Nature’s classroom

Students learn about environment, make life-long memories

Chris Albert

Thirty sixth graders in groups of three line up preparing to drop a powerful blow on their stomp rockets to send them into the stratosphere.

There’s an important distance record for these students to break this day.

In their hands they hold a launching tube with a rocket made of paper and outfitted with cut playing cards as tail fins resting on it. The outside of the rocket is littered with color marker drawings and the names of the students and their groups. The launching tubes are attached, with a rubber tube connected from the pad to a two-liter soda pop bottle lying on the ground next to them.

When their teacher yells “Go,” the students drop the hammer and leap onto the inflated plastic bottles, sending the rockets into the air.

The results are mixed. Some shoot into the air and flutter to the ground a few feet in front of them. Others make it a few dozen feet, not far enough to make a claim to the record.

But there is one trio whose rocket flew into the distance. Once it lands, the students run to the landing site, hoping for a measurement that puts them ahead.

Their teacher matches the location with a tape measure, but they’ve run out of tape and must count the remaining distance by going foot over foot. As their teacher edges closer and closer to the landing site it becomes clear what has been accomplished.

Sure enough the record is theirs at 145 feet. They’ve out-stomped the rest and secured some bragging rights for cabin B-9 at the Puyallup School District’s sixth grade camp at Island Lake in Poulsbo.

This is life at sixth grade camp.

To sixth graders in the Puyallup School District, camp is just as much of a right of passage as Senior Ball is to high schoolers.

“My number one thing when I look at camp is it’s a coming of age,” said Peggy Schuler, Zeiger sixth grade teacher and first time camp director.

The sixth graders learn part of what it takes to build a community. They live together, eat together, spend class time together, experience new activities together, sing together and work together. From when they wake up to when they go to sleep they spend time as a pseudo-family, a camp family.

It is not all fun and games at sixth grade camp; it’s a big part in how the district supplies its outdoor curriculum to students every year.

And for 23 years, the district’s sixth grade classes have made their way to Island Lake in Poulsbo and Miracle Ranch in Port Orchard in an attempt to bond before meeting again in junior high school.

In early May, more than 150 students from Zeiger and Wildwood Elementary schools continued that tradition by going to Island Lake for four days.

The experiences the students take from it range from one to the other. For some it’s their first time to camp and maybe the only time they go, but one thing they all share is a time to just be young and not be bogged down with growing up, just yet.

“It’s the last year they get to be kids like this,” said Amy di Barbora, sixth grade teacher at Wildwood.

Students band together, forming friendships that may not have happened in their classroom or on the play fields at recess.

And teachers are pleasantly surprised to see students come out of their shells, as the quietest students become the loudest campers.

There’s more to camp than the four days the students are at Island Lake. They prepare weeks before going by learning camp songs and class work that will be understood when they are outdoors.

Once they are ready to leave, they pile in their classrooms waiting for the buses to arrive to take them to camp. The essential camp gear is stuffed into plastic garbage bags with names written on them. The wait for the buses to arrive to take them to camp only feeds their excitement.

They belt out a few songs in the meantime and although they sound loud at school, those same songs will come across as a whisper at camp.

When the buses arrive there is no time to waste. The eager sixth graders race in a line, one class after another, to board and are ready to go within five minutes.

Inside the buses they are quiet, but once those doors close and the wheels start rolling all bets are off. The bus driver even gets into the camp spirit and blares the horn as the vehicles of newly appointed campers roll out. And, like a true camper, they jump right into singing the songs that they will become their anthems during the next four days.

How to build a camper

The campers, coming from different schools, are mixed and mingled into a cabin with a high school student as their counselor. Cabins are broken up into a boys town and a girls town. Each cabin becomes their camp family. They eat together, learn together and participate in camp activities together.

“I think they definitely open up a lot more,” di Barbora said. “You learn a lot about the kids seeing them in this setting.”

“All of them knew within the first day who was good at what,” said Kenny Layton, a camp counselor from Rogers High School.

