About SuperCamp

The SuperCamp Story

Bobbi DePorter, co-founder and president of SuperCamp, and her elite team of educators have changed the lives of over 10 million kids worldwide through SuperCamp and Quantum Learning Education programs.

Bobbi began her career in real estate in San Francisco in a dynamic firm that ran on an unconventional business model. Innovative management styles practiced at the firm led her to co-found a school for entrepreneurs called the Burklyn Business School, teaching the principles that made the real estate company a success. A school where learning was fluid and dynamic, success effortless, and relationships the center of everything. The business school taught in six weeks what other schools taught in two years.

Over the years of its operation, graduates of the business school would come up to Bobbi and tell her how they wished they had learned these skills when they were children, adding that no one ever teaches kids how to learn. This was a wake-up for Bobbi …"All at once, I understood. I was here to help kids, to make this happen for them. That was my spark, my personal aha."

Bobbi and an associate soon created a program for youth patterned after the business school—a program that would help kids discover their greatness and learn skills to succeed in today’s quantum world. During this period Bobbi studied with Dr. Georgi Lozanov from Bulgaria, the acknowledged founding father of accelerated learning, which led to her creation of the Quantum Learning teaching methodology, which contributes to the success of SuperCamp and school programs to this day.

The first SuperCamp was help in July of 1982. The concept, which began on a shoestring, took off almost immediately, spreading each year to more locations across the country, and then overseas. Now with more than 65,000 graduates and programs in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America, SuperCamp is an established leader in the field of youth development.

The outstanding results achieved with students at SuperCamp and requests by educators to offer the programs in schools motivated Bobbi and her husband and business partner, Joe Chapon, to develop Quantum Learning Education school programs for students, teachers and administrators. School programs started in 1992, and now over 70,000 teachers in thousands of schools and districts across the nation have been trained in the same Quantum Learning methods that are so successful at SuperCamp.

Bobbi is frequently asked to appear on television, radio news, and talk shows, and has participated in segments on CNN, NPR, Voice of America, and even Russia’s “Good Evening Moscow.” Over the years, SuperCamp has been profiled in leading magazines and newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and Entrepreneur magazine. Additionally, SuperCamp was honored in the “Touch America: Showcase of Model Learning Programs,” in Washington, D.C. Bobbi is the author of 18 educational books and has been published in seven languages. She was honored in 2006 with the Readers Choice for Fast Company magazine’s “Fast 50” list of leading creative thinkers, and has received humanitarian awards from the Transformational Leadership Council (2010) and from Parenting 2.0 (2012).

Bobbi DePorter is president of Quantum Learning Network (QLN), the parent organization for SuperCamp and Quantum Learning Education. QLN offers a range of programs and products that enhance learning environments and teaching skills in schools and empower students, families, and individuals with learning and life skills. QLN’s mission is to change the lives of 50 million children by 2015.

Our Experience

SuperCamp is a highly engaging 7- to 10-day experience where your son or daughter acquires strategies for effective learning in all subjects, develops critical new skills in reading, writing, thinking, speaking, memory and note-taking, and builds communication, leadership, relationship and career capabilities.

Think of SuperCamp as an academic retreat for your child. Students are required to hand in all electronics (cell phones, cameras, iPads, iPods, tablets, MP3 players, etc.) when checking into camp and for the duration of camp are allowed to use these items for 10-20 minutes a day—that’s it. This pattern interrupt opens students’ minds to the task at hand, immerses them in the SuperCamp experience, and allows us to “reach” kids and get exceptional results.

 When students are separated from their technology, they focus on the SuperCamp experience and look at their values and how they're living their lives without interruption.

Utilizing proven Quantum Learning teaching methods, every single minute of every day at SuperCamp is planned in advance and carefully orchestrated in the moment. This comprehensive planning ensures that students receive highly engaging and effective and academic and life skills training all day every day—a total of 90 hours in the 10-day programs and 63 hours in the 7-day programs. In addition to academics, students build their confidence and motivation by learning to value themselves and realizing they can achieve anything they set their mind to. They also learn about effective communication and positive relationships with techniques to address conflict, apologize effectively, and take ownership for their actions.

