English Camp
Every year for the past 4 or 5 years, Izumi High School, Miyagi’s biggest high school located in Sendai, has held an English Camp. This is a three day, two night camp with first year high school students. Kevin and Amanda are the two JETs working at Izumi this year and luckily Kevin is my good buddy, so he invited me and some of the other second year JETs to be staff members at this year’s English Camp. (Above: the whole crew) I jumped on the opportunity, always liking a change in my usual routine at the junior high school. I was looking forward to the camp because Kevin told me that the kids attending camp had to pay for it, so that meant these were this kids who would be excited and motivated to learn English, quite unlike some of the kids we all have in school who don’t like English at all. Indeed, Kevin was right. 95% of the kids there really tried using the English that they knew and weren’t as shy as the kids I’m used to working with at the junior high. Each of the 8 JETs at the camp was in charge of a group of 5 kids. This was way cool because we got to know our group a bit and developed a good relationship with the kids. My group was really fun. The students signed up for a variety of classes that us JETs taught. These included foreign language (non-english), music, games, culture, arts and crafts. (Above: Some of my fans watching me work out) I taught American culture with Kevin, Arabic with Julianna, and Dan and I taught the kids a rock song (Dandy Warhols- Bohemian Like You, from Portland, baby! Woop woop!) that we accompanied with two guitars. The JETs and teachers had a blast! In the evening the students got the opportunity to watch a western movie (Transformers or Finding Nemo), then went back to their rooms to write a diary entry/reflection about the day’s events that they submitted to their JET group leader each night. Reading and responding in the diaries was one of my favorite parts of the whole camp. After the oishii Japanese dinners each night, us JETs would pile into one of the rooms to talk about the day or about JET life. Casey, Dan, Kevin and I all played guitars, so both nights we enjoyed jamming and singing together. When the diaries arrived we would all take turns reading the funny or cute things that our group members had written. The final day of the camp was the speech contest and the skit contest. (Above: Dan and I teaching the kids how to ROCK!)Each group had practiced a skit at school to be presented at English Camp on the last day. These skits were based on a fairy tale, or popular movie and were often hilarious and quite entertaining. Finally, after the closing ceremony, the students were allotted about a half hour to take picture and get autographs. By this time, I had reached rockstar status at the camp, mainly because I was one of the only single guys, I was outgoing, and because I could play rock songs on the guitar. I would walk into the lunch room and 5-10 girls would shout out, “Keennny!!!” It was hilarious. Oh, did I mention there were 35 girls and 5 boys? Yeah, so that added to the rockstarness. We rode together back to the school and said our final goodbyes. (Above: Parting is such sweet sorrow...) It was one of my most rewarding and fun experiences in Japan to date, mainly because you could tell we really made a great impact on the kids. The students were given immediate feedback on their English and saw that they could do it! It worked! And that was really neat to see. Also, it was just simply a fun, natural, authentic environment for the JETs and the students to practice/teach English. There were no tests, no memorization, and there wasn’t a teacher lecturing at the front of the room while the kids have to shut up and listen. To me, this is what real teaching should look like. This was the ideal situation for English instruction and learning, yet it just felt so natural and normal. This is what I feel the English teaching environment should be like everyday. (Below: The Legends...)