2018年8月3日金曜日 - 
William Marshall：July Kid's Camp in Hyougo
This year, I was
lucky enough to be asked to go to Sasayamaguchi with John Keating to do a
children's camp for Josho All-Girls Junior High School. It took place on July
23rd and 24th in the beautiful Hyougo countryside. We
stayed at a hotel, and spent the majority of our time playing games with the
students.
We focused on teaching them about relative
pronouns (who, that, which). John and I split the girls into two groups and
took a dozen or so into separate rooms to teach at our own pace and in our own
way. This was a little intimidating for me as I'm used to smaller class sizes
and a more rigid curriculum, but this time I simply had a handful of games, and
subject matter to use.
For my group, I split the girls further
into four teams – Pancake, Sushi, Pineapple, and Waffle (They named
themselves!) – so I could remember their names more easily. After a few hours
of teaching, we merged the two groups together so they could all work on their
PowerPoint presentations. They had to present different parts of Japanese
culture (e.g. traditional dress, anime, snacks) to students in New Zealand,
which was where they were going for an exchange programme. When the girls
weren't sneaking looks at anime and K-pop videos, they all worked hard, and
gave John and I some wonderful presentations! We graded them across three
criteria – Presentation, Grammar, and Voice – and the top group received some
candy as a prize.
We were provided with wonderful meals when
we were there. Lunch on the first day was a rather large bento box, which John
and I ate in the teachers' break room. For dinner, we had some katsu, sushi, and
other typical Japanese fare.
For breakfast, we were treated to an
all-you-can-eat buffet (I loved the sausages the most!), and lunch was a tasty
hamburger and rice.
Before we left on the second day, we
strolled around the pond in front of the hotel, which was quite beautiful, but
searingly hot.
We thankfully didn't stay outside long,
apart from going back out to take a few group photos. This aspect was quite different than kids'
camps I'd done in previous years, but I certainly didn't mind the nice air
conditioning! I'm looking forward to when I can go along on another children's
camp, either similar ones to last year, like this one, or something completely
new!