English Camp in Mayberry

The following was an abandoned blog entry from last weekend, Sunday the 17th of January:

Today I took part in the Chan Klan English Camp. Coming into the camp, I didn't know what to expect really. This morning I left my flat with a thumb drive of potential English speaking/listening games. I had done one other English camp previous to this one. It seems like every other weekend someone I know is busy with a camp. I like to pick their brains to hear their stories, listening to what worked for them, etc. I knew generally what to expect, so I wasn't worried.

Sidebar: The old me would probably shit my pants at the thought of entertaining 150-200 kids without a specific plan (someone who knows anything about grammar feel free to correct this sentence).

Sorry for the stream of consciousness there.

Back to the ride over to Chan Klan. I'm sitting there with Tyler and Jesse, my partners in crime. A teacher from the school hosting the camp picked us up around 7am. So there we are, sitting quietly, Jesse making small talk. Tyler pondering to himself as usual. I'm digesting my coffee and bananas, thinking about the probable sequence of todays events: 150-200 kids, probably split up into groups of 20 or so, play some sherades, eat some free lunch, photo op at the end, make a couple speeches, and leave with 1,000 baht in my pocket.

This is what I expected. Not too much longer after I start spacing off at the rice patties whizzing by my window do I hear the driver share with us how excited everyone back at Chan Klan was that we [Tyler, Jesse, and I] were coming. I passed it off as nothing more than typical Thai flattery until he mentioned that we were the first farang their school will have seen in 10 years. This small talk just got serious.

Thai kids who aren't used to native English speaking tend to do the dear in headlights thing. On top of that. A this point he's got our attention. We ask the driver more questions. He said the camp was all Mathayom 1 students. For those at home, mathayom schools are M1-6 (grades 7-12 equivalent). In the 5 minutes in the car I had learned that I would be entertaining 100 7th graders for 6 hours. A typical English camp has somewhere in the vicinity of 150-200 students and about 5-10 teachers. The ratio ends up being in the ballpark of 20 students to every teacher. Once split up into these groups, the students rotate from teacher to teacher, being entertained at each station for about 30 minutes before a bell or something sounds and the students rotate to the next teacher.

This camp turned out to be quite different.

As the truck drove through town, we began to see why no white people had been there in over 10 years. Probably for the same reason Mayberry hadn't seen Thai people. As we passed the elementary school (which the driver said only has 60 attending students and 3 teachers, one of them being the principal) I started putting the figures together. Only 100 students at camp, and only the 3 Americans to entertain them for 6 hours. This meant 33 students per group session. This kinda rules out sports. 33 person kickball with 7th graders? Ummm No. OK how 'bout sherades? Well lemme think a second, these kids will surely be freaked out at the sudden whitey invasion of their bizarro mayberry. Since they're only 13, they won't have much of an English vocabulary of a knowledge of pop culture figures which is what kinda drives sherades. Not to mention awkward and self-conscious because: they're 7th graders.

We arrived and the bulk of the day was spent doing a lot of games that got them moving. This helped to...... "break the ice" would be a bold-faced lie, so I'll games melted the ice. Imagine that big mother that took down the titanic versus a hotel hair dryer. Having only planned for 30 minute entertainment sessions, Jesse, Tyler, and I met up at lunch time and had all run out of material to keep them busy. We used our go-to games, our back-up games, and our back-up back-ups. We refueled and brainstormed some quick games to occupy them for another 2 hours. Musical chairs, duck duck goose, crabwalk/leap frog relays... the old standards we know and love.

The students were painfully shy to start, but were screaming, play fighting and taking pictures with the Americans by the end. Total lovefest. I learned my lesson this week. Be more proactive in the planning stages of these types of things. The difference between 30 minute and 1 hour game sessions or 7th and 10th graders for that matter is big.

The post-English Camp regiment consisted of a long shower, bbc documentary on the Mayan disappearance, intermittent dozing, and a 22 ounce longneck of Leo (delicious local beer).

In case anyone was wondering, the theory that a long-lasting draught wiped out the Mayans has picked up more support as more climate data from ice cores and soil samples is coming in. Draught isn't as sexy as mass sacrifices by the millions.