Serrano,

Roxxie A. Serrano
Professor Jackson Frasier
HDF 413
21 September 2014
Campus Rec
Going into something that you are unaware of the outcome is a little nerve wrecking. This
retreat was one of the nerve wrecking moments for me. My impression of this retreat was not as I
expected. I believed it was not going to be entertaining but boy was I wrong. It was nice to see
that there were a lot of people came to the retreat. The concept of the retreat is to get the group to
work under the same circumstances in a friendly and enjoyable atmosphere. With attempting to
accomplish this task the group of facilitators must instill the values of trust and the ability to
work with one another in a place they would like to be on a everyday basis.
I want to start off by saying that I was not able to attend the meeting that Steve had
prepared on Wednesday due to the fact that I had class when they decided to meet. As for the
agenda the place was located at Tootell West Gym and the first thing we did was to do an
introduction and an icebreaker, posse up to be exact. Then from there split the group of an
estimate of 70-80 participants. The sessions approximately were going to take twenty-five
minutes each and then the small group will rotate to the next session. The three sessions was
going to be T.P Shuffle run by Brian and David, Pulse conducted by Annemarie and Nikki and
lastly Pipeline instructed by CJ and Dan. The last thing that the retreat would do is to regroup as
a whole and debrief and complete the evaluations. The group that participated was from the
Fascitelli Fitness. The purpose of the retreat was to get everyone on the same page with building
a community between two staff members that work at Fascitelli Fitness.
The Campus Rec was the name of the group that participated in this retreat. The first
thing that we did was a split into three groups, from there one of the groups went the cycling
room and other to a classroom and the last group remained in the gym. Brian and David were

Serrano,

running the cycling room. Brian and David asked us to get into a line from there they both taped
a box around us. The first activity we were asked to do was to line up and to organize ourselves
by last name without stepping out of the boundaries. The next activities were similar to the first
activity but some occasionally had to be done without speaking to each other. The group
discovered that it was difficult but possible to do it without speaking but it went smoother when
we were able to communicate with each other. The next thing we did during our time in the
cycling room was sit down and reflect on how this activity helps the group in general. We found
out that the group was semi okay when it came to dealing with communicating with each other.
There were new members joining the gym staff this year and they said that they felt welcomed
into the group. One of the few dilemmas they felt they have is one, not being comfortable to
communicate with the director of the gym because there are days that shes friendly and nice and
other days that shes unbearable to even attempt to talk to and second, was not being advised as a
whole of special events and or concerns. The example they provided was that they recently had
Disney theme day and the front end comes in asking what is this, why was I not informed of
this? They feel that it is the responsibility of the supervisors to communicate things like that to
everybody either through email or posting things in the staff room since thats where they spent
before starting work. The second place that we went was the classroom where we played pulse;
we had to trust the other person to give of the right pulse to get the chicken. The objective of the
game was to trust the doing of an individual or team. It was interesting to see that that group was
really into the game. Some of the words giving to Nikki and Anne Marie were trusting, stressful,
etc. I felt like those were the main words that the facilitators were attempting to get out of the
group. The last session was held back at the gym, where the group participated in pipeline. I was
astonished to see that things can get down without any communication but works even better

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when you talk about situations that complicate certain issues. I liked that the facilitators know
when it is okay to joke around but when it comes to dealing with the group they do it in an
orderly fashion.
I dont think that the retreat need any changing, I enjoyed it, so Im pretty sure that the
group found some pleasure out of it as well. I learned that retreats do not always have to be
something boring. You can learn the fundamental purpose of the retreat as well as get entertained
at the same time. I also learned that it doesnt take much effort to facilitate a retreat. Ill I need to
learn is to be more outspoken. I just hope when I facilitate a retreat that the retreat is as
entertaining and welcoming as this one was.
To conclude, the purpose of the retreat was so that staff members can build a community
between the staff members that work at the Fascitelli Fitness, I believe thats exactly what they
got. The activities provided during the retreat: T.P Shuffle Pulse and Pipeline and demonstrated
the values of teamwork and trusting each other.