English Camp!

Tamura is a special place for students to learn English.  I think you would be hard pressed to find another part of Japan with a student-to-ALT (Assistant Language Teacher) ratio as high as the one here.   As such, we can do some things here for students that you wouldn’t find in other parts of the country.  One of these things is English Camp.  English Camp is a two-day program that all the sixth graders in the town get to experience.  All students begin studying English in middle school, so one goal of the camp is to give kids a little bit of a head start in English study.  We also want the kids to start having fun with English, so we play a lot of games and crafts, and teach a little lesson about the most important American holiday (at least in the mind of a sixth grader), Halloween.  Yay candy!  Another goal of the camp is for kids to get to know students from other schools – when kids go to middle school, much like how we do things in the states, students from various elementary schools are combined.  We group students together that will be at the same middle school next year.  So not only are kids getting a head start on English and having fun at the same time, they are also meeting new friends and forming relationships they can look forward to next year.  We ran a total of four camps over the past two weeks, one for each of the middle schools in town. 

Day one of camp was always a little awkward to start.  Kids can be shy, especially when you put them in a group with a crazy off-the-wall American.  But we would always get over that quick enough.  Camps had anywhere from 70 to 170 kids, and we would break them into groups of 15 or so.  We started the day with simple introductions and then played some ice breakers and name games.  It’s fun being in a new country doing these sorts of games because they are all new to the kids here.  I’m used to kids being bored with ice breakers and name games back in the States, because they’ve seen them all already.  Kids over here are hesitant at first, but they get really excited about these games once they understand the rules.  I wonder what Japanese ice breakers look like, or if they even have an equivalent for that over here.  Some students did teach me a Japanese version of Red Light – Green Light a few days ago; they were excited to learn the American variant after teaching me how the Japanese play the game.  After ice breakers we would have to come up with our team name.  We gave each team a list of adjectives and a list of nouns.  They would pick their favorite from each list and combine them to make a name.  This led to some interesting names.  This year English Camp got to see the Big Bananas, Pink Monkeys, Dangerous Underpants, Cool Tigers, and Rainbow Kings, among others.  After choosing a team name students would have time to make a team poster.

The second part of day one was the infamous shopping game.  Each team was a different store (pet store, candy store, school supply store, etc.).  We took time to teach the vocabulary of what each store sold, and then we taught a simple shopping dialogue.  After some practice, we let the kids loose in our makeshift strip-mall, half the kids manning the stores, the other half trying to buy all the items on their shopping lists with the fake money we provided them.  It was a fun game, and a good way to get kids speaking English.  When we would teach the shopping dialogue, most of the students would be really nervous to try and practice.  But the chaos of the kids running around trying to get to each store provided the perfect cover for students to try the dialogue without being afraid of making mistakes.  I’m pretty sure everyone had it down by the end of the day, even the students that had been terrified to speak in English at the start of the day. 

Day two was all about Halloween.  At the start of the day we would have plenty of supplies set out and the kids would get busy making masks and decorating candy bags in preparation for the afternoon’s Halloween Party.  After all the sequins and stickers and pompoms and markers were cleaned up, we would spend some time practicing writing the alphabet; most students already knew the alphabet, but it was good for them to practice, and there were enough students that didn’t know much about writing letters that it was a worthwhile time.  But after lunch came what most of the kids would say was the highlight of camp: The Halloween Party.  All the teachers got dressed up in costumes and paraded around the students, with another teacher and myself giving energetic introductions of each costume.  We had a couple cowgirls, some Barbies, Pooh and Tigger, and I was (of course) Pikachu.   After the parade we would take some time to explain what happens on Halloween in the States, and then we got into a massive jonken (rock, paper, scissors) tournament.  Let me pause here at say a word about rock, paper, scissors.  It is way more popular over here than in the States.  Students are playing all the time; teachers will play with students sometimes to determine how big a homework assignment will be; they have different things you say depending on how many times you throw the same thing (e.g. both throwing rock, both throwing paper).  People take it pretty seriously over here.  Anyway, that to say that a jonken tourney in Japan holds a lot more excitement that a rock, paper, scissors tourney would in the States.  After that we would play one last large group game before ending camp.  That would be sharks and minnows, if the space allowed.  Again, here is a game that is old hat to any kid in the States, but is brand new to the kids over here.  Needless to say, they have a lot of fun with it. 

After the Halloween party we conclude the English Camp.  A quick note on meetings or programs in Japan: formality and structure is highly valued, even when working with 12-year-olds.  Before and after each section of camp it was imperative that someone would announce that we were officially starting or officially ending.  At the beginning of day one each teacher would have to give a brief introduction and say how excited they were about camp.  At the end both teachers and students would get up and say something about their favorite part of the camp.  There is a particular way to do everything in Japan, it seems.  Sometimes as an American the Japanese way seems strange or even inefficient, but what can I say?  When in Rome…

So we did it.  English Camp 2012 is done!  And this weekend comes the celebratory retreat to a nearby onsen, which you will probably be hearing about in a future post. 

This post was long overdue; sorry for that.  As you can see, though, I’ve been a little busy with English Camp the last few weeks.  And maybe a little bit of culture shock has left me without the energy necessary to bang out a new post.  That might be an interesting topic for a future post: culture shock.  Everyone experiences when they come over here, but for each person it looks a little different.  I’m still figuring out how it’s really affecting me, so maybe I’ll let ya’ll in on what it’s like.

(And thanks for the pics Ashley!)