Leadership at Summer Honors

The Summer Honors Program leadership curriculum includes our signature adventure-learning leadership components, classroom discussions and two reflection essays on different leadership topics. In the classroom, our leadership instructors use the characters from popular media such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and 24. Learn about your personal leadership styles and the strengths and weaknesses of those styles.

Adventures in Leadership

Adventure-learning means the curriculum is active, fun and outdoors. Leadership training requires an objective, a team and pressure. We keep the activities as interesting and challenging as possible with an outdoors adventure course approach to our leadership curriculum.

You will learn to cope with a variety of challenges and compete on several different teams. Our leadership trainers facilitate the events, manage risk, and evaluate your team's performance. After the team debrief, trainers share their insights and evaluations.

The feedback from our leadership trainers will help you identify your personal leadership gifts and leverage your talents and skills.

Pine Valley

We turn the Pine Valley ropes courses into leadership labs, a series of obstacles that your team must overcome. On both high and low ropes elements, scored leadership events allow teams to work together, brainstorm, solve problems and practice leadership. Learning leadership requires experiencing it, and you will get your turn as team leader, organizing your team's effort to complete the obstacles. We take time for reflection after each scored leadership event, allowing you and your teammates to discuss the strategies that worked well and skills that need to be better developed.

Summer Honors has fun events at Pine Valley. With nearly every afternoon spent at Pine Valley, we have plenty of time for learning leadership and enjoying ourselves, too. Between leadership events you will have opportunities to relax and time to enjoy:

Tubing
Volleyball
Zip Line

Dangle Due
Leap of Faith
Giant Swing

When participants reflect upon their Summer Honors experiences, an overwhelming majority talk about leadership events on the ropes courses at Pine Valley, and the capstone rock climbing and rappelling event at Mt. Yonah.

Looking back, many of our participants use the words "life changing" to describe how much they learned about themselves and about working with other talented team members and the leadership mentors at Summer Honors.

It's been life changing

Summer Honor Participants

Mt. Yonah

Rock climbing and rappelling safely require teamwork and communication. We will teach you basic rock climbing skills on our ropes course and builds toward a capstone adventure: hiking, climbing and rappelling at Mt. Yonah. Along the way, you will overcome obstacles with your team and learn how to work together for maximum safety and maximum fun!

You can't climb alone!