Just When I Thought I Was Done...
At the end of my Fulbright grant, I and three other ETAs volunteered to go to Taichung for about a week and help teach a summer English camp there. I wanted to go because I had not gotten a chance to visit Taichung, and doing this camp would give me an opportunity to live there for a couple days - and not even have to pay for it. However, when we first started getting information about the camp, I was not sure whether I had made the right choice. We were given very little information about the camp, and the information we did get made it seem like the camp was poorly planned and managed.
When we arrived in Taichung, however, an entirely different story emerged. Turns out this was the seventh time the camp would be taking place, and the camp was run by a capable group of students from Zhengzhi University in Taipei. They actually planned the great majority of the activities for the kids, and we ETAs only had to teach during English class. The rest of the time, we assisted the college students with the activities they had planned - things like making paper zongzi, dancing silly dances, and relay races.
These college students volunteered their free time during the winter and summer breaks to run educational camps for students at Zhongkeng Elementary School in rural Taichung. How rural? Well, it took us an hour of driving from the HSR station through winding mountain roads and farmland to get to a village so small, it had only one store. There wasn't any place for us to stay, so we actually stayed in a neighboring town, which had a hotel - one hotel. The thinking was that rural students do not get the same advantages as kids in more populated areas, so offering a free camp for these kids would foster their interest in learning (especially English) and give them an opportunity to come in close contact with role models. At the same time, the college students would learn more about education, planning large events, and cooperation.
The camp turned out to be a ton of fun. The kids and their families were incredibly friendly and welcoming, the college students were fun to hang out with, and the backdrop of hilly pear orchards and cold mountain streams was beautiful. We were asked to teach certain holidays in English, which was great, since Scott and I had a lot of experience running holiday-based English camps, and Brian and Fiona also had a lot of material for teaching the holidays too. Since we recycled a lot of lesson plans, we didn't have to prep too much. The best part was that we were given the opportunity to teach about the fourth of July (which the camp was in session during), and we used the day to teach explicitly about the United States and the diversity of its citizens. It was a topic that I had had very little time to explore during the year with my students in Kaohsiung, so I was thankful for the second chance. In addition, the students in Taichung knew even less about America than students in Kaohsiung, so a lot of the information was new and exciting to them. We covered racial diversity, language diversity, and socio-economic diversity. We ended the day with a fun Independence Day parade (where the students each represented their own made-up country) and... S'MORES! It was not only the kids' first time experiencing this treat, but the college students' first time too. The logistics of preparing over 100 s'mores (especially in a country where graham crackers don't seem to exist) was daunting, but we managed to do it, and the s'mores turned out great.
Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about teaching English in Taiwan, I got the opportunity to learn more at this four-day English camp. Just because the students were rural didn't make them any less excited about learning English. I thought that working with one co-teacher was enough, but at camp, not only did I co-teach with five or six people at once, but I had fun doing it. And finally, it is possible to drive the point home that not all Americans are rich white people who only speak English. It just takes a little focus. I will never forget the great time I had at Zhongkeng's English camp.
