Exeter Summer program hones tomorrow's leaders
Irene and Charles Hamm '55; P'87 broaden their signature curriculum to all Summer learners.
On a sunny day in July, a group of Exeter Summer students headed off campus to the Browne Center at the University of New Hampshire for a day of trust-building and team-bonding exercises. Whether working their way through the ropes course or reclining carefully on a suspended tree branch, the students made sure to have each other’s backs — and got to know each other along the way.
“We had to work together to achieve a specific goal,” says Jack Lu, a rising eighth grader from Sarasota, Florida, of the field trip. “It really helped to build bonds, as we needed to trust each other to literally stay safe.”
This summer, Lu was one of the students taking part in the first official session of the Irene F. Hamm P’87 ACCESS EXETER Leadership Program, an immersive cluster of courses for seventh and eighth graders focused on learning the principles and theory of leadership as well as acquiring practical skills for effective activism and advocacy. One of nine clusters in the five-week ACCESS EXETER program, it was created thanks to the generosity of Irene Hamm P’87, a lifelong educator who helped her husband, Charles J. Hamm ’55, found his namesake leadership-focused program for Exeter Summer’s UPPER SCHOOL in 2008.
A summer of growth
In courses entitled Youth Leadership and My Voice Matters, students in the ACCESS cluster explore the relationships between leaders and their followers, read literature written by leaders in society and write their own essays and action plans. In a third course, The Art and Science of Creating Real Change, they learn to channel their identities and desire for change through both artistic expression and hands-on action steps.