I'd like to begin this post with a brain fart. Why is it when I tell people I went to France, their responses are always along the lines of "That’s awesome!", "How cool!", etc. But when I tell people I went to Ecuador, their responses are, "Do you have family there?", "Are you from there?” Why is it hard to believe I may have French origins, or that I went to Ecuador for something other than possibly visiting the other brown people that live there? I don't get mad, I just think it's funny how we sometimes unintentionally make assumptions about people on a daily basis without realizing it.
In my last post I spent some time detailing the events leading up to graduation and the week or so afterward, followed by a brief reflection. As usual, I get lost in the details and don’t reflect as much as I would like. I hope that I can work on that. I want this second part to be a reflection on the five weeks I spent in northern Wisconsin as a camp counselor as well as the month right after.
Sometime in June, I was going through my emails, and I re-read a newsletter I had gotten from SLI (my former place of employment). Towards the bottom there was a blip listing opportunities. It read:
General Leadership and Involvement Opportunities
Camp Thunderhead
Camp Thunderhead is a five-week residential summer camp for the students of Nativity Jesuit Middle School. Nativity students are low income Latino boys on the south side of Milwaukee. The summer camp is held in northern Wisconsin. The students take classes in the morning and participate in typical camp experiences in the afternoon, like sports and woodshop. Each summer, we rely on responsible and hard-working counselors who have an interest in teaching, coaching, or working with kids. Nativity graduates point to the summer camp as a critical moment in their academic, social, and emotional development. Camp counselors view their experience as an inspiring and meaningful time with kids.
It sounded like something I would be interested in. Unfortunately, the newsletter was from April 14th, camp began on June 25th, and I emailed the director on May 28th. Talk about late. So I emailed to ask if they were still looking for counselors and got a positive response. I received a copy of the application, which had a deadline of March 31st! I did a phone interview and got hired the next week. At that point in time all I could think was, "Carlos, you lucky S.O.B." Talk about a break! Seriously, my whole life I've been able to get away with certain things, gotten some extra slack, an extra chance, certain privileges, and here I was again getting a job a month past the deadline. Granted, these extra chances that I get aren’t of my own doing, but in retrospect, I realize that I take them for granted. I’m not as grateful as I should be, and I certainly do not reflect on them as much as I should. I often fail to realize that a lot of my success is mere happenstance. Not to discredit the hard work I have done, but I always remember the A+ I got when I know I should have gotten a B-. Of course I would remember that grade, compared to the ones where I put a lot of time and effort into earning. I guess it’s just a matter of reflecting on my success more often and recognizing what went into them. I shouldn’t take for granted that I’m in a good place in my life.
So about eleven days after graduation, I was off to Milwaukee. Counselors had a two-day orientation prior to camp. We all met at the school, gave introductions, then got on a minibus and made the six hour drive to Mercer, WI.
I had never heard of Mercer, WI before in my life, and being the urban snob I am, I wasn’t a big fan of the state of Wisconsin either. The ride up was long, and most people slept, making it hard to get to know them. The camp itself was actually ten miles from the town of Mercer, down some long winding roads. It was really pretty. Lots of natural nature. Now, I’ve never had any sort of camp experience (just wasn’t necessary), and I certainly do not appreciate nature as much as I should (I’m very comfortable being an urbanite). I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was pretty cool. Facilities wise, the camp consisted of a main building uses as a cafeteria and kitchen on the first floor, with an office, classroom, and library on the second floor. There was also a deck on the second floor that served as the meeting point for everything. Across from that building was a soccer field, volleyball courts, and a building called the Caretaker’s. The ground floor of that building was used for storage for sports equipment, and there were bathrooms and showers for the swimmers. The second floor was an apartment where the director stayed. Near there were about five cabins intended for the female counselors. They were cool, kind of apartment style cabins. Some ways off were the main cabins. There five in total, named after different saints; Arrupe, Javier, Marquette, Miguel Pro, and Pacheco. One of them was brand new. The cabins basically consisted of six bunk beds and two separate rooms for the male counselors. The five cabins formed a semi-circle around a bigger building called Ignatius. Ignatius was the location of the chapel (that doubled as a classroom) a larger gathering room that could be split into two, and another room with a big fireplace. That’s pretty much where camp took place. We were bordered on one side by a lake, and on all the others by nature. There was also a guesthouse called Loyola down a path that was used by visitors as well as by counselors during the day as a place to relax and get away from the kids. This guesthouse was pretty sweet. It was nicer than most homes. The kitchen was stocked; the living room was full of couches and had a TV. There was a deck that overlooked the lake. The basement was basically more couches and a ping-pong table. The kids weren’t allowed in Loyola, which was nice. It was definitely the place to be if you were tired and needed quiet time. There was a basketball court (where the kids played) and a garage full of bicycles right there too. Again, I’ve gotten lost in the details. Simply put though, we were surrounded on one side by the lake, and on all other sides by nature. How ever did I survive?
