<p>My S went to CTY for several summers, until he aged out at 16, and absolutely loved it. We sent him to CTY for the social element–it is full of quirky, geeky kids like him–but he has been able to accelerate in his Computer Science major now that he is in college, due to the classes he took there. That was a completely unexpected benefit.</p>
<p>Then he got a job on the Geek Squad at Best Buy. It’s interesting, varied work and pays pretty well; S was able to save a fair amount for college, and also acquired a ton of the techy equipment he was yearning for, at the employee discount rate. The job was great at encouraging adult, professional behavior that spilled over to his interactions outside of work. Earning his own money also made him a lot more financially savvy.</p>
<p>After 8th grade and 1 year of high-school level Spanish my D went to Guatemala with a school group from our county, for a three-week total-immersion Spanish program called Casa Xelaju. The program, which was quite reasonably priced, makes money for a school and orphanage for local children; the visiting American kids live with families and do some volunteer work with the program during their stay. It was culturally very enlightening for my D, and it really jump-started her Spanish. She’d been a pretty indifferent student of Spanish until she went to a place where she had no alternative but to use it to communicate. Lightbulb went on in head! In the two years since she has had an A or A+ in Spanish every term.</p>