Winter Camp at Our School

Even a mosquito doesn't get a pat on the back until he is well into his work.

-Unkown

The Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday and all the schools are closed but since we work at a private school we still work. We had to work at our school’s Winter Camp the theme was “A Leader in Me.” We were obligated to teach nine classes a day and we weren't paid any overtime. In summary it was a pretty bad deal for us. In addition, Taiwan got cold. There was no heat in the classrooms and it got to be pretty difficult, especially because we didn’t anticipate needing real winter clothes.

The first day of Winter Camp our boss did not know how many students were going to come and therefore didn't have any materials for us. This is becoming a common theme at our school along with not having materials or supplies.  When we asked for more materials for activities the directors told us that the parents don't see the teacher’s manual so just do something else. With this said the school has been very difficult to work for. The management is unorganized and constantly passive aggressive. They with rarely talk directly to you and most of the time will get a student to tell you something even though that are standing right in front of you.

We knew that the winter camp was about leadership and that we had to come up with a performance for the parents to see. Again the director of the school didn't give us any information or guidelines except it had to be around an hour. We found a song and came up with some ideas about the seven habits to become a leader. Luckily there is a lot of information on the internet because schools in America teach around the same theme. We ended up doing a lot of skits about becoming a leader, a song and a play about Goldilocks that was changed to “Goldihood” (because the girls in the class were in a lower academic level than the boy, and he happened to be wearing a yellow sweatshirt one day) and speeches about famous leaders.

The student talked about leaders like Steve Jobs, Obama, George Washington, Queen Elizabeth... and these are the costumes they had to wear for their characters.

Goldihood

Practicing with the kids was a little bit frustrating. It was a challenge to keep the students motivated but we ended up playing a lot of games to break up the monotony. I thought up some challenges for the kids, some of them are very competitive, that also worked to tire them out. Adrien introduced some of the games like gagaball and crazy tag she learned while working for Royal Caribbean as a Youth Staff. We ended up merging some of our classes together because we simply didn’t have enough materials, and just played games instead. To us, that’s what a camp should be about, and that’s what we advertised to the kids before camp started.

At the end the kids did well and I have the parents were happy. So after two weeks of a semi-hostile work environment our bosses were finally happy.

Also if you want to see some videos of the kids practicing for the presentation click here.