Ninth graders exit two buses following a two hour drive to Camp Lake of the Woods in Decatur, Michigan, and the freshman retreat begins on dewy grass beneath towering trees. It is here that the freshmen will spend the next two days–the idea is to forge friendships and create bonds that they will take back with them to the city and maintain throughout high school.

The current 11th and 12th graders may be thinking of a different experience than the ninth and tenth graders. August 2016 marked the second year since the ninth grade retreat was completely revamped to more actively promote integration.

The new retreat is more structured than the previous retreat, according to Zeller. When ninth graders filled into the big gym before departing from Chicago, they were given a name tag that included their different groups for the trip: their cabin, their team, their table for meals, and their bus buddy. The purpose of having so many different groups was to give students the opportunity to spend time with as many different classmates as possible, according to Zeller.

“The first thing I noticed was how structured it was,” science teacher and new freshman grade head Ryan Zaremba said.  “There was little down time for the students and chaperones as well, which was good because it forced people to interact with each other when normally, they wouldn’t be doing that.”

While a lot has changed about the retreat in the past two years, certain memorable events were left untouched. Two traditions, the special objects presentations and listening to music under the stars, were kept as part of the new retreat.

The previous retreat program was discussion-based, according to Upper School English teacher Cory Zeller, one of the two freshman grade heads. Students spent time in small groups having conversations on specific topics, including Parker’s mission and diversity statement.

“When you go on a retreat as a freshman, and you don’t know people,” junior Jolie Davidson said, “and then the teacher says that we’re going to discuss things instead of doing fun activities as a group, it’s not as great of an experience to get to know your grade.”

Zeller has been attending the ninth grade retreat for the past four years, three of which she led as a grade head. After leading the retreat as a grade head for the first time three years ago, Zeller and the other chaperones decided that the trip was not fulfilling its purpose to ensure new students became integrated with the rest of the class.

“There was a lot of sitting, a lot of instruction,” Zeller said, “and they were not really getting to know each other.”

Every year on the second day of the old-style retreat, the entire ninth grade would venture to Jollay’s Orchard in Coloma, Michigan, to pick apples they would later use to bake pies together. “What we ended up finding was that returning students would clump together and go pick apples together,”  Zeller said, “and the new students would be wandering around.”

From frustration over lack of success from the previous trip, the new retreat was born–one that encouraged creativity, risk taking, and most of all, interaction between the students. Zeller said, “We came up with the format to make the retreat more team- and game-based, rotating through stations, and with more active engagement, hoping that by participating in activities, kids would naturally talk and get to know each other.”

This change agrees with Davidson’s experience on the retreat.“I feel like my favorite parts of the retreat were team-building activities,” Davidson said, “and if they added more team-building activities and ways for people to get to know each other that way versus discussion, then I think that’s a great idea.”

The new structure of the retreat involved a day of team competition to encourage students to collaborate with their teammates and try new things. Throughout the day, teams canoed on the lake, cheered each other on during archery, strategized to defeat opposing teams in gaga, and used one another’s knowledge to succeed in trivia. They were scored based on their spirit, teamwork, performance, and whether or not they accomplished their team goals.

“I think the team day was really good because it helped us bond really closely with eight people and it’s good to have eight people,” freshman Micah Derringer said, “who you know really well.”As the final activity to conclude the day of competition, teams collaborated to create their own skits that incorporated a specific theme, prop, and team cheer. The lively performances included heated cooking competitions, dramatic telenovelas, and comical reality shows.

“I think my best memory from the trip was the last night when we were doing team skits,”  Zaremba said. “You really got to see kids’ personalities, and that was kind of a cool thing. You got to see them work together with people they might not normally work with at all because they’re not close friends. The creativity and some of the humor that came out of it made the skits really fun to watch.”

After the sun set on an exciting but tiring day, ninth graders gathered outside on the basketball court with their new and old friends. They lay down to gaze at the starry Decatur sky while singing along as Alec Synakowski, a Parker music teacher, played some of their favorite songs.

With the weather cooperative, ninth graders then the congregated around a campfire for the annual special objects tradition. Each student talked about a possession that was meaningful to them while the rest of the grade listened and munched on warm, gooey s’mores.

“What was special about the campfire was that we don’t get to do that very often, just to sit as a grade and talk and not have to worry about school or stress or other stuff that gets in the way,” freshman Lia Palombo-Schall said. “It was really nice to get to share something about ourselves that other people wouldn’t have known.”