Northville's Newly Expanded Parent Camp Draws in Hundreds

On Saturday, February 4, more than 400 people from the community showed up for Parent Camp at Northville High School. The Northville Educational Foundation in partnership with Northville Public Schools offered the free workshops for parents in addition to the newly added Mental Health and Wellness Fair.

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I think today the turnout is really exploded based on what our expectations were. More than 400 people from the community showed up for Parent Camp on Saturday February 4th. You know you always want to have as many people as you can because you feel like you're touching more the community, the more people can be involved. The Northville Educational Foundation in partnership with Northville Public Schools offered the free workshops for parents at Northville High School. It's really been a great way for us to reconnect with the community and deliver some important things that they need and they want to hear from us. I really enjoy the fact that there are so many professionals and a very a wide variety of resources for parents to help our kids with stress, anxiety, social media, dangers and pitfalls. So it's just almost like a one-stop- shop of resources. Parents could attend three breakout sessions and had 37 different topics to choose from. It was difficult for me to sort of narrow down which sessions I wanted to attend because many of them looked interesting and relevant for me. I picked one of the ones that I actually two of the ones that I picked I have attended those particular sessions in past Parent Camp years so I wanted to you know revisit those and then I did pick a new session this time with Officer Norlock discussing social media because my kids although they don't have social media right now I wanted to learn a little bit more about the dangerous that he saw in his line of work so. Couple observations, I sat in three sessions, and those that come to the sessions are really engaged, they're eager to learn and since we are so spread out right if we had that representation across the board at every one of those sessions is tremendous. Former Lions quarterback, Eric Hipple participated and presented at Parent Camp. His session was about how to navigate through a traumatic event like he did when he lost his son to suicide. I wish there was something this when I was a parent in dealing with the stuff that we dealt with for my son but also you know for my daughter's. It would be really important to have some of this information you know it could have saved a life. Didn't have it and so that's why I'm so grateful for Northville for putting this thing on so parents can have a chance to do something I never got a chance to and come to a place and learn and be supportive of not only the school itself but also the school being supportive of the parents. New this year was a Mental Health and Wellness Fair with more than 50 vendors. So what I was impressed with was the amount of support from the various members and businesses in the community that can provide assistance in a variety of different, in a variety of different ways. I was actually very surprised with the sheer number of participants in the Mental Health Fair so that was really neat. So we're really excited to see how people are engaged and walking away with so much more than what they came in with. For Northville Public Schools, I'm Katie Rork, the district communications specialist.

The Northville Educational Foundation and Northville Public Schools partnered together for the 8th annual Parent Camp on Saturday, February 4, at Northville High School.

"I think today the turnout has really exploded based on what our expectations were," explained Bryan Valentini, Board of Directors, Northville Educational Foundation.

More than 400 people from the community showed up for Parent Camp.

"You always want to have as many people as you can because you feel like you're touching more of the community, the more people can be involved," said Valentini.

Parents could attend three breakout sessions and had 37 different topics to choose from.

"I really enjoyed the fact that there are so many professionals and a very wide variety of resources for parents to help our kids with stress, anxiety, social media, dangers and pitfalls. So it's almost like a one-stop-shop of resources," said Tanya Edwards, parent.

Former Lions Quarterback, Eric Hipple, participated and presented at Parent Camp. His session was about how to navigate through a traumatic event, like he did when he lost his son to suicide.

"I wish there was something like this when I was a parent in dealing with the stuff we dealt with for my son but also for my daughters. It would be really important to have some of this information, it could have saved a life. Didn't have it. So that's why I'm so grateful for Northville for putting this thing on so parents can have a chance to do something I never got a chance to. Come to a place and learn and be supportive of not only the school itself but also the school being supportive of the parents," explained Hipple.

New this year was a Mental Health and Wellness Fair with more than 50 vendors.

"So what I was impressed with was the amount of support from various members and businesses in the community that can provide assistance in a variety of different ways. I was actually very surprised with the sheer number of participants in the Mental Health Fair, so that was really neat," said Edwards.

If you would like to review the offerings from this past Parent Camp, you can visit the Northville Parent Camp website.