also trained. The materials and training amounted to more than $75,000 in grant funds.

The Orton-Gillingham philosophy, or OG, as it is commonly called, uses a language-based, multisensory approach to tutoring that relies on a student’s problem-solving and creative thinking skills to circumvent processing weaknesses. Although OG is most commonly used for children with dyslexia, the method has been successfully incorporated into learning environments for students of all styles and abilities.

During Appreciation Day, Camp Spring Creek directors and founders Steve and Susie van der Vorst offered a child-free afternoon for guests to eat, swim, and share teaching ideas. Guests were also able to win free OG classroom games, or make their own teaching materials at the camp.

Harlem Shake Meets Camp Spring Creek

Ladies and Gentlemen....drums, please... The Harlem Shake video has finally been accessed from our "archives" and is ready for public viewing. Help us celebrate the conclusion of another successful summer season at Camp Spring Creek by getting your groove on:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OmHx0LvnNk&w=560&h=315]

We're taking a week off (the blog). But posts will resume with a twice weekly schedule (occasional exceptions) next week. Thanks, as always, for following along!

Summer Summary: Photo Collage

Week 8 Reflections

The end of summer is always such a bittersweet time of year for us at Camp Spring Creek. We've said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch. We've cleaned and swept and cleaned some more. We've taken our last group photos and squeezed Mimi one last time (well, you guys did--we get to live with her all year!). But before all that, we did stick to business and wrap a few things up during Week 8 with:

• Final testing
• Making paste paper journals
• Finishing up all our clay and woodshop projects

Selecting a Room Inspection winner daily (instead of at the end of the week) and rewarding them with freezy pops at lunchtime.

By now, our campers have headed down new paths...back home, readying for a new school year, dreaming of next summer. Our hearts are with you and please call or email us at any time!

Week 8 Photo Collage

Fall Training Opportunity

We are so excited to announce that we'll be offering the Orton-Gillingham 70-hour Associate Level Training course this fall out at Camp Spring Creek. Training on-site during the beautiful fall months is an incredible opportunity! "We're going to live, eat, and breath it," says camp co-director and co-founder Susie van der Vorst. Training includes housing at the camp and lovely meals prepared by our chefs. Susie is one of just a small number of people in the country who is allowed to officially train and certify others in OG methods. More info about the September 20-30 training can be found here, and don't wait...there are only a few spots left! If you're curious about how OG training works, check out this post and video from last spring's training that we offered at our Outreach Center in Spruce Pine. Susie is available by phone or email with any questions (though it may take a day to respond, as we're entering the final week of camp). For those of you with friends and family in the education field near or far, please share this post with them and help spread the word!

Week 7 Reflections

We're in the home stretch of summer here at Camp Spring Creek and so much has happened, at times it feels like a blur. We said goodbye to campers Miles and Matthew last week and miss them both. Meanwhile, CIT Gregg (who came at the midpoint of summer), has been enjoying his new role and is thrilled that he got to overlap a little bit with Marco, who was our CIT for the first half of summer. These two first met a Camp Spring Creek as campers and have known each other for years! Greg has been helping out in the boy's cabins, assisting with lifeguarding, kitchen prep, and sometimes even woodshop and art. "I’ve been taking a lot of kids down to breakfast in the morning or helping them get ready for bed at night," Greg said. "I also make sure they brush their teeth and make their beds right."

Here's the run down of last week's news:

• Rain, rain, and more rain. But still, we swim! We hike! We laugh!
• Campers have been making ceramic mugs and vases in Art class and finishing up bird houses, doll houses, and bird feeders in the Woodshop.
• We changed our Outdoors Class around a bit. Rather than having this class peppered throughout the day with small groups of campers, we now enjoy Outdoor Class together. For the final period of classes, everyone in camp gathers and chooses from several outdoor options, giving them exposure to more fun activities over a longer span of time. Lately, we've been offering rock climbing, paintballing, water polo, hiking, and basic lifeguarding skills. After Outdoor Class, everyone piles inside for Study Hall to wind down our day before dinnertime.
• Epic games of Capture the Flag still continue...
• And our "Announcements" song has gotten a makeover. We still have 7 verses going (one for every week of camp), but we've changed them up a bit and moved things around to keep it interesting. Phew! Just singing the song is a workout in and of itself!
• This weekend we camped at the McDowell Nature Preserve, went wild with whitewater rafting, and even experimented with ziplining and mega jumping. Who knew there we so many different ways to have a roarin' good time--and with good friends, too!
• Sunday, everyone went on the infamous hike to the top of the property, which involves 2-3 hours of brave bushwhacking through nettles and brambles (it's fun, we swear!). Up top, we took a break, then took the easy way home down an old logging road. Great job, everyone! Time to hit the showers!
• Sunday night concluded with an impromptu game of poker between the boys' cabins. In the end, the winning camper earned his prize by deciding that the boys in the losing cabin would make his bed every morning for an entire week!
• Another bonus has been Chef Kevin and Nurse Kelly's sweet, lab puppy named Oliver ("Ollie" for short). Mimi's a giant compared to this lil' pup but we have a feeling that by next summer, these two will be unstoppable giants. It's been delightful to watch them "growing up" together at camp this summer and we'll try to post a photo soon.

