Mark gives out jackets at the 2024 Divisional Sing.
Continuing our guest blog series in the 2024-25 off-season, featuring reflections, lessons. and connections between camp and the outside world from Scatico Senior Staff. Up next… Boys Head Counselor Mark Gretenstein. For those who don’t know Mark, he’s been at Scatico since 2018 (starting out as then-Head-Counselor Cory Schwartz’s assistant). Mark grew up in Miami, and pre-Scatico had a long camper, counselor, and senior staff career at Camp Blue Star in North Carolina.
Throughout my life camp has meant many different things to me. As a first year camper, I experienced newfound freedom (which I promptly took advantage of to brush my teeth as infrequently as possible for 4 weeks). As I grew older, camp became a place where I developed leadership skills, built lifelong friendships, and eventually had my first job. At each stop along my journey one aspect of camp remained constant - camp as a place to experience new things and step out of my comfort zone.
During the year I work as a middle school math teacher in Brooklyn. It can be hard to find moments to step out of my comfort zone when confined to a classroom and curriculum. However, last year I was presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to chaperone a 9-day trip to Japan for 25 8th grade students. Most teachers were uninterested. Understandably they shied away from the 30+ hours of travel each way, long days exploring a foreign country with little to no ability to communicate, and responsibility for 25 middle schoolers. As soon as I heard about the opportunity, my camp persona emerged and I knew I couldn’t pass it up. Even though I felt like I was stepping out of my comfort zone, I had nothing on my students. About half of them had never been on a plane, the majority had never been outside of the country, and for almost all of them this would be the longest time away from their parents in their lives.
Once in Japan, I tried to model trying new things and students were eager to take that journey with me. On the first day that meant trying a strange flavor of broth in their customized Cupnoodles created at the Cupnoodles Museum. Soon we were participating in historic customs at a Shinto shrine with a group of Japanese locals. The second night I tried takoyaki (octopus dough balls for lack of a better description) which are an Osakan delicacy, although my stomach didn’t agree. A late-night trip to 7-ELEVEN for some plain rice was needed. We were reminded that trying something new doesn’t always go perfectly. For some students, stepping out of their comfort zone was snapchats going unread for long periods of time due to the time change, others tried sushi for the first time, and a few adventurers joyfully ate chocolate-covered insects.
As the trip progressed, students adjusted to the routine but never stopped noticing or exploring things that were different. From the incredible lack of trash on the streets, to an unbelievable lost and found culture (1 passport and 2 phones lost and more importantly found), as well as Tokyo’s eerily quiet subway cars, we tried to appreciate and embrace all aspects of the experience. After about a week, the camp side of me was just getting started. There was something familiar about going to sleep exhausted after long and unpredictable days but waking up excited and ready for the next adventure.
Back at school for the last few weeks in June, the days felt oddly calm and uneventful. Students who had been on the trip of course had lots of stories and pictures to show their classmates, but they also felt slightly changed - a little more confident in class, willing to take a chance and share something, or push through a challenging math problem.
This school year there’s unfortunately no Japan trip on the horizon. Even without the trip I try to find small moments of exploration and the unknown. One new challenge this year is I teach a math intervention class four times a week in Spanish. I don’t know where I would be without Google Translate and Duolingo, but even so I have no idea how a lesson is going to go until I am working through it with my students. Sometimes it goes great and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s all a part of the fun.