Video: Students prepare for college at Camp Catanese

A group of high school juniors and seniors at Camp Catanese at Arizona State University West worked in groups adjusting their marble run made of paper ramps attached to cardboard.

“As you test, you’re going to find what works best,” said a camp counselor and mentor to the campers.

“What are we thinking?” asked one student.

“Guys, look at this,” said another student.

Camp Catanese is a one-week, college access summer camp at Arizona State University West where students learn about college, STEAM careers, and also discover the best versions of themselves and the people they want to be, said Jason Catanese, a seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher at Pueblo Del Sol Elementary School in Isaac Elementary School District and chairman and executive director of Camp Catanese Foundation.

AZEdNews video: Students prepare for college at Camp Catanese

Video edited by Tabitha Bland/ AZEdNews & shot by Mary Irish/ AZEdNews

“Essentially, in 2016 a few of my students who I was tutoring at a Starbucks were concerned about a test they had never heard of and asked me if I had heard of the ACT.  They were going to walk into the test blind, with no preparation two days later,” said Catanese, a 2022 Arizona Educational Foundation Ambassador of Excellence and Director of Camp Catanese.

“After discussing with them some other obstacles they were facing to get to college, it became clear that depending on where our students went to high school drastically determined their trajectory,” Catanese said.

Catanese and his friends created Camp Catanese in 2016 to change that.