Aram at center stage,
director material for sure.
They are creative, talented, brilliant, amazing people, so why would they give up 3 to 4 weeks of their summer to take a job that pays very little, requires them to be on 24 hours a day for days on end, infringes on their lives all year long, and just doesn’t look all that impressive on a resume. Here are their stories.
Sarah Kavana gh – Jr. High Camp
I started going to camp in 1992, went through YPC and Jr. High Camp, and was a CIT in 1997. Then in high school I got involved in theater in my town of Ithaca, NY, and stopped coming to camp. I took a five-year hiatus, and then in 2002 I got a grant from my school, Wesleyan University, to be an intern at all of the Youth Camps for the summer. So, I worked at T Camp, Jr. High Camp, and Sr. High camp the summer of 2002 without being paid. I fell back in love with Jr. High Camp that summer and just kept coming back as staff until 2005 when I started Co-directing with Aram.
In my life, usually, I teach high school and write for the New York Times Learning Network. For the last two years, I’ve taught English, History, and Drama at a small private high school in Sausalito, CA. I really love teaching a lot and am hoping to go back to it next year when I get back to the States after traveling for 6 months in Central and South America. For the NYT learning network, I write lesson plans to accompany articles on the day the articles come out so that teachers can easily teach them in their classrooms. I’ve been living in San Francisco with my girlfriend of 4 years, Megan, and just enjoying city life
Currently, Megan and I are in Nicaragua but will be in Panama in two days, and then in a week in Ecuador. (You’ve caught me at a particularly heavy travel moment). I’ve been taking intensive Spanish classes and just exploring parts of the world that I’ve only read about.
When I was in middle school, Rowe was my haven. I really felt as though I could be more myself at Rowe than anywhere else. My years on staff gave me some of my best friends and instilled in me the leadership skills that I now need to be a good teacher. Directing camp allowed me to give back to a place that had given me so much.
Aram Rubenstein Gillis – Junior High Camp
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Aram at center stage, director material for sure. |
You could say I’ve been a Rowe camper for 19 years now, working my way
up from Young People’s Camp as a camper to Sr. High Camp as Director. I’ve been going to camp since I was 11 years old. My first year was 1987 at YPC. After that I got on the Jr. High track, working my way up from camper to CIT to counselor, but then didn’t go to Sr. High because I was scared of it. To be honest, I regret that. Instead of Senior High, I went to Star Island, which is also a very special place to me (and a great place for people who age out of Senior High to go). I chaired the youth conference there in 1998. I co-directed camp for 6 years, four at Senior High and the last two years at Junior High. I am now ready to have a summer with no responsibilities and to just ride my bike and visit my nephew and my niece.
The Rowe experience has been very important in terms of what I have done professionally. I worked for three years as a community organizer and an activist in Cleveland, Ohio. For the past 6 years, I have worked in New York City as a teaching artist making movies and musical recordings with elementary school kids. It’s kind of like the movie School of Rock, except it’s not at a fancy private school. All of my work has been heavily informed by values I experienced at camp: community, creativity, caring, consensus, and respect.
Editor’s note: Because Aram is a bit modest, I would add that he has been a very active participant in promoting the Woodside Diversity Planning Committee Program. He submitted an extensive proposal to the board, one piece of which requested that $5 of every camp fee be allocated to the Woodside Endowment. His proposal also included a vision for building a new cabin that would house ten additional campers. The idea to create a NYC benefit concert was also part of the proposal.
Jonah Spear – YPC
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I started coming to camp in 1991 I think. Maybe it was ’90. The only way to know for sure would be to climb on top of the art room loft and check my graffiti from those years. Morning meetings were amazing. Playshops were mind blowing. Meals were of course out of this world. And for the first time in my 9-year-old life, I had a real sense that I was part of something. YPC was for me – and I know I’m not alone – a week I looked forward to all year. I loved YPC so much in fact that I was scared Junior High would never live up to it, so I left! *If you’re laughing right now, it’s okay, I get it. I staffed JHC in 2000, and I’m pretty clear about how much I missed...* Instead of JHC, I went to a performing arts camp in upstate NY and had a great time learning Circus Arts and musical theater.
