At some point being an English teacher in Thailand will give you the chance to participate in something called English Camps. They are a world of their own! I’ll have done three different ones by the time I finished my first semester. Companies all over Thailand look for foreign teachers to join them for the weekend. It’s a chance to create a completely fun environment while learning English. One thing to understand about Thailand, since it is not even close to how we learn in America, is that they base a lot of their education on games, songs and fun. I understand the kindergarten classes being filled with dancing and singing but when I was 16, I don’t ever remember playing games in school. I’ve done English Camps for every age from 8 to 17. With the 7 year olds, we sang songs for an hour, had learning sessions with poster boards for another hour then had them get up and give presentations of the vocabulary they learned combined with their own posters they made. Oh and how could I forget, we played games for the rest of the time! That seemed a lot more normal for that age. But when I did a camp with the 17 year old it was so amusing. We got to the camp and the school canceled the actual learning English part and decided to play games the entire 6 hours. We played games like Name That Celebrity, Question Your Leader, and my absolute favorite, Pass the Bomb. This is where we all stand in a circle and while the music plays we pass around things like lipstick, eye shadow, and lip liner. Sound strange yet? When the music stops the leader tells the person holding the item what to do with it. “Turn to the person on your right and put as much of your make up on their face.” Music plays again…STOP! “Turn to your left and draw on that person.” Music plays again…STOP! “Take the make up and give it to you friend. Now have your friend put all the make up on your own face!” It was hilarious! All this is the normal learning process at English camps. The last one I did was amazing and stressful all at the same time. Julia and I went to a 3 day Camp at a golf resort! They put us up in a hotel, fed us the whole weekend and all we had to do was keep up 3 days of energy! This camp was completely different. 2 of the days were get to know you games, a talent show and a cool Fun Fair where the students set up booths and we had to go around spending fake money playing carnival games. But 1 of the days was total over board. The second day there they spend 6 hours straight doing English learning. They had a book that they had to complete by the end of the class and I would have to grade them on it. The weekend had a theme called MoSo. Moderation Society. It focused on how to save energy and recycling and more things along those lines. The kids didn’t really want to pay any attention at all. And the hardest part was that the company didn’t explain to any of the staff what it all meant so we were trying to teach them about this topic that we didn’t understand fully our selves. The most ironic part of it all was when they were given an activity to build a roller coaster out of straws and tape. Now, they were just learning about recycling and cutting down on the materials they use in their lives though they used 1000’s of plastic straws to play a game. Ummm….interesting. Well, it all worked out in the end. English Camps…don’t you wish you had this in high school?
Tip #1-Have fun and appreciate the learning differences in Thailand. It’s like being a camp counselor. And what’s better than getting to be a kid again!
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