Scott & Jody's Adventures Abroad: This Is The Day, This Is The Day of Our English Camp!

This past weekend Scott and I participated in Damrongratsongkroh School's English Camp. What an exhausting but memorable weekend! Each year my school has a 2 day English camp for a selected grade level and all students in that grade are invited to participate. This year the camp happened to be held for Mathayom 2, which is the level I teach, so it was pretty special to get to spend 2 days with kids that are enthusiastic about learning English. The 2-day long camp was held at a "resort" just outside of town, and a total of 120 students participated. Scott was invited to join as a Facilitator, along with several other teachers from my program that are teaching in nearby cities. There was a teacher from Ghana, and several from the Philippines, along with the Americans and an English guy that works at my school. Too bad Scott got food poisoning Friday night, got no sleep and was up bright and early to entertain kids all weekend. He was such a trooper! It was a weekend full of corny camp songs, games and skits performed by non-native speakers in an attempt to create a comfortable environment in which students can work to improve their fluency.

The Facilitators enjoying an adult beverage after the campers went to bed. The man in the orange in the middle is my boss, the Head of the English Department.

It started bright and early at 7:00 am when all the teachers and students met at the school to check in, and then headed 20 minutes out of town to the site.
Upon arrival we jumped right into English fun. There was no shortage of sugary snacks all weekend, and we were greeted with doughnuts and strawberry flavored milk upon arrival. The opening ceremony included camp songs that will be stuck in my head for the next several weeks, and introduction to all the Facilitators. All of the students know me, so they recognized me when I was introduced. But when Scott got up to introduce himself the entire hall, mostly the girls, erupted in "oooohh!" and "awwww!" We were each assigned a group to supervise during the camp, and we got right underway making group names, group cheers and group flags.

Mathayom 2 students at the opening ceremony.

Not that I have favorite students, but some of my favorite students were in my group, so we had a lot of fun. The theme of the camp was "Intensifying English Learning Towards the ASEAN Community." Personally I think that's quite a mouthful for 8th grade non-English speakers, but they definitely understand ASEAN and the importance English has in Thailand's future. Each group was assigned a country in the ASEAN community, and had to come up with a name, cheer and flag based on that country. Scott's team was the Malaysian Bumble Bees and my team was Cambodia: The Best of ASEAN.

Part of my team brainstorming cheer and flag ideas.

Saturday consisted of songs and games led by the Thai teachers, and stations with listening, speaking, and vocabulary activities led by the foreign teachers. Each group of 12 students rotated to a different station and got to do each activity once on either Saturday or Sunday. Scott did a great vocabulary activity introducing different animals and played a highly competitive matching game that the students really enjoyed. I used one of the vocabulary words later in the day when I asked one of the students about a rhinoceros. I put my finger on my forehead and pretended to headbutt her and she said, "Ooh! Teacher Scott!" She had remembered learning that animal at his station. The students seemed to really respond to him as a teacher, which was great, but it may have just volunteered him to participate at all the upcoming English camps!
My station involved bargaining with fake money, which proved to be very entertaining. Some of the most timid, soft-spoken kids came out of their shells and bargained harder than the market women in South America! Those kids will do well later in life for sure!

Students learning to haggle.

We had breaks for lunch and a snack in the afternoon, but other than that, we were working the entire day. It was really exhausting being outside, constantly thinking of new games when we had extra time, and always putting on an excited face. By the time dinner was done, all the Facilitators were ready for bed, but the evening proved to be one of the most entertaining parts of the camp, when students performed the skits they (or mostly the Facilitators) had written earlier that afternoon. Scott's group performed a game show skit called "What Animal Is It?" largely based on his activity that afternoon. Two teams competed in a 20 questions style game and had to guess the other team's animal after getting clues and asking questions.

The skits went by pretty slowly. Students got embarrassed speaking in front of their classmates and started giggling, which got the rest of the room giggling, so you can imagine a 4 minute skit dragged on for quite a bit longer, but it was really fun to see what the students came up with. Their levels of speaking vary greatly, but it was fun to see students that don't participate much in class getting up in front of their peers.

My group came up with the skit idea on their own, and I had never heard the fairy tale so I just went with it and let them do their thing. They wrote out the dialogue in Thai and translated most all of it themselves, only asking me a few technical questions along the way. Granted the dialogue consisted of really simple sentences, I was really proud of their efforts. They performed really well, and the whole crowd went crazy when the boy playing the prince got down on his knee to ask his princess to marry him. They had practiced before, but when they actually performed it he said, "My Princess, I love you." which caught the princess by surprise, making her blush uncontrollably and got the whole room hooting and hollering. This is 8th grade, so you can imagine. Anyway, my team ended up winning the skit competition, so they were all very excited, and got super hyped up on the sugary prize that they won.

Part of my group after winning the skit competition.

Other groups performed English songs, including one rendition of Bruno Mars and another rap in English. By the time Lights Out came around at 11:00pm, the students and teachers were all exhausted. 6:30 am breakfast came really early the next morning...
Sunday included the second set of stations and closing ceremonies. We were asked to name a Best Camper award, which was really hard for everyone. There were obviously some members of the team that were stronger English speakers than others, and some students participated more than others, but even so, I really didn't like the term "Best Camper." Scott and I both felt that there were several really strong people in our groups that contributed in different ways: some participated a lot in the group stations, others really contributed to writing the skits and team cheers, but others who weren't as strong were just really enthusiastic. How do you choose? We ended up choosing one and asking them to share with their team as everyone participated to the teams' successes. The Vice Director of our school gave the closing ceremony speech, and it was actually one of the best speeches I've heard. She delivered it in English, although the other teachers liked it so much that they translated it to Thai to post on our school's website. Hopefully it will inspire other students to work on their English and come to the camps we put on in the future. The students left happy, and all in all had a great time at the camp. It definitely gave them an opportunity to speak English in a much more relaxed atmosphere without worrying about being docked points for making a mistake like in the classroom. It was also really exciting for them to meet so many new teachers from different parts of the world. The students really enjoyed meeting Teacher Scott and having him at the camp, and he really enjoyed meeting them as well. I talk about them all the time, so it was really nice for him to not only meet them but to also participate in teaching them. It was also nice for him to get a taste of what I go through everyday, and experience how exciting it is to see a class go really well and the buzz you get after really connecting with your students. We will both need a break before the next camp, but it was a really fun weekend and I really enjoyed getting to know my students more. Below are a few more pictures from the camp: