Camp Council
This council functions as the governing body of the camp program - an exclusively student-run organization that is in charge of program planning, business items, strategic planning and problem solving. Adults provide guidance from the background. The council president will use the newly acquired apple gavel symbolizing leadership, education and democracy.

Leadership & Literacy Classes
The program includes discussions, debates and lectures on topics such as semantics of language arts, idioms, colloquialisms, tag lines, one-liners, journalism, parliamentary procedures and critical thinking.

Campers study and practice the fundamentals of leadership. They will learn, for example, that a leader is not a leader unless he or she develops new leaders in performance of their projects. They must also build relationships that last, and they benefit much from utilizing the strengths of others in becoming all that is in them to be. Leadership develops self-esteem, self-sufficiency, an "others-before-self" attitude, self determination, rational thinking, self-control and self-discipline.

Mentorship Class

The most potent environmental influence on growth and development of campers is the peer group.  Its influence is especially prominent in changing social attitudes and personality.  Socialization in the daily life, as much as information, is likely to have an impact on attitudes toward grades, future aspirations, and life goals.  The “camper-helping-camper” concept of NLLC’s mentorship program responds positively toward stimulating and motivating students to realize their true potential – on their own. 
   

All NLLC repeaters, those who return to camp for the second time as well as the following summers, are afforded the opportunity to perform as mentors or role models for the first-time campers.  They are taught the basic fundamentals of supportive leadership, a ”family model” characterized by warmth, cooperative spirit, and positive expectations, as opposed to the “factory model” which views leaders as functionaries with emphasis on product.  They lead first-year campers from behind and do not drive them.  They involve them, but do not coerce them. Supportive leadership encourages novice campers to perceive themselves as able, responsible and valuable, to act in accordance with these self-perceptions to the tune of “Deaf people can do anything except hear.”
    In the role as mentors, the veteran campers are persons of vision.  They involve, rather than coerce the mentees in their vision.  They persuade the mentees not by commands, but by the power of their own conviction.  They develop a nucleus of campers who work well with them and who, as a team, work well by themselves.  Others are drawn in by the magnetism which the team generates – the team’s whirlwind of energy and spirit of creativity.  The environment is supportive and invitational , not dictatorial.  The supportive leaders are trained to focus on mentees’ natural strengths that, over time, eliminates  weaknesses by magnetizing mentees’ virtues rather than brooding on their shortcomings.
   

Supportive leadership champions flexibility: the ability of the campers to admit mistakes, to relax their mindset, and to adapt their actions to reality. The ultimate goal is to develop the skills the mentors need to build more leaders – to be an architect of the personal and professional growth and development of their peers … to develop a crowd of leaders around them when they return to their respective schools.