Bowmar faculty faced their fears and all got a little closer Wednesday at their first retreat.

Lead teacher Tondia Ferracci said the group of teachers, administrators and others who help keep the school running spent the day getting to know each other at Warner-Tully YMCA camp.

“We have discussed it for a few years, but we actually made it happen this year,” she said. “The driving force behind it was that we have so many new faculty members that we wanted that down time to get to know each other.”

Bowmar has six new faculty members this year, Ferracci said.

“It was all about synergy and working together,” she said. “We needed to get everyone over the wall or past the tire swings or whatever the obstacle was.”

Ferracci said the retreat was well-received by the faculty.

“People said it was fun and it was a great idea,” she said. “They got to know the new teachers and try things they had never tried before.”

Ferracci said she believes the teachers will have an easier transition into the beginning of school after completing the teambuilding exercises at the camp.

“It kind of made us unwind and be present with one another,” she said. “We’re so busy when we’re at the school.”

In the low ropes portion, participants crossed a path on tire swings, balanced an oversized see-saw, climbed over an obstacle wall and paired up to skirt across steel wires.

“The high ropes and zip line, we had 12 people do that,” she said. “We had several of us overcome height fears.”

After lunch, the group did a spiritual activity led by Mille Wolfe a former Bowmar teacher and current YMCA director of camping and childcare.

Wolfe explained the C in YMCA stands for Christian and as a Christian organization, it is important to spend time reflecting in God’s great outdoors.

“From the time that I started teaching, my mother used to always say, ‘Mille you were born to teach,’” she said. “God calls teachers, you don’t just learn to be a teacher.”

Wolfe read 1 Samuel 3:1–10 to the group.

“I read that scripture to them and five of us called each teacher by name, and we answered with ‘Here I am Lord,’” she said. “We listed to the song ‘Here I am Lord,’ followed by prayer and that was how their day ended.”

Wolfe said her perspective as a former teacher at the school helped her see how beneficial the retreat was.

“As a former Bowmar teacher looking in from the outside, it was easy to talk to those who had been there before,” she said. “The greatest thing I saw was there are so many new teachers, and as we did the team building elements, I saw the new teachers interacting with the old teachers, it was amazing. They were divided into groups and to be able to see them communicate and work together to complete a task will make the beginning of their year a whole lot stronger.”