Picture courtesy of the Unionville Speech and Debate Program: Say it Like You Mean It Camp

Ian Coutinho ‘25

REPORTER

Throughout the summer of 2023, there were two main summer camps hosted by clubs run by Unionville High School students:The Say It Like You Mean It camp hosted by the Speech and Debate program took place from August 7 to August 11, and the Mathlympia camp hosted by School Math Club took place from August 14 to August 18.

Say It Like You Mean It has been running for many consecutive years as a fundraiser for the Speech and Debate Program at Unionville. “We had about 60 registrants,” said senior Felicity Chen, one of the overall captains of the Speech and Debate program. “We [host] rising fourth to rising ninth graders.”

The goal of this camp is to teach kids speech and debate skills; however, this year, it was more interactive. “We focused a lot on the speech and debate curriculum: like what are the elements of speech and what are the elements of debate; however, this year it was more interactive,” said Chen. “We [had] young kids that didn’t want to sit through slide shows every day.”

Planning the camp took many months. There were many camp materials that needed to be made. “Arjun and I were responsible for coming up with a schedule and… curriculum,” said Chen. “We gave [activities] to some event-specific captains because we wanted to involve them in the process because they're gonna be running [the camp] next year.”

There were many challenges that came with planning the Speech and Debate camp in previous years and in the current year. “Last year, one of the problems that we encountered was we started too late,” Chen said. “So…we started in March… We worked toward getting the curriculum and everything done by June.”

Along with the Speech and Debate program, Math Club hosted its own summer camp: Mathlympia.

Mathlympia’s goal is to prepare students for the upcoming math class they’re taking. “Our summer camp is focused on four subjects: pre-algebra, algebra one, geometry, and algebra two,” said senior Steffanie Jones, one of the leaders of Math Club.

The camp was founded around three years ago as a fundraiser for the Math Club. “[The camp serves] as a fundraiser for math club for competitions during the year,” said Jones. “[It was created] because we wanted a fundraiser and something to promote Math Club…we hadn't had a lot of opportunities to do community outreach and we wanted to start.” 

The club gathers mentors mainly from the high school. “The [Math Club] presidents make a form and send it out, and based on the responses we coordinate what days [we] will come in on and like what subjects [mentors will] teach,” said Jones. “So, it's really about who's available and the volunteer hours.”

This year was the first year the camp was hosted in person since COVID-19. “COVID was very different. We had [the camp] on Zoom and it was a lot harder to split the students into groups based on their level,” said Jones. “And then this past year, we did it a little bit differently. We did have it in person and we split up the kids based on pre-algebra, algebra, geometry, and algebra two so we could give them specific content all week.”

This year, the camp succeeded in its goal of inspiring students to enjoy math. “We've had parents tell us how much their kids loved it. We had homeschooled kids tell us how much it looks like a good opportunity for them to socialize, see other kids, and learn,” said Jones. These two camps have been a UHS tradition for many years and they will continue to be a good way for clubs to do outreach, fundraise, and have fun.