A World of Many Hats and Not Enough Shoes

Teacher says, "What?"

July 22, 2010 - 6:25 PM

With a whole LOAD of thanks to Leah laying out a lesson plan outline, I was able to teach an English Class of high school students at English Camp. Students were divided into English classes based on skill level. My class was considered an entry level English class with most kids having "only" 6 years of previous English classes (I know, 6 years!). Leah taught the other entry level class and Josh was in an advanced class.

leah's class

Leah's Class meeting outside on a beautiful day. Notice Zeke right in there participating! He did an amazing job both at participating and being a great example! Praise God! One day of class all the kids interviewed Zeke (in English) by asking lots of questions about his family. At one point someone asked Zeke to describe each person in his family and he said his dad was "open minded," his mom was "thoughtful," his brother was "creative," and his sister was "crazy and funny." Leah said it was SUPER sweet! On the flip side, there was another day when the class was talking about dating/marriage and one of the girls started talking about her boyfriend /kissing at which point Zeke says to Leah, "I don't think my mom would want me to listen to this," and he asked to leave. Awwww!!!

josh's class

Josh's Class meeting outside on a beautiful day. It was taught by a great bible college guy from the Cherry Hills Team who went by the nickname Ragu (which is based off his last name). They had an advanced class and after the first day they realized they need harder class work. Josh's internet connection & iPad came in great handy at teaching some lessons with harder vocabulary. Josh had great conversations with some of the guys about deep philosophical topics and it was a simply perfect fit for Josh. They also had lots of fun too when they wrote a short film and Josh filmed / edited their shorts. They're great & if I can upload them from Josh's computer to YouTube I will!

In my class I had Zuzka as my translator, an amazing young woman from Moravia who came out specifically to translate. She was an amazing support for me both in teaching class and in praying for our students. Then there was Ondra, a great young guy from a local city who was there to translate and to love & pray for our students. Aaron was a high school kid from the Cherry Hills Team and I want to say this was his 6th or 7th English camp? The other 6 in our class were high school kids from local Czech cities, one of which was sweet Bara who attends the school year long English club that Leah leads in Strakonice. For 4 of the students, Honza, David, Jana & Mirka, this was their first English Camp and for Klara, this was her second camp.

One of the perks for a Czech student to coming to a JV English Camp is that they get to speak English with Americans 24 hrs a day. They get to learn more about American traditions, culture and slangs, but also learn English in a very creative setting. (Though the one downside is that in school they are taught British English, not American English and yes, there is a difference.) Even still, each English class went about teaching English in very creative ways so that camp was not exactly like "school" and we played a lot of games, acting, relay races, etc in class.

body vocab

For example, this was a relay game we played to work on English vocab of body parts. Aaron and I were the guinea pigs and the students had to race to put all the body part names on us.

taste test

Or the day we did food we had blindfold taste tests like you see Jana and Bara doing. I brought along A&W Root Beer from the US for this game that thankfully did not explode in our suitcase! They do not have Root Beer at all in Czech so it was new for our students! :)!

This is Honza and David doing an activity where they created their own menus using a US Steak-n-Shake menu for an example. (Thank you Steak-n-Shake for giving me tons of your take out menus!!)

All the activities we did were for the students to practice both speaking conversational English and writing conversational English. For example, dressing up and acting out a traditional American wedding...

wedding day

Or in Josh's class (like I mentioned) when they wrote and filmed their own movies in costume...

costume

Overall, with the 3 hours of English Class plus the extra Discussion Time at night, we got to know all our students really well. I am probably fairly biased when I say I had the BEST class! They all contributed so much in class and in discussion time. I appreciate watching people really think through deep topics, it's a beautiful thing.

Admittedly, I have not spent much time with high school kids. Outside of the 3 awesome and only high school kids in our church, the only other high schoolers I've dealt with has been in less than desireable circumstances. But my students were amazing and I love each of them so much! I am incredibly thankful for Facebook so that we can continue to keep in touch!

class