Orientation for the Summer Camp USA program was today. In the email they sent out about the meeting, they never really specified what the format of the discussion would be. I figured it would be a little fact presentation about the program, a little Q&A, and then maybe some games or something to show what you could expect while there.
What did happen, was primarily a presentation of fact for about 4 hours on things to pack, what you need to obtain (visa, passport, etc..), what travel would be like etc… There was a little Q&A, but not nearly as much as I expected, and a short presentation on cultural differences, and how they affect communication.
All in all, the presentation wasn’t overly helpful, as they could have simply given out the handouts, and people could have read them on their own time rather than having them recited to you. I would have preferred to see some footage from previous camps, and had several people there that had been over for a panel discussion or something similar.
Aside from that, I did learn a little bit about the Camp USA program itself, and how things are taught. The Camp USA program was started by an American, Guy Healy, as a small operation for providing the opportunity for Japanese people to interact with native English Speakers. The camp began with a single camp in Nagasaki, but this year, has worked with the Japanese Education board to open camps in Sapporo, Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka, and Tokyo.
The camp has teaching activities already prepared for the most part. The camp has attendees ranging from the age of 3 to 22, and all different levels of English ability. For the extremely young children, ages 3-5, counselors must create their own activities. For all other ages, the counselors are told which activities they are to use, which is nice for non-teaching majors, so they have something to work with. For teaching majors, this may prove slightly frustrating.
Activities are a base, however, and as activities can and probably will finish early, the counselor is left to come up with something to educate and entertain students until the next activity. The good news is that pretty much anything we take for granted here, such as duck, duck, goose, or even children’s sing-alongs will probably go over well. The attendees there probably will never have been exposed to what we consider children’s games here, and will not mind them. The most important thing is exposing the attendees to English in a manor they can understand.
As for arrangements for the counselors themselves, all arrangements will be made by Guy Healy, and all expenses paid. Counselors will have airline tickets bought for them, and will depart primarily from O’Hare in Chicago, Illinois, and enter Japan at Narita airport. From there, depending on where their final destination is, they will take another flight, and then a bus to the camp or their host family’s house.
Travel time from the host family’s house to the camp also varies widely on where you are located. The one previous camp counselor at the meeting said that his travel time was usually about an hour, but others in different camps were closer. I would think that if you were in Tokyo, count on a very long travel time, anywhere else and you could probably expect under an hour. This is not really an issue though, as it sounds like the schedule will be that a counselor will be on at the camp for two days, at the camp but preparing for the next two days for one day, on again for two days, and then at the host family’s house for two days.
The one downside to this setup however, is that it sounds like travel opportunities will be rather limited. I am also not sure on how long the counselor will have after camp’s end until departure back to the US. I would imagine that everyone for a particular camp would have the same arrangements so that tickets can be bought in bulk, so I would imagine the counselor would have a minimal amount of time. No one was sure on exact dates however, as the tickets have not been purchase yet.
So, the camp sounds like a great opportunity, and also a little intimidating. Looking around the room, I saw a lot of women, and a minimal amount of men, and of those men, it sounded like most of them had studied abroad before. I would imagine that most of them are education or ESL (English as a Secondary Language) majors, and have some training in this. I doubt any have any practical experience in teaching Japanese people English however, and that’s the one area that the field is even. No one knows exactly what to expect, but all will have many memories after it, and a good bit of real-world experience.