So after we arrive, we were sent on a quest to find the cabin we would be staying in and/or be responsible for. I was giving a color, and had to find the cabin with that color on the door. I got confused because all the cabins had multiple colors (for multiple counselors, duh Carlos), but eventually I found my cabin which was Miguel Pro. To this day, I have no idea who Miguel Pro, but I put my things away and went back to join the others.
Spent the next two days learning more about the camp, what we would be doing, our responsibilities, how to handle certain situations, first aid type training, etc. Probably the most important thing we learned was how to deal with bears (little did we know at the time) [Foreshadowing?]. So it was a beautiful two days that we spent doing things I don’t remember (because it’s been over two months, not because they weren’t important). Those two days the counselors all got to know each other better. The kids arrived that Saturday and we were ready to greet them, sort them, and take them to their cabins. Each cabin had about twelve kids or so. My cabin had four 6th graders, four 7th graders, and four 8th graders. It was strange at first because I had been used to seeing all the counselors 24/7 and from that point on it became a delight and privilege to have some time to talk to them. If you were on duty, you’d be busy with your cabin. If you were off duty, everyone else was on duty.
So what goes on at this camp you may ask? Well, the kids take classes in the morning, have activities in the afternoon, followed by an all-camp activity in the evening. That was pretty much the routine Monday through Saturday. Sundays were the “Zone Days” which was basically a big field trip to different locations. Some kids went to an indoor water park in a town an hour away, others went fishing, others went to Lake Superior, some played tennis in town, etc. On the right is a copy of a typical schedule.
Because of a scheduling conflict, I ended up having to teach Algebra with the advanced section of 8th graders. Now, if you know anything about me, you should know that Carlos does not do numbers. I mean, I have difficulty adding. It’s been years since I’ve taken a math class, and there was a reason why I chose a degree program in the social science field. I live in a world of ideas, and numbers have no place there. Basically, I suck at math. Always have. After looking through the book, I realized that I would need to do some studying of my own before being able to teach this class effectively. The book itself was interesting. Apparently the school uses a spiral curriculum, meaning that a typical lesson would include a lesson, practice problems, and a problem set of thirty questions, however the problem set would probably only contain five problems relating to the lesson, and the rest would be on previous lessons. Considering I wasn’t there for any of the previous lessons, I kept running into problems that I had no idea how to solve. Fortunately, there one bright kid in my class who I could always just call up to the board to solve a problem the class didn’t get. There were times when I had to brush off a problem as, “Who wants to show the class how to do it on the board?”, because I had no idea. Regardless though, I had a lot of fun teaching that class. Aside from learning a lot of math, I learned more about my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to teaching and working with middle school students. There were times where my students made me want to pull my hair out, but overall, they were good kids. It was however, very unfortunate that they all did so poorly in my class in the end. I kept struggling with their low scores, blaming myself for being a poor teacher, but it took me a while to realize that many of the mistakes they were making could have been easily avoided by taking their time and reviewing their work. If they remember anything from my class, I hope that it’s that in math, there is no room for error. As I told them in class, “Stuff has blown up in space because someone failed to put a decimal in the right place, or added instead of subtracted, or failed to convert a measurement unit.” The beautiful thing about math, is that there is only one universal answer that anyone anywhere can understand. Those first couple of weeks they blew through their work so fast and made so many mistakes, that after a certain point it just became unacceptable. I couldn’t afford to give them half a point for a question only because they made a small mistake. They wouldn’t learn anything. Yes, in the end they did poorly, and I did notice that many of the questions they got wrong on their tests were questions dealing with lessons we never covered in class, but there was no excuse for failure to review a math problem and making a simple mistake. Did I like teaching? Yes. Do I love math? No. Would I ever teach a math class again? Definitely. I learned that I enjoy not just teaching a new subject, but I also enjoy being a role model for that particular age group. Unfortunately, there aren’t many male teachers in the primary school system, which is regrettable because many young boys in this country lack a positive male role model in their daily lives. From my experiences beforehand, I know that one of the things that makes me happiest is helping the development of others. I was fortunate enough to have a good upbringing, something many people can’t say. I have been given many opportunities, and I have been helped my many. I do what I do because I have the privilege and luxury of being able to give back, but more importantly, because I hope that in the end it makes the world a better place.
I totally just jumped ahead of myself, because those last couple of sentences basically describe my entire experience at camp.
This post is long enough. I’ll finish up the rest of my camp experience in the next post.
Photo Slideshow:
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