Well it has been quite a long few weeks but I want to catch up as much as possible!
So a week ago I started English Camp. Basically it was a week long camp where kids from schools all around the area came to improve their English and get an immersion all week :) There were 4 counselors including me and then about 40 students. So we split them into two groups most days with two teachers each. Now I didn’t know at all what to expect when I first started and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to do it but let me tell you that it was the most meaningful experience I’ve had by far during my time in Chile. We had a total blast all week with the kids! It was a ton of work don’t get me wrong but seriously it was amazing and totally worth it!!
As with many things in South America plans weren’t really settled until the last minute :) Therefore, we didn’t know how many kids would show up or what their abilities were. We were given a rough schedule of what to teach and thrown in to fend for ourselves. As you can imagine I was a little nervous about this aspect. The first day was quite a long one. It felt like I spent most of it scrambling to keep my head above water. We tried to play games and practice with dialogues so as to get an idea of the English level of our kids. I surprisingly learned all their names thanks to a name game. My name was jumpin’ Jessica lol. We were supposed to go bowling the first day but that fell through so we just kind of went with the flow and tried to make it through! After we finished we regrouped at a local food court next to the school and put our heads together as to how we were going to make the next days go a lot more smoothly :) We got ice cream while we brainstormed because they always helps! We decided to take it one day at a time and plan for the next day at the end of every camp day (which was at 6pm)
The planning really paid off because the next days were great! I don’t want to bore you with too many details but I want to tell you a few things we did :)
So a week ago I started English Camp. Basically it was a week long camp where kids from schools all around the area came to improve their English and get an immersion all week :) There were 4 counselors including me and then about 40 students. So we split them into two groups most days with two teachers each. Now I didn’t know at all what to expect when I first started and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to do it but let me tell you that it was the most meaningful experience I’ve had by far during my time in Chile. We had a total blast all week with the kids! It was a ton of work don’t get me wrong but seriously it was amazing and totally worth it!!
As with many things in South America plans weren’t really settled until the last minute :) Therefore, we didn’t know how many kids would show up or what their abilities were. We were given a rough schedule of what to teach and thrown in to fend for ourselves. As you can imagine I was a little nervous about this aspect. The first day was quite a long one. It felt like I spent most of it scrambling to keep my head above water. We tried to play games and practice with dialogues so as to get an idea of the English level of our kids. I surprisingly learned all their names thanks to a name game. My name was jumpin’ Jessica lol. We were supposed to go bowling the first day but that fell through so we just kind of went with the flow and tried to make it through! After we finished we regrouped at a local food court next to the school and put our heads together as to how we were going to make the next days go a lot more smoothly :) We got ice cream while we brainstormed because they always helps! We decided to take it one day at a time and plan for the next day at the end of every camp day (which was at 6pm)
The planning really paid off because the next days were great! I don’t want to bore you with too many details but I want to tell you a few things we did :)
- We did end up going bowling which was tons of fun and a first for many of the kids! I was so happy because a boy won who had never bowled before and he was just ecstatic!
- We had an Olympic day where we broke them up into teams and they had to complete different tasks at different stations. I had the trivia station where they answered questions like how many stripes are on the US flag, which two states have Disney land and Disney world, and who is Angelina Jolie dating :) I think the hardest for them was naming the two non-continental states of the US.
- We had them in 9 different groups where each was given a state to research. Of course Illinois was one of them!! They came up with hilarious cheers for their states and made posters full of interesting information to share on the last day. The Illinois kids made a great flag and gave it to me as a present :)
- We had a spelling bee which the kids got really into, I was really impressed with their skills! Spelling has certainly never been my strongest subject.
- We had a Christmas day where we made a tree and snowflakes! We had everyone bring a white elephant gift and it turned out really fun!! We also made chocolate chip cookies and watched a Christmas movie. I think that was one of the best days :)
- We also had the kids come up with a skit, a children’s book or a song for the last day where we put on a talent show for all the parents and a few members of the ministry of education. It turned out so good! The kids were so excited to share what they had been working on and it was great way to end everything.
- Another really fun thing we did was have a sort of supermarket sweep! We taught the kids English words of what you might buy shopping and then brought them to a local shopping mall where they had to find all of the objects and whoever did it first and cheapest won! We didn’t check with the store first however so it was interesting to figure out how to not get kicked out :) That was super fun.
- Every day we taught new vocabulary pertaining to the activities and tried to give them time to work with it and speak.
On the last day I was so sad to have to say goodbye to the kids. They all worked so hard and got so close throughout the week. They got together and bought us all aprons because of the cookie making day :) I though that was such a sweet idea! They also surprised us with little homemade gifts which I will keep forever!
I must admit I cried when we had to say goodbye. I feel like I learned so much from this experience. I learned how to think on my feet and go with the flow. There were so many unexpected surprises and things that didn’t workout how we wanted them too that I really feel it helped me to be creative and not worry so much about the outcome. Working with the other volunteers really helped us to become great friends. When you go through that kind of experience you really get to know the other people :) I think we all made a great team!
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