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"!