The sense of community these students develop is astounding, di Barbora said.

“They change after this and across the class they are such a strong community,” she said.

The learning is different too, said Rachelle Johnson, a sixth grader from Zeiger.

“What is also cool about camp is it’s still part of school,” Johnson said.

Every morning at camp she was eager to get up and start her day. She was so excited the first morning that she woke up at 5:45 a.m. Breakfast wasn’t until 8 a.m.

“That was the first time for me,” she said about waking up so early.

Some of that enthusiasm comes from earning beads.

At camp a big reward for the sixth graders are beads. They earn them for participating in classes and activities, for helping out and for going above and beyond to make camp life great for their classmates.

“I like the beads; they’re all beautiful,” said Miranda Maxwell, a sixth grader from Wildwood.

That beauty translates to a camp currency.

“If the market crashed right now, beads would be gold,” said Shawn Anderson, sixth grade teacher at Wildwood.

The students make an active effort to earn beads and it brings their participation out. Although there is some competition to earn beads, the students spend so much time working together the earning of beads becomes a team effort with individual rewards.

The teamwork sticks around after camp, but the value of beads falters.

“We go back to school and there’s a different camaraderie,” said Annie Miller, a sixth grade teacher at Zeiger Elementary. “Except they don’t work for beads anymore.”

Just because the sixth graders are away from the classroom doesn’t mean they are all comfortable with embracing camp life.

After all, the activities require a lot of enthusiasm for singing songs, belting out chants and a willingness to laugh with each other and themselves.

Still, some campers get homesick. During the first day, di Barbora, had a student come up to her crying and asking to go home. A fellow student saw this classmate bawling and gave them a hug and asked if they would please stay.

“She came up to me later and said ‘I’m good, I’m fine,’” di Barbora said.

That’s the sort of bond the students build.

“They get to bond with each other that just isn’t possible at school,” Miller said.

The students are from different schools but will be part of each other’s academic life at least through high school.

But not all students make it through camp just by drying their tears and getting a hug.

While Zeiger and Wildwood were at Island Lake three students went home early, with only one because of disciplinary reasons.

It’s pretty rare for a camper to go home early, Schuler said. They want to be here and most are on their best behavior.

Not even a broken wrist could keep Justin MacFarlane from missing out on camp. The sixth-grader from Zeiger tripped and fell on his first day at camp.

Off to the hospital he went. Before the doctor even told him, MacFarlane knew he had broken his wrist. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d been hurt. Having a passion for riding dirt bikes can lead to some injuries.

The doctor told him he couldn’t go back to camp, MacFarlane said. But MacFarlane insisted the doctor just wrap the wrist up and send him back to be with his classmates.

After conferring with his parents and teachers, they did just that.

“This is a once in a lifetime thing, to come to camp with your sixth grade class and a class from another school,” he said.

That eagerness to be involved trickles down from the counselors, Schuler said. They really help in transforming the sixth graders into enthusiastic learners and energetic participants.

“It’s nice to see the change in them (sixth-graders) when they first get here to the end of the first day,” Layton said.

Counselors take the lead

Even though being a camp counselor can sound like a mountain of work, none of them would trade the experience.

“You get to be in sixth grade again as a counselor,” Layton said.

“The counselors really get them going,” di Barbora said, “because they aren’t afraid to act silly and have fun.”

“It gives them permission to cut loose,” Miller said.

The enthusiasm and participation is only as good as their counselors, Schuler said. High school students from throughout the district come to camp, many having shared the same experiences as campers when they were in sixth grade. The counselors guide the young students along the way and encourage them to be a part of camp by encouraging making each experience fun.

It is refreshing for the teachers as they spend much of camp hands-off watching the high schoolers run some of the most memorable parts of the experience, like campfire.

As the sixth graders take part in camp they let where the counselors guide them take over. They sing loudly, chant loudly, cheer loudly.