Week 7 Photo Collage

Week 6 Reflections

We're a day late getting last week's "reflections" to you, but hopefully camp photographer Anina van der Vorst's slide show kept you going while we were busy having fun. Here's the skinny on last week's adventures:

• Our Trail of Pages is epic! During Week 6 of camp we read a total of 3,307 pages and 52 books!
• Cabin Inspection continues to be a healthy rivalry. Week 6 went to the Senior Boys cabin and they haven't decided yet what they want their "treat" to be, but they're considering paintball.
• We said our tearful goodbyes to tutor Chris, C.I.T. Marco, and campers Ana, Olivia, and Tyler last week. Safe travels home and keep us close to your hearts. We miss you already!
• Buddy Beads have been effusive lately! For those who don't know, each day after lunch we take a moment to offer "Buddy Beads" to someone special. If someone made your day, or impressed you, or went out of their way to do extra work, or even just made you smile and gave you a hug at the right time, you can celebrate that person (camper, staff, tutor, counselor - even Mimi!) by offering them a "Buddy Bead" after lunch. You raise your hand and tell everyone in camp about the special act that someone did, and they get a bead and a round of applause.
• It's also book mania here...in particular, camper Miles and his tutor are totally hooked on Warrior's Apprentice, a novel. Camper Janusz can't keep his nose out of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Of course, both stopped long enough to partake in last weekend's adventures...
• On Friday, we had an all-camp dance with a "Black & White" theme.
• Saturday, we hiked to Wilson's Creek with high hopes of the great, natural swimming holes there. However, a last minute downpour saw the already high waters rise up and over the ledge we like to sit on (that's 4 feet higher than normal!), so we were rained out of the swimming hole. We made the best of it on the natural rock slides down into a lower, deep pool, however, and then hiked our wet selves back to the vans.
• Sunday, we went to Tom's Creek and everyone washed their hair in the waterfall! We concluded our weekend with bowling at Lightning Lanes and our weekly ice cream sundaes, before ending with study hall.
• Everyone continues to get different, private tutoring sessions with Orton-Gillingham methods--so it's difficult to explain who is doing what. Suffice it to say that everyone is still tapping for sounds and chunking for syllables, an exercise they'll take home with them and hopefully practice throughout the school year.
• Last but not least: LETTERS! Some of the kids have started writing letters to the parents of their counselors and sending them all over the world. A few have even been at camp long enough to receive letters in reply. There's just barely enough time left to get real mail to us at camp, so send away! (If for some reason a camper misses your mail, we'll gladly forward it.)

Week 6 Photo Collage

Week 5 Reflections

Rain, rain, and more rain! Even if you don't live in this part of the United States, there's a good chance you've been hearing weather news broadcasts about the record-breaking precipitation we've experienced. Last week, we had one evening that wasn't pouring down...thankfully, our spirits aren't down at all. The "new" group of campers who arrived at the mid-point of summer have fit right into the routine and are cruising along without missing a beat. Here's a recap of some of last week's highlights:

• The great thing about the rain is that we're getting really creative with ways to spend our time indoors. We've had Bingo night and board game night already! The skies did part once this week, and we snuck in a rousing outdoor game of Capture the Flag.
• It's been a bit too wet to mow and weed whack, so Olson has been keeping busy moving things around with the tractor and doing trash runs to town.
• The Harlem Shake found its way to...the Camp Spring Creek pool. There's rumor of a video, but with no Internet access at the camp and closed roads in town, getting to a wi-fi connection strong enough for video is a bit tricky this summer, so you'll have to use your imagination on this one...
• Lilja is seeing great progress in the pool with daily swimming lessons. There has even been an early morning swim crew that meets from 6-6:30am for a little exercise. Way to go, campers!
• Those who aren't swimming first thing in the morning have been going on runs along one of the wooded trails...and a few even race down the gravel road on the mountain (and back up) to get their hearts going as the sun rises. Wow!
• We started telling a joke a day at breakfast and the campers have been cracking up at their own, cleverly created dyslexia jokes. Here's one from a few days ago: "Somebody just heard that ten out of two people have numerical dyslexia..."
• On Friday, we headed to Parkway Playhouse for some live theatre and received four compliments on the campers' polite behavior.
• We spent Saturday at Lake James, hosted by camper Emily's family (they are so gracious!). We played and splashed all day long, doing every kind of water sport you can imagine: paddle boarding, paddle boating, wake boarding, you name it! We had lunch and dinner together on the lake, and came home delightfully exhausted.
• On Sunday, we faced another huge downpour, so we drove to town to catch up on laundry (no use using the clotheslines!). Some campers decided to stay at camp and bake cookies with Chef Kevin. The evening ended with movie night and a slide show by camp photographer, Nina van der Vorst.
• Last but not least, Mimi the camp dog looked like a tie-dye t-shirt all week because, as we were painting the walls of the new dance area, she kept rubbing up against the wet paint.

Returning Campers Speak

We took a moment to talk to returning campers Ana and Emily. Here's what they had to say about Camp Spring Creek: What makes you want to come back to Camp Spring Creek and why?

Ana: I want to come back because it helps me learn and it is so much fun.

Emily: It's so much fun at camp and I learn so much.

What is something that you worried about before you came to camp, that you no longer have to worry about?

Ana: That I would not be good at school work and that I would not make friends.

Emily: I had a lot of stress related to school and camp helped me. I don’t have that as much now.

When you're back at home and you think about all your fun memories from camp, what comes to mind most often? Describe that memory:

Ana: My favorite memory is when we went to the waterfalls, played capture the flag, and other activities.

Emily: I love making new friends and having great experiences.