Basic Approach to Finding and Starting Bridge Camps in Your Area
Yes, you would like to teach bridge as a mini-day camp, an overnight camp or as a special activity in an established camp in your area. But where or how do you get started?
Probably the best location for summer camps is at local universities and colleges. Other potential locations will include high schools, libraries, boy’s and girl’s clubs, 4H’s, community centers and churches. Many of the camps held at colleges and universities are designed for “gifted” students or students who plan to attend college in the near future.
At this point, it is unlikely that you will find an established camp in your area that actually has bridge as part of its program. Therefore, you are going to have to convince camp officials to run a program or to let you help them run a program.
There is great news however! The ACBL will fully support you in your endeavors! Read on to learn some basic steps you can take to locate a place to start a bridge camp and some ideas on how to sell the idea of a bridge camp to the place you have selected.
1) Search the internet! There are almost too many camps to list for any given area if one uses the right search words in a search engine such as Google. Some good word combinations to search for in addition to “camp” include “math,” “science,” “chess,” “computer,” “gifted, “games” and …………….. Locations that already have chess, math or an advanced math program will be prime candidates for a bridge program.
2) Search College Sites! Many colleges have summer programs and camps that will include fun activities designed to “stretch the brain.” Bridge would be a perfect addition! The best place to look on college sites is in their Summer Programs section or in their Conference Services section.
3) Search state and regional camp databases! There are also too many of these to list, but the good news is that they are there for you to use. Some of these will further differentiate their listings by such categories as age groups, day vs. overnight and college preparatory.
When you think that you have found a suitable location, contact the ACBL Education Department at (901) 332-5586 x1352 or education@acbl.org first.
The ACBL has a packet of materials designed not only to help you promote a bridge camp but also to show you how to run it. There are example lesson plans based on whether bridge might be part of a full-day program or whether it will be used as a special activity for rainy days or whether if will be scheduled as an all-day event.
The promotional packet will be something that you also can use to show a director why and how bridge will benefit their campers (beneficial to math, problem solving skills, language, camaraderie and more). There is information on everything the ACBL has to offer including free textbooks, teacher’s manuals, cards, T-shirts, trophies, certificates of completion and newsletters. The ACBL will pay a teacher (you) to come in and teach bridge to the camp. Furthermore, this information lets the camp officials know that they can run bridge at their camps with almost no out-of-pocket expense.
What you are able to offer to camp officials is an additional program and incentive to draw children to their camps at no cost to themselves!