JUSTIN REICH

1. What do you enjoy about your job?

Every day I study learning, which is inexhaustibly fascinating. Nothing is more interesting than watching, thinking about, and learning about the ways in which people grow up and become wiser and more capable.

 

2. What led you to pursue your career path?

All my life, I’ve been blessed to have teachers and camp counselors who cared deeply about my growth as a person and who wanted to help me be a better person. That’s what teaching is about to me.

 

3. What are your favorite memories of ALC?  Pretty much every time I have a really large meal, I have dreams of AMT resupplies, especially one resupply in particular where in addition to vast quantities of everything, someone sent a giant bowl of strawberries and cream, which we ate by the fistful until we were deliriously full and sick. I have weird little funny moments that I remember and still resonate with me. Keith Russell once slipped on a trail that ran along a short cliff and stumbled into Chris Bagg and me. We all stopped right at the cliff’s edge. We looked down the cliff and the sharp, broken tree stumps that we almost fell on to. Keith said “That woulda hurt,” with great nonchalance, and we kept walking. It pops into my mind when we have a close call. Whenever I swim out on the mountains, I remember the time that I went two months only washing in mountain streams.

 

4. Did you gain anything at camp that you use today?

Most good days, I use my personality, resilience, creativity, and appreciation for the world, all of which were forged at camp.

 

As a more specific example, much of my job is helping educators think about technology and how young people should learn to learn with digital media. Knowing when to turn things off is a vital skill, and I’m deeply grateful to my camping experiences for helping me know what it means to be unplugged.