Camper Evaluations

Israel Moreno:  

Looking at Israel's evaluation last year, his personality corresponds starkly with what his parents, previous mentors and teachers had to say about him:  "The sunshine kid of F&M Camp," "usually gets along well with other children," "usually follows rules," etc.  However, I gleefully picked Israel as one of my campers because I felt I could relate to him culturally.  Noting in Israel's extended profile that he could "easily be mislabeled as lazy due to his struggle with language and understanding directions," I felt a significant bond materialize.  After moving back to America from Beijing, China for the 'F&M experience', I felt like a cultural pariah, a complete fish out of water - unable to laugh at US pop-culture references my friends made and always slightly disturbed by the cleanliness of Pennsylvanian air.  I thought perhaps Israel and I would be able to commiserate on our cultural awkwardness (Little did I know that this kid would be a master at evading my inquiries that delved beyond camp life).  Like any other excited counselor, I tactfully cornered Israel one-on-one during walks to the pool/the bus/field trips and politely sprinkled him with questions.  No deal.  I then tried talking about myself to get him to open up.  Even worse idea.  Then I spoke to him in Spanish - duh.  The result was a brief, yet illuminating conversation that went something like this: 

Me: "¿Hola Israel, puedes hablar Español?" 

Translation:  "Hey Israel, can you speak Spanish?" (Obviously I knew he could - It was just part of my master plan)

Izzy M:  "Si!" 

Translation: "Yes!"

Me:  "¿Hablas Español con sus padres? 

Translation: "Do you speak spanish with your parents?" 

Izzy M:  "No, hablo Inglés" 

Translation: "No, I speak English" 

And that was basically it with some superfluous stuff that I cut out.  At the time I was just excited to be practicing my spanish (Spanish 221 is coming up next semester so I need all the practice I can get) and that Israel was sharing stuff about his family with me, of course.  But after reading Israel's evaluation a second time and noting that his "parents speak only Spanish" and that last year "he was occasionally teased for not speaking English as well as the others," I understand this conversation much better.  I feel like Israel is trying to mask his hispanic heritage, which is regrettable.  Having attended international school all my life, it never occurred to me that yes, it can suck to be a minority sometimes, and yes, even little kids can be racist (not that i've seen any of that at camp).  So what I want to work on with Israel is bringing out his confidence in his own culture.  Besides that, his English doesn't sound as bad as his evaluation makes it out to be so perhaps he's improved since last year.  He also participates in sports and arts and crafts and enthusiastically and usually joins in performing arts activities.  Last year's evaluation also mentioned anger problems, but so far Israel has been relatively passive.  If he lands himself in cooking club next weekend, maybe Debbie, Fred and I will focus more on ethnic cuisine.  

Justin McEvoy:  

J-town has definitely been a tough cookie to crack.  The first two weeks he was an angel for the most part - almost frozen in weird, extended honey-moon state.  He participated maturely in all the activities and talked avidly about Godzilla flicks and his video game collection.  But nothing gold can stay...  I've noticed that Justin picks on other kids discreetly, which makes me believe that maybe he was causing drama the first week, and that I was simply oblivious to it.  Most of the other campers know not to pick on some of the more timid kids like Jonathan and Seth - but Justin hasn't really grasped this concept yet.  What's interesting is that each kid seems to have a pretty clear-cut personality (a.k.a. sweet and giggly, straight-up obnoxious, or angry yet misunderstood) but Justin seems to be more of an almagamation of many different kinds of 'clear-cut' personalities.  Definitely a good thing though because it keeps me on my feet and reminds me not to typecast campers.  I have noticed that Justin is very sensitive, especially when interacting with mentors, in that he takes getting scolded personally.  Over the next couple of weeks I plan on observing Justin acutely - so that hopefully I will be able to piece together his wide spectrum of emotions and behaviors.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Brian Lebzelter:

Has yet to show up...but I hope he does because i'm sure he's a lovely character based on his evaluation from last year!