For camp counselors Lauren Barron and Melissa Hallenbeck, camp is something they like being a part of and look forward to. The Emerald Ridge juniors were spending their second year as counselors and hope to do the same next year.

“It’s so much fun,” Barron said.

Like many of the counselors, the two spent a great deal of time and money making sure their campers had materials to decorate their cabin. Their sixth grade girls chose a masquerade theme for their cabin.

“It all adds up pretty quick,” Hallenbeck said.

They aren’t sure how much they spent, just more than they expected.

“But it’s worth it,” Barron said.

“It seems just like yesterday I was here,” said Jordan Daskam, counselor from Puyallup High School. “It shows how fast you’ve grown up.”

“It is so worth it,” Daskam said, adding that she would gladly return next year.

Even as the sixth graders are making new friends counselors are making new ones, too.

“I met two girls that went to my school and I didn’t even know they went there,” she said.

This is a return trip to camp for Zeiger student teacher David Couch. He spent some time there years before as a counselor when he was a student at Rogers High School.

“This is definitely the best,” he said of this camp experience. “It’s fun to see them (students) in a different light.”

Try to stay dry, warm by the fire

While at camp the elementary school students learn about the environment in the great outdoors instead of the confines of a classroom.

Learning about nature in nature has more of an impact, several of the teachers agreed.

There’s even a different smell and sound at camp. There isn’t a hint of dry erase markers in the air and the hum of a computer is replaced by chirping birds.

Fresh air can be tasted, cedar trees are inhaled and the chirping of night wildlife or aquatic birds can be heard throughout the day.

With outdoor education at the core of the camp class work it also gives students an expanded chance to learn through observation. Campers aren’t allowed to bring cell phones, iPods or computers.

“They were worried, too,” di Barbora said.

But their worries soon disappear. Out here, learning takes place without aide from the 21st century.

“It’s a nice alternative to technology,” di Barbora said.

There’s the lake were they learn about water quality and its delicate ecosystem. During their water quality class time they sit around an inlet from the lake and point out what they see, recording it in a field guide, like real biologists. During tree identification they get to stretch their observation skills in a different way by figuring out what trees are what and what makes the forest unique.

How to survive in that forest is an element that is not lost on the campers.

Knowing where to go is part of that. The students learn an orienting through a scavenger hunt throughout the campground, where they have to find and identify certain landmarks.

They learn to build campfires responsibly and effectively. They gather in groups of four or five on a safe cement surface and pile a small amount of twigs they’ve gathered. Each camper brought a bag of candles and cotton balls to help them out. The campers use the cotton balls as a starter by putting them in with their pile of twigs. A teacher comes by to light their candles. Students drip the wax from the candle onto the wood and cotton ball pile.

The wax helps the fire ignite and keep going. Having a successful fire means the campers get a chance to get a marshmallow to roast over it to make s’mores.

Making a fire is one way to dry out and stay warm and after making outdoor survival shelters some campers could use them.

Groups of four or five campers use a tarp, their ponchos and whatever they can find around them to build a shelter. The goal is to make a shelter big enough for all of them that will stay dry when a teacher dumps a bucket of water on it.

“We’re probably all going to get soaked but that’s part of the fun,” said Brandon Mills, a sixth grader from Wildwood.

His group tried to make use of a big stump, but still couldn’t keep the water out.

Those are camp classes, not to be confused with camp activities.

The fine art of archery is something many the campers experience for the first time at Island Lake and the persuasion of boating is no different.

They learn how to hold the arrow in the bow correctly and have to follow precise instruction, because those are real arrows they are shooting. Safety comes first; it’s a theme that carries over from classes to activities.

Boating is another one of those first time experiences for several campers. Groups of sixth graders got outfitted for the open water with life jackets and paddles or oars. Under the watchful eye of their boating instructor they learn how to canoe and row a boat on the water. Many learn quickly that they have to work together if they’re going to get anywhere on the water.

Becoming a team is one of those activities built around trust. Everything at camp is a team effort in some way. And last been not least the sixth graders learn to work together to build something in an effort to go the distance — stomp rockets.

