Leadership at Summer Honors
The Summer Honors Program leadership curriculum includes our signature adventure-learning leadership components, reflection and discussion, and reflection essays on different leadership themes. Our leadership instructors engage students in reflection and growth in personal leadership, both in the academic classroom and through high-ropes course challenges at Pine Valley. We use reliable tools and assessments to create baselines that we use to develop strategies to move each student into growth areas unique to their skillsets.
When our participants think back on their Summer Honors experiences, an overwhelming majority comment about the leadership activities on the ropes courses at Pine Valley and the capstone rock climbing and rappelling event at Mt. Yonah. Many describe their experience as "life-changing" when reflecting on how much they learned about themselves, about collaborating with other exceptional team members, and about working with the leadership mentors at Summer Honors.
Adventures in Leadership
Adventure-learning means the curriculum is active, fun, and mostly outdoors. Leadership training requires an objective, a team and pressure to succeed. We design our activities to be as interesting and challenging as possible, with an outdoor adventure course approach to our leadership curriculum.
You will learn to cope with a variety of challenges and compete on several different types of teams. Our leadership trainers facilitate the events, manage risk, and evaluate team performance.
After the team debrief, trainers share their insights and evaluations to elevate and challenge both the team and the individuals.
The feedback from our leadership trainers will help you identify your personal leadership skills. We will then work through leadership sequences to help you leverage your talents and skills to achieve the best outcomes.
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 a team leader, organizing your team's effort to complete the obstacles. We take time for reflection after each leadership event, allowing you and your teammates to discuss the strategies that worked well and skills that need to be better developed.
With nearly every afternoon spent at Pine Valley, we have plenty of opportunities to have fun and grow as leaders. Between leadership events, you will also have time to relax and enjoy activities such as:
- Tubing
- Volleyball
- Zip Line
- Dangling Duo
- Leap of Faith
- Giant Swing
Mt. Yonah
Rock climbing and rappelling safely require teamwork and communication. We will teach you basic rock climbing skills on our ropes course and build 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! Climb on, Summer Honors!
