After finishing work with ELAC, I was offered another summer camp job with a different firm (who shall remain nameless, but who definitely lived up to the summer camp stereotypes!).
On the way down to Surrey, I stayed overnight in Birmingham and met up with Tunde from my CELTA course who was teaching at Birmingham Uni over the summer. She definitely had a cushier job, teaching for about 12 hours a week for much more money, but then again, she does have years of experience teaching adults! We went out for some food and had a good catch up.
I arrived in Surrey on the Monday to find everything in chaos awaiting the new students arrival. I waited at the station for about an hour for someone to pick me up and there wasn't a bedroom ready for me. In the end, another teacher and me just went to find a room and picked one that looked as if it wasn't being used! As the camp was at a boarding school rather than a university or college, most of the rooms were shared (luckily all the staff were given single rooms the next day) and didn't have locks, so I had to lock all my valuables in my suitcase and hope for the best.
The camp was expecting around 200 Chinese students aged between 10 and 12 for 2 weeks. The teachers were expected to teach for 3 hours a day and do activities for 6 hours a day, a pretty hefty workload, especially with staff meetings on top. The Course Leader was a deeply unpleasant man and was pretty much unprepared for the new students. The students were not streamed according to ability and I ended up with one class of 30 students ranging from complete beginners to Intermediate! One of the teachers lasted a week then quit and I lasted about a week and a half... not a great experience!
Monday 30 August 2010
Friday 6 August 2010
Nottingham
I spent July teaching at a summer camp in the UK (in Nottingham to be precise). For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of summer camps, they are a study vacation for (mostly) European teenagers studying English to give them a chance to be immersed in the language and culture for a couple of weeks. Working for summer camps has a bit of a bad rep due to long hours, low pay, shoddy accommodation etc, but I struck lucky working for ELAC. They were recommended to me by Jim, one of the guys I was on the CELTA course with as he works as a Course Director for them, and fortunately I ended up working with him and his friend Kera, who I met when she visited him in Budapest.
As the camp was based at Nottingham Uni, we all got our own en-suite rooms which were in good condition. We taught for around 6 hours a day and supervised evening activities a couple of times a week. As the students came with their own group leaders (usually their teachers), we didn't have any onerous pastoral duties (getting the students up in the morning and making sure they go to bed at night). We also had 3 meals a day provided; the catering was a bit monotonous (and the Italian students complained a lot about the food), but it was much better than the food I was served at university!
We had to plan our own lessons (although we did have plenty of text books and other resources) which was time consuming, but meant we could be creative in our lesson plans and I could put all that new CELTA training into action! For the most part, the students were great and I really enjoyed teaching them. They were mostly Intermediate-Upper Intermediate, so the speaking activities flowed really well as they were able to reason in English and put their views across.
The best thing about working here though was definitely the people! The other teachers were all great and I made some really good friends. After a few days, it felt as if we'd known each other for years! We would always go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night which is how we invented slide conga and Rich invented slide-boarding using ashtrays as skis!
Nottingham itself was nicer than I thought it would be.... the city centre is very Victorian with lots of grand buildings and is great for shopping! We gave the pubs a good sampling - special shout out to the Three Wheatsheafs where we spent many an hour and the Johnson Arms for introducing me to Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer! The only dodgy moment was being shouted at by some chavs on a Saturday night who took objection to the house party we were at and threatened to "shoot us up"!
As the camp was based at Nottingham Uni, we all got our own en-suite rooms which were in good condition. We taught for around 6 hours a day and supervised evening activities a couple of times a week. As the students came with their own group leaders (usually their teachers), we didn't have any onerous pastoral duties (getting the students up in the morning and making sure they go to bed at night). We also had 3 meals a day provided; the catering was a bit monotonous (and the Italian students complained a lot about the food), but it was much better than the food I was served at university!
We had to plan our own lessons (although we did have plenty of text books and other resources) which was time consuming, but meant we could be creative in our lesson plans and I could put all that new CELTA training into action! For the most part, the students were great and I really enjoyed teaching them. They were mostly Intermediate-Upper Intermediate, so the speaking activities flowed really well as they were able to reason in English and put their views across.
The best thing about working here though was definitely the people! The other teachers were all great and I made some really good friends. After a few days, it felt as if we'd known each other for years! We would always go out for a few drinks on a Saturday night which is how we invented slide conga and Rich invented slide-boarding using ashtrays as skis!
Nottingham itself was nicer than I thought it would be.... the city centre is very Victorian with lots of grand buildings and is great for shopping! We gave the pubs a good sampling - special shout out to the Three Wheatsheafs where we spent many an hour and the Johnson Arms for introducing me to Crabbies Alcoholic Ginger Beer! The only dodgy moment was being shouted at by some chavs on a Saturday night who took objection to the house party we were at and threatened to "shoot us up"!
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