Meal time, “Grey Squirrel” ready

All meals are served in a large dining hall, with each cabin at a table. Cabins take turns setting up tables, getting food for each other and clearing them after meals. It’s a family-style setting.

The dining hall in the lodge is one of the group meeting spaces. Before each meal, the cabins form a big circle spanning at least 100 feet in the yard in the front of the building. Their counselors stand in the middle making sure the campers aren’t letting up on the energy. It’s time for more songs. The dozen high schoolers yell each verse in hopes of outdoing the 150 sixth graders, only to be blown back with a powerful response. The back and forth cheers go for as many as 30 minutes before one by one the campers line up single file and enter the grand lodge. To make sure cleanliness isn’t lost on the campers, their teachers check their hands to see if they are clean or dirty at the front door.

Meal time isn’t just for eating. For every camper a little light hearted humiliation is part of the experience. And they often eagerly take part in it. Every day during one of the meal times teachers announce who has received mail that day.

But before the students can pick up there letters they must go to the center stage with other mail receiving students and perform a camp tradition, with the song and dance routine of “Grey Squirrel.”

Campfire though is always the grand crescendo.

Besides meal time, campfire is when the whole camp gets together. But unlike meal time it is where campers, counselors and teachers cut loose and make some noise.

There is a center stage, with a campfire just off to the side. The campers sit on wood benches surrounding the front of the stage and staggered in height to form a sort of woodland amphitheater. The location is tucked just inside of the woods, as cedar trees and Douglas firs form a natural border around the meeting place.

The stage becomes a centerpiece for performing as each cabin tests their acting chops through skits and the counselors lead the campers in a number of camp songs, getting the last bit of energy out of them before bed time.

On the last day at camp, although it’s not at night, everyone gathers again for one last round of songs and cheers. Awards are given out by the counselors for their campers of the week and the teachers select the cabins of the week.

Sounding hoarse, but still singing

Going home is a bittersweet moment for everyone at camp, no matter how tired they are by the end of the four days.

“I’m going to bed when I go home,” said Breanna Hethcock, a sixth grader from Wildwood. “I’m excited to go home, but I’m sad to leave too.”

Four days of singing their hearts out left many of them a little hoarse.

“Everybody loses their voice from singing,” said Zeiger sixth grader Cameron Dingess, who admits he lost his voice early on.

But even being tired doesn’t keep the campers from being enthusiastic all the way home on the school bus. Many thought it was louder on the way home with the bus filled with songs and chants they had done all week at camp.

“They don’t want to go home,” Schuler said. “We waited for so long and now it’s over.”

Asking a camper what they liked the most about camp will get a different response every time, but to many of the campers the friendships they developed are what matters the most to them.

“I’m just glad our counselors were nice and actually hung out with us,” said McKenzie Mathews, a sixth grader from Zeiger.

“I think the thing that was super fabulous were the counselors,” Schuler said. “They saved me.”

As a first time camp director she couldn’t have dreamed for a better bunch, she said.

“It was a great week,” Schuler said.

Like everyone she’s tired and will spend her first few hours at home, sleeping on the couch.

As the buses arrived at Zeiger Elementary, the parents stood eager to hear how camp went.

“I think it’s a great opportunity,” said Carrie Selden whose daughter, Kayla Frank, went to camp.

“They learn to be away from us for a little bit,” said Cathy Crossen, whose daughter Rachel went to camp. “I don’t know how to teach them that.”

It seems like a long time they are away, but it’s a good bridge into seventh grade, Crossen said.

“They should never get rid of it,” she said. “It’s something you remember your entire life.”

Plus there are several siblings who are fifth graders who can’t wait to experience camp.

“It wouldn’t be fair to the younger siblings (if they got rid of it),” Selden said.

Reach Reporter Chris Albert at 253-841-2481 ext. 313 or by e-mail at chris.albert@puyallupherald.com.