Even with all this learning going on, SuperCamp is fun. At the beginning of each session, students come into the main room dancing to a live DJ. The course work is interactive, not just lecture style. We make sure all learning styles (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) are engaged. We encourage students to take responsibility for their education and give them strategies to make learning more meaningful—and easier. Students learn about the benefits of teamwork and bond over team-building activities including ropes courses, board breaking, and general group interaction. The result? Most students form deep friendships that last.

Independent studies have found that a full 98% of our graduates continue to use the SuperCamp academic and personal growth skills to achieve success in their lives years after graduating. In the 21st century, students need an edge to get into college and to be successful in their lives. SuperCamp gives your son or daughter that edge.

All Students Benefit

Over our 30 years of operating SuperCamp, we’ve identified four types of students who attend, and have found that each group benefits in a unique way.

1. Straight-A High Achiever With academic skills honed, these students gain a new understanding of how they learn best and how to study smarter rather than harder. These high achievers greatly benefit from SuperCamp’s ACT/SAT prep, leadership activities, and relationship-building exercises.
    
2. Not Living Up to Full Potential These kids do well in school by doing the bare minimum—with little effort, however, they could be in the straight-A high-achiever group. These students are simply not living up to their full potential. They have it in them to do more, but just don’t have the drive to push themselves to their limits. At SuperCamp these teens learn to take responsibility for their education and understand the value of putting in the extra effort to move up to that straight-A level.
   
   
3. Under the Radar These kids are not high achievers and they’re not failing—they simply go unnoticed because they’re “doing okay.” They work fairly hard to get Bs and Cs and the occasional A—they could, however, do better, and they know it, but they aren’t willing to put in the extra time and effort required. Through their experience of repeated success moments at SuperCamp, these teens realize that with a little effort they can achieve more, and they’re motivated to move in that direction. Their exposure to leadership, barrier breaking, and new learning strategies helps them rise to the next level.
   
   
4. Struggling These students have fallen into a negative pattern. Their self-talk consists of “I can’t, I don’t know how, I don’t have support.” Every class, every test, every year is a challenge. At SuperCamp struggling students benefit greatly from specific academic techniques such as Quantum Writing, Quantum Reading and Quantum Strategies, and gain confidence in their ability to succeed. They learn how to change their language to “yes I can, here is how I can do it, and I have the tools to be successful.”

The parents of students in all of these groups feel a great sense of relief when they return from SuperCamp—they’re more well-rounded, more motivated, more confident, and more capable. Their teens are taking responsibility for their learning—and the pressure’s off the parents!

The success of SuperCamp is based on an integrated system of proven teaching practices. One of those is our Quantum Learning Success Model, an approach that’s based on extremely effective and well-researched behavior transformation techniques. Every academic, life skill, communication, team and leadership experience we orchestrate for students is designed to create "success moments." When adolescents experience these success moments over and over and over again, as they do at SuperCamp, they develop higher levels of competence in learning skills and life skills, which, in turn, yields greater levels of confidence. This systematic progression—success to competence to confidence—is the basis of the intrinsic motivation your child requires to be an independent, innovative, and successful individual.

Staff That Inspire and Motivate Students

Our rigorous selection process ensures that your son or daughter will be supported by staff members who will make a positive difference in their lives.

Only the most qualified, committed, and caring candidates are chosen to be part of the SuperCamp team. Our facilitators go through over 300 hours of extensive training in the proprietary Quantum Learning system. They not only learn the “why” of the system, but are taught the “how” to effectively teach students the specialized learning techniques that lead to the outstanding results we achieve. SuperCamp is an annual tradition for many of our staff members who feel they get as much from the experience as they give to the students.

On the first day of SuperCamp, students are assigned to teams of 10 to 12 campers, each of which has two team leaders. The team leaders are responsible for the cohesion for their teams for the duration of camp and help them to form close, supportive bonds. Each year we receive close to a thousand applications from college students across the globe who have heard of our program and are passionate about making changes in the lives of children. Because of the number of enthusiastic applicants, we are able to hand pick the best candidates to ensure your child is constantly surrounded by positive, encouraging role models. Our student-to-staff ratio of four to one enables us to give your child the attention they deserve and require for a successful outcome.

In addition, we have a site administrator on campus to answer any questions you may have during your child’s time at SuperCamp, as well as a medically trained wellness person (many are registered nurses) to administer medications and help with any aches and scrapes that may occur.

Want to know more about those who orchestrate the SuperCamp experience? Click here to meet some of our staff members.