English Camp

My time at English camp astounded even I. I went into it with as positive of a mind set as I could. Even still, it wasn’t as bright as I was attempting to trick myself into. It didn’t work in my favor that I had the most unresponsive child there (that’s purely an exaggeration).

Alex. That was the English name dubbed to him by yours truly. I presented him a list of generic names like John, James, Adam etc. When I said Alex he jumped and nodded since he refused to speak English to me despite the fact that he spoke English very well. Later I was told that there is a famous Korean singer who goes by the English name as Alex. The truth behind the name!

Surprisingly, young children are so much like puppies that sometimes I almost picture a leash on that tiny little neck. :P I wish I had had one for Alex; all those times he ran off and taunted me for not keeping up got under my skin. I understand all the numerous times I was told not to take it personally, but it’s harder than you think to just brush it aside. In fact, I had this rather annoying scholar actually complain to me about his perfectly receptive, cute Korean kid because she liked to hang out with her friends and didn’t pay him enough “attention”. I had no remorse for anyone except Shalini, who had a kid that actually swore excessively in Korean and thew fit after fit.

Our days were meticulously planned by Group four coordinator, Tee. Luckily, I was part of group four. Previously we had divided into teams. I belonged to team 3, my team leader: Stephen Christopher Low, a very interesting Brit/Kiwi with a shock of red hair. The first days consisted of game that, to be honest, none of the kids in my team hardly participated in. In fact, my rambunctious cheek-squeezer was off in the corner playing with a mock, orange football (soccer ball). From that day on, I would learn that if I ever needed to find Alex, that I could just look for a brightly colored football and find him not far in toe.

The next day we had textbook rotation. We were incorrectly informed that we had to make a lesson plan for our child for two hours straight. We were allowed to be in groups of two, so me and my friends Leanne, teamed up to teach our living, breathing Korean child. I need to preface that Leanne is fucking awesome! She helped me so much to plan for our lesson and was such a great break from working with my kid. She’s from New Zealand. For some reason the Kiwi’s grouped together a lot, so Leanne sort of helped me make headway into the Kiwi scene. There are a shit ton of Kiwi’s here!

Anway, so Leanne and I planned this rad lesson involving colors that we had to scrap when they told us that it was a rotation style lesson. I would get to work with 4 kids, including mine, through a rotation about every 10 minutes. Working with my kid was...well, honestly, it left nothing to be desired. He sat there, staring at me, no matter how hard I tried to get him to repeat me and learn with me. After a long and grueling 10 minutes, I was gifted with three of the sweetest, most responsive kids! The last, Justin, even gave me a sticker with Korean written all over it. The sticker said, “Thank you teacher! My English isn’t very good, but I feel that I’ve gotten better being taught by you. Thank you.” It was so fucking cute I almost puked.

The rest of the classes were pretty lame. We had traditional Korean music, cultural experience where we made Aboriginal dot art from Australia/New Zealand (even though they are two separate countries), a football jersey from UK, or a board game from America (I know, I had the same reaction. What the fuhhh!? Is America land of board games or something?), English through theatre (I was the director. I was told I treated the kids like dogs. :D), and English through music.

We were also required to eat our meals with our kids. Cute, except that I would always have to ditch my meal to take my kid back to the dorm because I didn’t know how to get across that he needed to wait for me to finish.

Our rooms consisted to 10 scholars per room, two showers and one toilet. Not only that, but we slept on palates on the floor, not on beds. I thought this would be bad, but honestly I slept so well on it that I can’t complain.

After three days of constant silence from Alex, watching everyone enjoy their adorable Korean pets/kids and being exhausted from 12 hours a day of children and classes, I think a majority of us were pretty stoked for it to be over. We had a talent show near the end, where the groups separated into two divisions and got a song together to perform. Highlights were definitely Thriller and Jump on it. It was so rad. We actually were told that our talent show was the best that a lot of the supervisors had ever scene. It was great! Then we had our closing ceremony, in which Alex was playing a game on my phone because he was bored. A lot of the scholars and their respective children were teary eyed.

Despite my bad experience at English camp, I did enjoy myself quite a lot. I got to be around really great people and we turned the negatives to positives as much as we could. That, and we ate so much ice cream thanks to a convenience store being right next to our dormitories. And even though I had a bad child and had to sleep on the floor and share a shower and work and work and work, I really enjoyed it. I feel so much more prepared for my class room now. It is my first time teaching, so I know that I still have a lot to learn, but I know one thing. My classroom is so going to have a disciplinary system. 100%