I bided my time, watched a few years go by until I thought I was old enough to apply to be a counselor. Finally, in 1997, I was 15. Surely old enough to tackle anything camp would throw at me, right? Yeah, right. I was 15, and I was the oldest YPCer at camp.
But somehow, I managed to stay on staff at YPC for 9 consecutive years. Finally, when it happened, Co-Directing was a dream. I like to remember walking up the Komido with Rosa on our first days together on staff in ‘97 and saying, “We’ll direct camp together one day.”
Camp has always been a forum in which I have learned immense amounts about myself. Staffing and Directing is the best opportunity I can think of for personal development. Today, I write from the room of a hotel in Florida. I’m on tour with an ensemble called STOMP. In my mind of course, it’s all a kick back to junk band with Mark and Mona Malin, another set of camp directors.
Since leaving school in 2000, I have made my life out of various stage and film performance jobs as well as a position teaching at Trapeze School and a relationship with the Wellness Company, Nikken. Around the time of YPC this summer, I’ll be in Hawaii with STOMP, and I will think about camp every day.
Rosa Kessler - YPC
I guess I never quite left Young People’s Camp. I remember going to YPC at ages 10 and 11 vividly because it was such a fun experience. Knowing how much YPC shaped me as a tiny camper is a strong reminder of the importance of camp and what is possible to create there. I went back again from ‘97 through ‘99 as a counselor. I became director of YPC from ’03 through ’05, was scheduled to direct in 06, but got a new job and wasn’t able to get the time away to direct camp.
When I wasn’t working with kids, as a teacher or counselor, I was somehow involved with art. I built miniature models for set designer Douglas Stein and worked as an art assistant on the sets of various independent films, as an assistant to artist Alyson Shotz preparing a piece for exhibit at the Guggenheim, and for an artists’ collaborative in Madrid, Spain. Right now, I’m an art teacher for the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, a social-work community service agency in Brooklyn, N.Y.
My role there is to provide arts programming that compliments the community-building goals of the organization. Everything I do there has been helped and guided by what I have learned from working at Rowe. My everyday tasks include teaching classes, community mural making, preparing sets and costumes for performances, and decorating the hallway with all of the kids’ artwork. I spend a lot of time in staff meetings (that use the group work model also), and I also write the monthly newsletter in English and Spanish.
Working at Rowe helped me understand that community building and helping kids express themselves creatively are things that I feel passionate about.
Yoruba Ze-Ti — Transitions Camp
I learned about Rowe from a friend when I was 19. I had just experienced a fire in my apartment that destroyed not only all my belongings but also several important relationships (and threatened to send me back to living at home with my parents). I was feeling lost and confused in my life and didn’t know which way was up, much less which way to go. I signed up for a work-study in the area of housekeeping in the fall of 1999.
Felicity immediately recognized me as a “camp person” and encouraged me to apply for the coming summer. I submitted my glitter-covered application to T-Camp, and Paul and Maureen Gemme (the co-directors at the time) hired me before they had even opened the envelope, owing to the very sparkly design I had painted on the envelope! I worked on T-Camp staff for 5 years, and I was able to help T-Camp grow from a toddler to a teenager. My last 2 years on staff (05-06), I was a Co-Director. The experience of being part of transitions camp taught me so many important lessons in trust, community, healing, leadership, and love.
I am happy with my life right now, although it is the reason I will not be directing or working at camp this year... In 2004, I moved to California to pursue a Master’s Degree in Social Work at Berkeley. I graduated with that degree in May of 2006, and I decided I wasn’t ready to stop yet, so I am currently on my PhD in Social Work at Berkeley. I am interested in social work and interdisciplinary responses to major disasters, wars, and large-scale conflict. I would like to help figure out more helpful interventions for the major disasters that are becoming regular occurrences in the global community.
In addition to my schooling, I also work in direct practice with children and families who have experienced severe trauma. Everything in my professional and scholastic life relates back to my larger goal of helping children and families to heal after difficult experiences.
Special Thanks To all of these wonderful directors who have served our youth so well, we say thanks for giving of yourself so wholeheartedly, and for being great role models for the next generation of leaders, who are at camp today.
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