Steve Betando is a San Francisco Bay Area educational leader who served as superintendent in the Morgan Hill Unified School District. Passionate about engineering, nature, and conservation, he values and supports children’s science and outdoor activity camps. It was not surprising for Betando to accept the appointment as a trustee of the Walden West Foundation Board in support of a regional outdoor education center in California's Santa Clara County.
The Walden West Outdoor School is similar to many other exemplary natural environment science centers held across the United States. Nestled in the Saratoga and Cupertino hills and as part of a Pacific Coast Mountain Range, children gather for hands-on learning. Those activities and concepts are instructed by Naturalists among the Coast Redwoods. The Santa Clara County Office of Education administrates the 60+ year-old program and provides an ideal destination for multi-day overnight field trips. 5th and 6th grade students attend as part of their own school curriculum. They come from dozens of school districts in the South Bay during the school year. During summer months, the Walden West weekly summer camps attract enthusiastic children as young as 1st grade on up, including a camp for the entire family.
As one might expect, there are a number of other camps dedicated to science and technology in the San Francisco Bay Area. Camp Galileo has more than two dozen regional locations and gives K-10th graders a combination of outdoor play and projects with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEAM).
Destination Science also has multiple locations and encourages kids ages five to 11 to explore various knowledge-building facets of science. For example, Artemis Moon Mission Camp provides kids with the opportunity to launch rockets and build personal lunar transport vehicles. The BioBot & Roller Coaster Camp, on the other hand, has kids build Explorers and work on the physics of coasters. The TechKnowHow LEGO and Coding Camps span 10 locations and feature STEM LEGO projects, as well as scratch and roblox coding and Minecraft adventures. Parents can learn about the many Bay Area science camps to get a sense of which might be appropriate for their family.
The Bay Area is rich with schooltime, and summertime camps focused on the Sciences. High engaging student-centered camps not only provide valuable content, but schedule many social engagement opportunities to develop leadership skills, theatrical involvement, and public speaking experiences.
